I'm dying to find out how this beautiful video was made - what program produces these semi-3D animated marketing pieces? There are flat lines curving around text content in a fixed camera view...it looks very unlike 3D Studio Max or something, that would be using lighting and moving camera angles etc.
1 Answer
As this is mostly hand drawn animated vector graphics you could do these kind of videos in most 2D animation software. Lighting in this case isn't rendered by the program but painted by the artist. In most cases this would be done in Adobe After Effects as it offer very sophisticated timeline animation tools and works very well with vector graphics. There are also still quite a few people using Adobe Flash for these kind of animations.
You are not limited to these two software options though, you can definitely do this in Apple Motion or Sony Vegas aswell.
An artist would draw the single elements for the video in a vector graphics program like Illustrator or Inkscape and then these would be animated in a 2D animation software package like mentioned above.
You might want to have a look at this article from the maker of this specific video, it explains the design process quite well: https://www.behance.net/gallery/CBRE-Animated-Infographics/15921655
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It is also possible that some of the parts could be using the basic 3d capabilities of After Effects itself, but I concur that it is most likely AE.– AJ Henderson ♦May 10, 2014 at 17:29
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Sure it might animate in 3D space. Though the animated footage is definitely 2D.– timonskuMay 10, 2014 at 18:29
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Thank you for the detailed answer. The article you linked to is where I initially found the video. He does describe some of the process, but not his tools or workflow. You can see my comment in there asking how he did it, but I received no answer :) Well that does it, time to learn me some After Effects!!! Thanks again guys. May 14, 2014 at 20:38