How is maths used to make animations and films?

Loaded Bunny: How is maths used to make animations and films?
I have a school project to do on Maths and it’s applications in film and animation. I just need to know how maths can be used to make animations and films. Thanks

Answers and Views:

Answer by Anza Power
In Flash all the animation is done mathematically, all shapes are drawn with vectors and the program makes stuff move all mathematically…

Basically every type of animation out there that is not stop motion animation is done with mathmatic programs, especially cartoons, CGI, and 3D movies, in 3D movies it’s all about calculating the depths of objects in an image to determine how to render it and make it look real…

Answer by jc_yurcastle
i have the class, is cuz you need to know the distance between objects, and easy in and out so you know at what speed every bones and frames are moving on!

Answer by Foxie
For example when making 3d animations the computer does lots of math-work in counting the exact x and y values (coordinates) for every polygon and mesh. Math is also used as algorithms in for example decoding the final video file.

Answer by jplatt39
Having done a little of this and a little of that over the years (notice my top contributor badge is currently in drawing and illustration) I’ve noticed a lot of things too simple for these people to notice which are ESSENTIAL in filmmaking.

First point to make: animation has to be budgeted. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about SecretAgentBob (Jason Steele) doing Charlie the Unicorn on a Mac with Flash, Big Buck Bunny by the Blender Institute produced with Blender on Ubuntu or Disney’s Up, you can’t make a movie unless you know how much you are prepared to spend on it. Budgeting uses math.

Second, when you record it, you need both a sound track and a record of how long each sound lasts (I forget what it is called). It is used to determine both how long each motion lasts (how many frames are involved in it) and precisely when it starts.

Third, Linear perspective can be modelled with math quite directly. Think of it as the apparent size of an object equals the width times the height divided by the distance from the viewpoint. The farther away this is the smaller it looks and this is a LINEAR transformation.

Finally of course there are various morphing algorithms which allow for the computer generation of particular movements once you have start and end points, or key frames. But you can’t get to that point until you have budgets, and you can’t get to that point unless you use math.