Check out how Marza made 2D effects 3D with a Flash/Maya Mesh Converter.

When Marza worked to create a realtime CG Film production pipeline for “The Peak,” it chose Unity as a platform. One of the challenges was to keep the 2D Handrawn style of the animation while working with a 3D scene. That included the effects, too, especially the water effects. The team came up with a system that used Flash-generated (Adobe Animate) content and brought it into Maya, automatically making the elements 3D. 

The team wrote a shape mesh tool that could take animated flash content and translate them into illustrator sequences. Those sequences are imported into Maya and made into animated meshes. The Marza team included Technical Director Brent Forrest, Director Takahashi Satoshi, Matsunari Takamasa as the Unity lead, Ashkan Zanjirian as the head of lookdev and lighting. Check out how the system works in the Unite Tokyo 2019 talk below.