James Cunliffe

3D Animation | Animation | Gaming

3D animation for games: creating characters and environments

3D animation is a key element of modern video games, adding depth and immersion to the gaming experience. Whether creating realistic and believable characters or immersive and detailed environments, 3D animation plays a crucial role in bringing the world of a game to life. Here’s a look at how 3D animation is used in the creation of characters and environments for games:

Characters:

3D animation is used to create the characters that populate the world of a game. This involves creating 3D models of the characters, rigging them with a skeletal structure to define their movement, and animating them to bring them to life. 3D animation is used to create a wide range of characters, from simple NPCs to complex and realistic main characters.

Environments:

3D animation is also used to create the environments of a game, including the landscapes, buildings, and other structures that populate the world. This involves creating 3D models of the environment, adding texture and detail to create a realistic and believable world, and animating any interactive elements such as doors or vehicles.

Cutscenes:

3D animation is often used to create cutscenes or cinematic sequences in games, which are used to advance the story or provide important information to the player. These cutscenes can be created using a combination of 3D models and 2D artwork, and are usually rendered and composited in a way that creates a seamless and cinematic experience.
Overall, 3D animation is a key element of modern video games, adding depth and immersion to the gaming experience. Whether creating characters or environments, 3D animation plays a crucial role in bringing the world of a game to life.

Related Articles

New Skool Community

The Hidden Archive: Free Creative Tools, Resources and a New Teleprompter App Over the past few years, I’ve created a slightly ridiculous number of things. Books. Apps. Courses. Music. Videos. Experiments. Resources. Some useful, some strange, and quite a few that sit somewhere in between. One of the things I’ve wanted to do for a while is create a single place where I can bring more of this work together and make it accessible to people who might find it useful. That place is The Hidden Archive Skool community. The idea is to build a growing library of creative

Read More

The Hidden Archive

What is The Hidden Archive? The YouTube channel finally got a rebrand. I realised two years ago that my YouTube page was starting to feel uncurated. The simple truth was that being multidisciplinary, and wanting to explore a wide variety of mediums, had led to a kind of anti-niching. In my own way, I was navigating the principle of correspondence. In creative abstraction terms, that essentially means gaining an understanding of multiple fields and then connecting the dots between them to deepen my understanding of creativity as a whole. That said, I realised that on the surface, this

Read More

What Are UFOs?

What Are UFOs and What Do They Say About Humanity? Back in 2024, I went down the rabbit hole of UFOs/ UAPs. It was around the time David Grusch hit the scene and it really did seem like we were going to get disclosure any day. There was an energy around the topic, it felt charged, so much so that I found I could rarely think of much else. I read American Cosmic by Diana Pasulka, picked up Elizondo’s Imminent, watched all the congressional hearings on the topic, and got hooked on AJ’s The Why Files. The whole

Read More

The Gnostic Creation Story

Why This Story Is Valuable While researching the Red Book series, I’d occasionally read comments linking Jung’s work to Gnosticism. I was raised by Christians, and although I’m agnostic myself (if I had to put a label on it), I’m still interested in the history of religion and more recently whether the stories hold any value in the modern world. I eventually made my way to an Alex O’Connor video with Bart Erhman where they outlined the core aspects of the Gnostic Creation Story, from the Apocryphon of John. Which then led me to a translation of those

Read More

James Cunliffe

Creative & Multimedia Artist

A full-time creative sharing the journey.

Previously an animation technician for a subsidiary of Epic Games. As well as a digital producer, creative director, and gaming media content lead for multiple award-winning agencies.

I lead end-to-end content delivery, shaping the idea, building the plan, and directing execution through production + post.

Latest Book
My Current Focus
Latest Videos
Scroll to Top