3D Animation Development Process
Created for the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission
This page offers a behind-the-scenes look at how we create emotionally realistic 3D animated characters for educational use. From initial character selection to expressive animation techniques, you’ll see how each phase of our process is designed to bring authenticity, nuance, and impact to training content.
Developed specifically for the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, this walkthrough highlights how thoughtful design and cutting-edge animation work together to support effective, trauma-informed learning experiences.
This demonstration is intended to be an abbreviated version of the real process which will include a larger quantity of options and refinements along the way.
Step 1: Expert Script Development & Storyboarding
Every effective training begins with a thoughtful, trauma-informed script and a detailed storyboard that maps each scene to a learning objective. Our process is guided by deep subject matter expertise and a commitment to educational best practices.
Leslie Briner, MSW, founder of Social Strategies, LLC, is a nationally recognized expert in trauma-informed practice and human trafficking. Her extensive experience includes developing and refining simulation-based courses as an instructor at the University of Washington School of Social Work. This ensures each narrative reflects an understanding of survivor-centered practice, emotional nuance, and the realities of frontline work.
Complementing this, Daniel Ballard, Executive Director and lead investigator at our subcontractor, Soteria of Washington, brings direct, real-world experience in stalking investigations, threat management, and law enforcement interactions. His professional training, including certifications through CJTC, ensures alignment with agency standards and expectations.
Our storyboarding is a collaborative process, working closely with stakeholders to ensure the final product Authentic Motion Capture for Lifelike Movementreflects organizational values and field realities, engaging learners with clarity, empathy, and professional relevance.
Step 2: Authentic Motion Capture for Lifelike Movement
Our process begins by capturing a live performance from actual human actors. We use cameras to record the actor’s body and hand movements in real time. That footage is then processed through tools like QuickMagic, which translates video performances into real-time footage. This allows us to bring natural gestures, posture shifts, and physical cues into the character animations.
By starting with motion capture, we lock in authentic human performances as the foundation for every scene, while still leaving room for manual adjustments as the project develops.
Step 3: Realistic Facial Animation
Once we have captured the live performance, we run that footage through tools like Framemancer to extract detailed information about the facial movement of our actor. This data is then used with Unreal 5’s Metahuman Animator to create incredibly realistic, life-like face animations.
This process allows us to achieve realistic facial animations directly from video, while still enabling manual adjustments if needed, such as exaggerating expressions or changing camera perspectives.
Step 4: Authentic Vocal Performances
To achieve the most realistic vocal performances for our characters, we record live dialogue. We utilize powerful tools like ElevenLabs, which not only allows us to select a voice that best matches each 3D character but also enables us to capture performances from multiple actors while maintaining a consistent voice for a single character. This ensures that the strongest performances are delivered in an authentic voice that perfectly fits the character.
Step 5: Character Customization & Environment Creation
After capturing realistic performances, we focus on the visual presentation of characters and their environments. We collaborate with clients to determine whether a photorealistic or a more stylized 3D approach best supports their training goals, offering different styles in action before a final decision.
We can customize characters by modifying their wardrobe, hairstyle, skin tone, and more, ensuring authenticity for the training scenarios. For environments, we have access to a wide range of high-quality 3D assets, providing the flexibility to build a myriad of realistic settings. Our design team includes dedicated 3D modelers who can create new assets from scratch or modify existing ones to better fit specific scenarios.
Step 6: Collaborative Review & Refinement
Collaboration is central to our process. After initial scenes are animated, we share drafts with our clients for review and refinement, ensuring the final product reflects their goals, values, and vision.
We welcome feedback on character behavior, pacing, and visual emphasis, working closely through multiple rounds of revision to ensure clarity, emotional accuracy, and alignment with trauma-informed practices and proven investigative techniques.
Click Here for Our Earlier CJTC Stalking Demos
This is the second release of this RFP, and in response to the initial posting, our team submitted a comprehensive proposal along with a functioning demo to illustrate our ability to create interactive, branching scenario-based training. While our original demonstration utilized illustrated slides rather than animation (prior to fully understanding CJTC’s emphasis on animated realism) it remains a strong example of our capability to design complex decision-making pathways and generate user-specific reports. For this updated project, we would adapt that same branching framework by replacing static illustrations with fully animated video scenes, preserving the interactivity and logic while elevating the visual and emotional engagement to meet CJTC’s expectations.
Following additional discussions with CJTC during the initial RFP process, we developed a second demonstration that incorporated both 2D and 3D animation to align more closely with the clarified request for animated training content. While we were not yet informed that CJTC’s primary focus would be exclusively on 3D animation, this demo reflects our responsiveness, flexibility, and the breadth of our technical and artistic capabilities. It also demonstrates the investment and commitment we have already made to this project. By showcasing both animation styles, this demo highlights our ability to adapt to evolving project needs and deliver high-quality, emotionally resonant training experiences using a variety of animation techniques.
By combining cutting-edge motion capture and animation tools with trauma-informed scripting and real human performances, our proposed approach delivers realistic, adaptive, and effective training simulations.
This process allows us to create truly immersive training scenarios where professionals can practice decision-making and learn to recognize subtle verbal and non-verbal cues with confidence when responding to complex cases.
Thank you!
