Does MLP:FIM look better in 2D or 3D?

[Gaines 1,219]

Do you prefer MLP in a 2D style or 3D style and why?

I like when simple cartoon characters come in life using 3D animation, so that's what I prefer. 

[Tom Gallagher 33,581]

It would've been interesting but me personally, I can't see or want it to be any different from how we know it so maybe 3D wouldn't be ideal.  I mean, people have made them 3D quite a few times to varying degrees of cuteness or scariness. 

Edited July 24, 2020 by TomDaBombMLP

[Moony the Cat 3,702]

I would die for a Theathrical high budget 3D Movie about the My Little Pony Franchise. 

But a more detailed 2D incarnation ala Disney/Don Bluth would also be super awesome!

Even though both of these dreams seem very unlikely.

[Splashee 28,563]

FIM looks best in 2D thick line art style.

3D might make water waves look realistic, but it also makes cheeks happen. I don't like pony cheeks

[ExplosionMare 18,062]

12 hours ago, Splashee® said:

FIM looks best in 2D thick line art style.

3D might make water waves look realistic, but it also makes cheeks happen. I don't like pony cheeks

Pony cheeks still exist: 

[Splashee 28,563]

11 hours ago, ExplosionMare said:

Pony cheeks still exist: 

Noooooo. Why they make adorable Cozy have cheeks! 

[Fluttershutter 2,398]

I definitely prefer it to be a 2D cartoon, though I still think a big budget, well written movie where the ponies come to our world(different from the EQG world) like Sonic the Hedgehog would be awesome.

[Jesse Terrence 2,968]

2D all the way babe.

I have never liked 3D ponies, because they get some really weird and ugly angles on a 3D view, while they can be covered up on 2D through many 2D animation perspective techniques such as ignoring how the perspective would actually work

[SasQ 1,375]

Ponies are 3D, they're just drawn in 2D (since our screens and paper sheets are flat), by making sharp edges in places where the line of sight is tangent to the surface of the object, and areas of coluor fill where the line of sight falls upon the surface at some more perpendicular angle.

What people often refer to as "3D" is actually CGI graphics rendered/raytraced from 3D models by a computer instead of hand drawn by a human. And this usually looks bad because it is hard to do it right. The most trouble is with fur / hair, as well as lighting. (Lighting your scene properly so that it wouldn't look too dark or too bright requires a good amount of knowledge about photography, while fur / hair requires a lot of processing and physics computations so people often just handwave it and replace with some cheap cop-outs.)

Therefore I don't think that ponies would look good as computer-generated 3D graphics. Many people tried it, but most results look like crap, because they modelled their 3D meshes based on just a few reference angles from the show, and only these angles look decent, while others look bad. There's a couple of exceptions, of course, made by great 3D artists who know how to model stuff to look good from all angles, or rig the character properly so that their legs weren't bending in some creepy way etc. One such example is DJTHED (more on that below).

But personally, I'd rather go with the hand-drawn look from the original show, maybe just spiffed by some extra shading to make them look less flat and fit their surroundings better, such as this one here by StormXF3:

BTW here's a good explanation of why computer-generated 3D graphics often fail for cartoon characters, with a nice breakdown of Hasbro's 3D animation of Pinkie Pie:

And here's a video in which he presents the entire process of modelling Rainbow Dash:

I don't know anyone who would be able to model 3D ponies in a more accurate and convincing way that would look so good. So far this is the best I've seen.
Check out some other videos on his channel, they're pretty amazing

As for the actual 3D, as in solid objects in the real world, there's also one dude who makes very awesome looking pony sculptures / figurines from clay:

 

 

[Stardust 641]

2d I mean I like some of the 3d fan animations but really i am a 2d fan :3

[Splashee 28,563]

8 hours ago, flurry said:

2d I mean I like some of the 3d fan animations but really i am a 2d fan :3

Very clear and perfect answer! I concur

[Technoblade 113]

everything looks better in 2D

[Lambdadelta 1,462]

I prefer 2D, not just mlp but animation in general.

[Vefka 1,499]

On 7/27/2020 at 11:32 AM, SasQ said:

The most trouble is with fur / hair, as well as lighting

Truth spoken. I once tried to make artworks with actual fur and hair and it took me countless hours

On 7/27/2020 at 11:32 AM, SasQ said:

I don't know anyone who would be able to model 3D ponies in a more accurate and convincing way that would look so good. So far this is the best I've seen.

He uses tricks to make them look good, eg snoot is actually following the camera and multilayered mane mesh

[Ittoni 538]

I honestly prefer 2D as it is right now because they have done very cool things with the medium. Also because the existing 3D models are pretty much garbage including the model for pinkie pie in those terrible shorts (except few of the fan made ones done by professional artists).

Just compare this 3d models

This one is the free model from deviant art that started everything and that is used for all of those pony fan made 3D animations but as much as it's noble it's not good.

This is almost a nightmare for all the effort and heart that the artists put on it.

And the same happens with the Hasbro one. I would dare say they took the free model as a base and just modified it enough to make their shorts in time. But you can look at how badly resolved it is. YOU CAN SEE THE EYE SHINES POP OUT OF THE EYES!

And the shading is gross and muddy. The shapes are forced, the details are sloppy like in the nose is just a punch in the snout. And the animation itself is terrible.

Now this one is almost there. But it still looks like the head has no shape (is an egg) and it has no chin.

This one is good. Too much light so the details are not very visible but at least is not grey and muddy. We will have to see if it passes the expressions test.

But yeah, it's still not there. And until is not on a good enough place I can't take the 3D as an option. 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Ittoni

[ZiggWheelsManning 9,889]

2D, as it is touching and a lot to relate to.  

[Landi 600]

I would say 2D. I have always loved 2D animation, and there is something about it that feels more heartfelt. I feel that 3D can sometimes look very manufactured and unnatural. For instance, while I don't hate the G5 movie style, I still prefer the nice and simplistic style of G4.

[Pentium100 2,120]

IMO it's not really possible to make a 3D model of a pony that looks good and looks like the show.

The reason is that at least I accept "distortions" on a 2D animated medium, but on 3D models they just look bad. What "distortions"? MLP:FIM is drawn in a style that reminds me of anime. Anime characters look cute with their big eyes etc, however, in my mind, I know that they "really" look like humans, just that the drawing is stylized. If you made a 3D model that looks like an anime drawing and also not cell-shaded, IMO it would look awful. I see that when people make 3D models of anime characters they either make them cell-shaded or alter them to look more like a normal human (shrink their eyes etc).

What does it have to do with ponies? Ponies were designed to look good as drawings and look OK as toys. However, "in reality" they would look different (because the drawings are distorted just like anime, where eyeballs of a character would intersect each other), I just do not know how. Most of the 3D models I have seen just look like the toys. So, 3D animation would look like a walking plastic toy or, if fur and hair was rendered in detail, just look wrong.

For example, the characters in Frozen look like made of plastic. And it's not just that they are not rendered in too much detail. If I watch a VHS recording (which would somewhat obscure lack of detail), they stil look like made of plastic.

Also, the screenshots of G5 to me look like the characters are made of plastic too. If I end up liking G5, it will be despite the art style.

[dead account 2,710]

Definitely 2D. To make something look good in 3D, it needs be incredibly polished. And in my opinion it works better for serious shows and not something like FiM. Think about all the various expressions FiM has. It looks good in the style it has, it's perfect. But the same would look very creepy in 3D. That's just how I feel about it, I wouldn't enjoy it.

Not related to FiM, but I enjoy Nintendo's 3D games. I see those as perfectly balanced. It looks perfectly beautiful and it's never over the top. FiM could definitely pull off the same, but most of the fun and silly moments wouldn't work anymore, so you have to leave away many of FiM's unique and funny moments because of it. They could have used 3D for a more serious movie, similar to the 2017 one.
Hasbro always screwed at 3D from what I've seen. I don't believe they would be able to pull off something to my liking.

[ExplosionMare 18,062]

For animation, 2D works the best since you can use more cartoon logic and it won't offend as much as 3D cartoon logic, even if we're talking about magical ponies here. Not only that, but 2D ponies are easy to replicate and they look much cuter.

[EpicEnergy 23,163]

It looks better in 2d, but I still love the 3d animation of the movie.

[Savy 5,075]

I think it looks  better in 2D, but I still love the movie's 3D animation.

[Tacodidra 61,044]

I definitely prefer 2D, it has more personality (3D animations tend to look somewhat similar to me) and cuteness. 3D is more realistic, but that's not really something I expect from a show with talking ponies.