6 Key Techniques for Creating Cinematic Architectural Animations

In this article, we’ll cover the key qualities of a cinematic format and how it helps with keeping your audience engaged throughout the film and more importantly, why it’s crucial to learn these techniques.

1. Software & Tools

   To give some context, the software tools and workflow that I often use in creating my personal projects are:

   • SketchUp (3d modeling)

   • D5 Render (3D rendering)

   • Adobe Lightroom (minor adjustments)

   • Adobe After Effect (video editing)

   • Dehancer (color grading)

   It’s good to note that all my personal projects are done using an old RTX 3070 GPU laptop and not a powerful desktop computer - so don’t let computer specs hinder your skill growth. Remember, these are just tools that aid us in achieving our project goals. Don’t let these dictate the outcome or limit your potential. But if you find yourself having to deal with a bigger scale project, there are workarounds to manage this.

2. Cinematic Architectural Animation Qualities

   We need at least three fundamental qualities:

   • Immersiveness - this quality can come in various ways such as using high-quality texture and materials, subtle movements from your character assets or objects, and many others.

   • Little details that tells a story - this can be done through the atmosphere of the environment and its detailing, which can help make the setting of your scene believable.

   • Emotions or Mood - this quality can be controlled by introducing consistent color grading. This can set the tone of your cinematic animation while unifying the visual experience of your audience. There are many tools that I use like the one built-in D5 Render or a plugin inside After Effects - Dehancer. I made a video specifically for this brilliant tool and you can watch it right here.

3. Build a Storyboard

   It’s critical to learn how to create a compelling narrative using storyboards. At this planning stage, you need to have a rough idea of the shot composition, pacing, and its transitions. It can be a simple sketch outline or a series of reference images that will help you stay on track with your storyline.

4. Lighting Placements

   Lighting can make or break the mood of your story.

   When creating a cinematic look, a good starting point is to mimic the ones we see in the movies. It’s good to explore different lighting techniques like the golden hour, dramatic shadows, and accent lighting to add depth or drama.

5. Sense of Scale

   In order to make your animation convincing, we need to give it a sense of scale. You can populate your scene with 3d assets like trees, furniture, and some dynamic characters.

6. Composition Techniques

   To achieve a cinematic look, here are some of the classic techniques that will guide us with our composition:

   • Golden ratio

   • Leading lines

   • Symmetry

   • Frame within a frame

7. Camera Movements

   To create visual interest, we need to use dynamic camera movements.

   It is uncommon to have shaky camera movements for architectural animations, unless that’s what your story is going for. A good starting point is making use of subtle panning camera movements.

8. Post-processing

   There’s a bunch of ways to go about this topic. If you’re making a rendered still image, you can use Photoshop to add more subtle elements to liven up your final image. At this stage, you have all the freedom to test out different improvements for your lighting, color grading, character emphasis, and so on.

   For animations, you can essentially do the same enhancements inside Lightroom and then stitch all image sequences into a video clip, but if I can produce an animation clip straight away without any issues, I usually go for the plugin Dehancer inside After Effects. It saves me more time and gives me a lot of options to tweak additional settings.

9. Music & Sound Effects

   In some cases, choosing the right music becomes the first task. This not only sets the mood, but also dictates the pace of your animation. With the right ambient sounds and other audio effects, you will further enhance the immersivity of your cinematic architectural animation. I always use Epidemic Sound for this task.

10. Conclusion

    We have only covered a few of the key qualities in creating Cinematic Architectural Animations, but mastering these techniques will definitely improve your skill to the next level. If you want to get into the details, you can watch the entire video below:

For more tips on 3D visualizations, be sure to check out my other tutorials.

If you want to try out D5 Render for yourself, you can use this link to get a discount on your annual subscription.