Summary of three-dimensional animation creation based on ethnic culture element

three-dimensional animation is a product combined by technology and art. It is an artistic expression form combining painting, film & television, digital technology, music, and literature. As an audio and visual art, three-dimensional animation has its own unique culture-loading function, technical aesthetic characteristics, and requirements for national art expression. This paper aims to find the method to combine digital technology and national art in combination of three-dimensional animation short film creation, and hopes to clear the road for the cultivation of domestic three-dimensional animation quality project.

Maya can be called another milestone in three-dimensional animation development history.Maya is a world's top three-dimensional animation software produced by American Autodesk Company.It can be applied in professional film and television advertisement, character animation, and special effects of motion pictures.Maya is improved in function, flexible in working, easy in learning and use, high in producing efficiency, and strong in reality sense rendering.It is high-end manufacturing software in film level.The three-dimensional animation mentioned here refers to the newly-developing production method of using MAYA software to finish the rendering procedure and create image motions according to the virtual scenes, characters, textures, modulation motions, and setting lights shown in stories and original drawings.It can be seen that there are strong characteristics of the times contained in animation technology.Rapid development in technology can help animation artists free their subjective artistic performance and create better animation works.
2) Aesthetic styles of image Three-dimensional animation can manifest perfect spatial shape creation and real texture.More freedom is allowed in three-dimensional animation creation.The virtual lens and lighting can truly realize animation artist's subjective ideas.In 1995, PIXAR Computer Art Studio completed Toy Story which is the first three-dimensional animation full of stereoscopic impression and sense of reality created by digital technology.It is an important turning point in the world animation history.Later, it only took threedimensional animation less than 10 years to occupy the leading role in animation creation industry.Threedimensional animation films, such as Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, and UP, have won the Short Film Award in Oscar and made new records in the world box office history.Seen from the outside, it seems the sensation caused by these three-dimensional animation films is a reform of audience's visual enjoyment.However, the root cause lies in the fact that each three-dimensional animation film has developed a new producing technology to make an obvious reform in visual effect.The emergence of three-dimensional animation has made the room for two-dimensional animation so much less that Walt Disney Company had to offer a high price for acquiring Pixar which has always focused on three-dimensional animation, in order to return to its leading role in animation industry.There is no doubt that aesthetic style of image is in continuous progress and has promoted the development of animation technology to a brand new area.

METHODS TO COMBINE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL ART
The Horse, a short three-dimensional animation film, has won many awards, such as The Best Story Award in 2010 Changchun International Digital Entertainment Animation Art Festival, and Excellent Animated Short Film awarded by Beijing Film Academy.The writer will make analysis of the methods to combine digital technology and national art based on his own production process as follows.

Technical characteristics of story content
The Horse has strong literariness with compact story structure and gradual development of paradox and suspense.It contains the basic conditions to produce a high-quality animation film.The Horse tells a story between a county magistrate and an ordinary citizen in ancient time.By describing the process of how the magistrate stole the horse from a farmer's home, it has many settings in details.The story begins with the magistrate's greedy image.After a yamen runner tells the magistrate there's a precious horse in a farmer's home, the magistrate decides to steal it.The short film focuses on the process of the magistrate's horse stealing, such as the scene when the magistrate enters the farmer's home and hides himself after the farmer sees him.In the end, when the magistrate starts stealing the horse and fights with the horse, the climax of the whole story comes.The result of this story is the magistrate fails to steal the horse and gets kicked by it.
The story line of The Horse is full of irony and entertainment.However, test of CG technology is the precondition to start producing this animation.If the technical problems existing in the film cannot be solved, the transition from abstract literal art to visual entity art cannot be achieved.For example, the creation of storyline and shooting tone, test of shot application, creation of the characters' emotion and personalities, motion test, skeleton setting, uniformity of weight production, performance exaggeration and lyricism, descriptive performance practice, effect of the blowing dust, and test of MAYA particle effects are the preconditions to ensure the smooth production of this animation film.Without these technical tests, the smooth transition from literal story to animation is impossible.

Application of plastic arts in modeling of three-dimensional animation
Modeling quality is critical in the quality of the entire animation.Original painting is the proof for modeling production.Model is the virtual presentation of the original painting accomplished by three-dimensional software MAYA.Animation character is one of the key factors for the success of an animation film.Cute cartoon modeling styles are usually used for character image design.As excessive realism may weaken the entertainment of this film, the prototype designs of the characters in this film are all in cute cartoon style.
There are four characters in this animation work.Exaggeration and contrast are used in character design, especially in the designs of the county magistrate and his yamen runner.The magistrate is short and fat to show his greed while the yamen runner is tall and thin to constitute obvious contrast to the magistrate.The yamen runner is in simple and unadorned clothes while the patterns on the magistrate's clothes are same as the patterns and tones of ancient official's robe.Ancient farmer's poverty is referred to in the design of the farmer so as to show his poverty in an exaggerated way.The precious horse is in white with a long neck, heavy horse mane, strong skeleton, and a powerful tail.The horse can give a presentative feeling and show its unique feature to whoever sees it.(See Figure 1 for character image designs) Before modeling, the personalities, shapes and other details of the characters in this story must be fully understood.Three-dimensional models should only be produced after getting familiar with these preconditions.The first two problems are the modeling structures of the original paintings and the arrangement of the three-dimensional models.Model arrangement is around character structure.The modeling lines move with the structure.Thus, detailed description about structural points must be given by the original painter, especially the relations among the main joints of the characters, such as wrists, arms, knees, legs, waists, upper limbs, and hips.(See Figure 2 for three-dimen-

UV is the key carrier of the correlation between model and color art
UV is the attached carrier of modeling material.It is an important channel to create colors, patterns and structures in three-dimensional animation models.As shown in Figure 3, character UV is produced by LAYOUT through mapping.Two-dimensional UV can be exported from material editor and imported into Photoshop for drawing (as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5).After the drawing is done, it can be connected to the models through preset MAYA material ball (as shown in Figure 6).The characters' social status and personalities have been fully considered during the production of The Horse.For example, in order to show the magistrate's characteristics and clownish presentation, red is used to replace the originally considered blue as the background color of his clothes so as to better manifest the entertainment of the story.Chinese opera facial makeup is used to draw the magistrate's head while the patterns and styles of the official robes in ancient China are also considered to match the entire color scheme.In this part, Photoshop is applied in delineating, coloring, and creating clothes plication.And it can also be used to timely change the observation effects of the three-dimensional models if necessary.After the basic colored mappings are completed, highlight and bump mapping are also required for further processing.At last, the connection and adjustment of material balls are conducted in MAYA to reach the expected effect.

Uniformity of motion modulation and performance art of three-dimensional animation character
3.4.1 Body constitution is the technical proof for the skeleton setting of three-dimensional character Skeleton system is the precondition of character model motion.Binding must be strictly done according to character structure so as to avoid difficulty in producing following motions.As shown in the figure given below, take the magistrate as an example.Some condyles can be added on the waist to make his motions more natural and real.A parent skeleton is added under his hip to control the whole body.The skeletons on his feet are kind of special.They are set up for driving.After all skeletons are set up, historical records need to be deleted.It is better to name each skeleton to make it more convenient for weight brushing.The next step is to add controller which serves for motion adjustment.Take the magistrate's hands as an example.IK handle is controlled by the controller and the skeleton is controlled by IK handle.Control of three levels or more levels are set to control the hands and make it more convenient for motion adjustment as skeleton selection will make the whole process much more complicated.Key frames are set up for the feet and the hands and controllers can be used to control the hands and the feet.Historical records need to be continuously deleted during production to avoid mistake.After controllers are added, rename the locations they are in and accomplish freeze transformations of the controller attribute values.Check whether all the controllers are valid.If any mistake is found, find the cause as soon as possible as it will be much more troublesome to modify after covering.Conduct smooth bind after the check is done, and then start weight brushing.During weighting, patience and perseverance are required.Reasonable weight allocation shall be conducted in accordance with joint structures.After all the above steps are completed, character skeleton binding is done (as shown in Figure 7).3.4.2Animation performance is the condition of creating three-dimensional motion Carlos Baena, an animator from the famous American animation studio PIXAR, once said, "The difference between a good animator and an animation master is like that between a good actor and an acting master."Animation performance attaches life or soul to characters or virtual models.It can make the characters or models vivid and natural.There is no doubt that animation performance is playing a key role in animation production.Just as its name implies, animation performance is to perform by cartoons which can move.Animation creators must realize the performing process with their pens in hand, and make the motion producers understand the motion rules through performance.Animation performance emphasizes on motion-mental activities are manifested through the combination of body motion, facial expressions and language.All the above constitute the foundation of three-dimensional animation motion. [6]The production of this animation was also in accordance with such scheme.After receiving the files, the motion group checked binding and made character performance in accordance with the story.They used DV video camera to shoot or draw the motion rules; analyzed the sequences of moving rules and key gestures; completed artistic processing and shifted it to three-dimensional models.Pose-to-pose method was applied in posture production.After key frames were adjusted, middle frames were adjusted to reach the required animation effect through repeated modification.After this motion was finished, it was outputted for video preview.All previews were gathered for watch.If any failed to accord with the style of the entire animation, it would be returned for adjustment.The relation between time and interval, the moving rhythm, must be well controlled in motion adjustment.Besides, animators shall go deep into the personalities of the characters and their role statuses in the story.All these require high artistic aesthetics and creativity on animation designers.

Uniformity of lighting embellishment technology, picture, and space art
Modeling and creation of frames in accordance with story line can manifest the important role that three-dimensional lighting plays.Three-dimensional lighting can light up the setting, make objects show various reflection effects, create shade and special effects, and shape beautiful and fine frames through lighting effects and materials.MAYA lighting is divided into ambient light, parallel light, floodlight, spot light, and surface light.They all have their own characteristics, but also share common features.In animation creation, lighting is alone to exist.In most cases, several kinds of lighting will be used in combination.
According to RGB Illumination Rule of Addition, mixing and adjustment of hue, saturation, brightness (HSV) and Alpha value can also be realized in lighting.
Lighting is to determine light ray and direction of main light source of the setting which is similar to oil painting in which direction of main light source and major color relations of painting need to be determined.The keynote of setting light serves for information and storyline creation during story development.In addition, the empty and full relations, relations between cold tone and warm tone, and the volume relations among model objects should be considered to realize gradation changes in light ray.Lighting can also make up the defects in the mapping of objects.

CONCLUSIONS
To a large extent, the perceptual and entertainment features of digital artistic aesthetics have been popularized by the comprehensive power originated from the mutual combination of contemporary digitization and multimedia.Maybe, this is some manifestation to reflect the self-worth and significance of digital technology under the background of art.Technology and art are the two attributes of three-dimensional animation development, and we shall be able to understand the relation between them in the right way.To catch one and lose the other will only lead to isolated and lopsided views.The application of CG technology in three-dimensional animation is not only a breakthrough in animation production technology.In a higher level, it can free animation artists from the restrictions set by realizable conditions Moreover, it can concentrate and focus the ideas, emotion, understanding and views of ourselves, others and social groups on the creation of animation characters, in order to obtain artistic breakthrough.Without animation technology as the support, artistic concept alone will be castle in the air or mirage.Of course, animation artistic expression without technology is like a tree without roots.Therefore, employees in animation industry need continuous exploration in both new technologies and new artistic expression forms to create animation works with era significance.They need to perfectly combine new technologies and new artistic expression forms; update their creative ideas; and improve manifestation patterns.

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .
Figure 1.The character design of The Horse

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Diagrams of character skeleton design and binding

Figure 8 .
Figure 8. Characters' movements of The Horse

Figure 9 .
Figure 9.The still of The Horse combination of painting, film, digital media, music, and literature.Image is in the core of Chinese traditional aesthetics.It reflects the good wishes manifested by social life and idea expression.Script is the foundation of animation literariness.
2 ARTISTRY IS THE SOUL OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL ANIMATION CREATIONAs a comprehensive art, animation is an artistic presentation form in no base in life cannot arouse people's love and spiritual resonance.