At what point does 3d animation become more efficient/cheapter than 2d animation?

I thought the two were already roughly equal in terms of cost to execute. The digital work is snazzier, but the 2D ink and paint takes more time for having to be done by hand.

I mean, I don’t agree that the 3D work takes more time; I think it takes less.

The only real problems with 3D are render time and the initial creation of the characters and objects. That takes an eternity to do when you are talking about photorealistic animations.
However, in 2D, when you have a scene and decide that you want it to show something different, you have to start from scratch (unless you are using vector graphics). With 3D you do not have to create the characters and objects from scratch, you just modify/relocate them if you have to and change the animation rules, and you are set.
I think the point at which 3D becomes cheaper is when the time it takes to create the characters, to set up the animation and to render it is shorter than the time it takes to make a 2D animation with classical techniques. It becomes even more contrasted when you include the time it takes to redo scenes or you decide to change characters, because then 3D is faster.

before i give you my opinion ill give you my animating credentials. i make animations from time to time in flash, and have been doing so before flash was even owned by adobe. i have also started to learn how to animate in things in 3D very recently, using programs like houdini 3d and maya.

in my experience, if i am using motion tweens i can draw a car driving down a road by drawing just 1 frame (30 minutes to 2 hours) and then chop that up on layers and animate it with tweens within mere moments. the same animation drawn frame by frame with no tweens will require 24 to 60 frames for each second of animation. so a 5 second animation now takes us about 10 days (obviously no one is ever going to animate a car manually if tweens exist, it looks identical if you cheat and use tweens). if i wanted to draw the same thing in 3D, first i would draw ’‘1 frame’’, a car a road and scenery. this takes about 5 to 6 hours or so, and then i create a ‘reality/universe’ where i set the laws of physics for the speed of the car, gravity, friction of the road etc… and then the animation is automatic, this takes another couple of hours to do.

so… 2 hours 2D using tweens, 10 days 2D without using tweens, about 1 day in 3D.

i guess it really just depends on what you are animating and how good you want it to look. how long it takes being a side effect rather than a basis to make your decision on what way to animate.

@poisonedantidote explains it quite well. Frame-by-frame animation is the most time consuming; modern 2D animation programs like Flash have great tools for making the animation process easier and faster, but there still are limitations.

3D takes a bit longer because you also have to model everything. That in itself can take quite some time, since often you’re basically building things from scratch and adding the textures (which can make or break a 3D piece). There is “modeling” in a sense in Flash, but I feel you can get away with a bit more because you don’t have to make sure every side of something is perfect.

You also have to consider the price of the actual programs. Flash Professional CS5 (the most recent version) is about $700 on its own holy shit I can’t believe they’ve already came out with CS5… I just got CS4 a few months ago! and Autodesk Maya (one of the most widely used 3D programs) is $3,500. Yeah.

But as far as the actual animation goes, @poisonedantidote summed it up well so I won’t talk about that.

By the way, my credentials: I’m an art student majoring in digital art. I’ve been using Flash since 2002, and I just started using Maya at the beginning of this year.

thanks!
just to expand a bit

Lets say you Are using Flash tweens/symbols, whatever you want to use, it’s ok.
VS. Blender, or Maya.
Assuming you know all the tools and programs.

Again, it is very important to pick a scene for your example/answer so that it doesn’t give either method an advantage. Ex. 2d snow, vs. 3d particles, or the car tweening example.

Assuming it’s fair to both sides. Which one would you pick.
Having these in mind.

2D: ignore the fact that you have to redo the entire scene from scratch if there is an angle change

3D keep in mind that you have to model your objects/environment. Texture, light, etc etc.

Let’s say you already have a solid storyboard and no major changes are gonna be made.

For what is expected of a 2D animation versus what is expected from a 3D animation, I’m pretty sure 2D animation is always cheaper than 3D animation. However, to do the kinds of things that might be easier to do in 3D in 2D, it would cause the cost of a 2D animation to go through the roof.

Production costs:
2D:
Princess and the Frog: $105M
Princess Mononoke: $20M
Spirited Away: $19M
Akira: $11M
Beauty and the Beast: $25M
Ponyo: $34M

3D:
Finding Nemo: $94M
Incredibles: $92M
Cars: $120M
How to Train Your Dragon: $165M
Up: $175M
Kung Fu Panda: $130M
Bolt: $150M

Err, to answer the actual question, it’s probably more along the lines of complexity of the scene, and not the length of it. If there’s a ton of action, then you’ll probably get some savings doing it with 3D.

There’s no exact number for something like that, since there are a lot of factors that could skew it either way. The amount of people on your team, the type of scene, complexity, skill level, all kinds of things. Even your tool set and skill level could be a huge factor.

Obviously 3D can be exponential time saver, but it’s not a magical instant-animation solution. There are actually quite a few instances where 2D animation can be produced cheaper and faster than 3D, even for long movies. It’s all very dependent on a variety of factors, and in a lot of ways it’s like comparing a high performance jeep to a high class sports car, both do basically the same thing, but it’s the road you need to worry about.

If you’d like, I could probably be more help if I knew more what you’re looking to do. My degree is in media arts and animation and I have a fair amount of experience with 2D and 3D.