Autodesk Media & Entertainment
Creative projects don’t always begin with ideal conditions. Sometimes they start with a tight deadline, a small room, and a simple question: What can I make with the tools I already have?
That was the starting point for SWITCH, a short animation created by Masahiro Yoshida, technical sales for Flow Studio at Autodesk Japan. Designed for an exhibition at a Japanese anime creators’ event, the film was produced in just three days using Autodesk Flow Studio, alongside 3ds Max and Arnold.
Working Under Tight Timelines
Rather than assembling a large team or complex setup, Masahiro chose a deliberately minimal approach. He filmed himself performing the action in his own room, using standard live-action footage instead of traditional motion-capture equipment.
The goal wasn’t to recreate a full studio pipeline. It was to see how far an AI-assisted workflow could go when time and resources were limited.
Those constraints shaped the project in practical ways, but also creatively. The confined space, the single performer, and the short schedule all became part of the experiment.
Refining the Scene in 3ds Max
After exporting the animation from Flow Studio as USD, Masahiro imported the scene into 3ds Max to prepare it for rendering.
He notes that the bones can appear large after import, which is easy to manage by scaling them using the Bone tools. Small end bones can also be hidden in the viewport to keep the scene readable.
The surrounding environment was modeled directly in 3ds Max. Objects like books were duplicated using an Array modifier with randomized scale and rotation, while elements such as windows were created using Boolean operations so they could be easily adjusted later in the modifier stack.
Stylized Rendering with Arnold
For the final look of SWITCH, Masahiro used Arnold with a toon rendering workflow.
To begin, he changed the render filter to Contour in the Arnold render settings. This step is required to enable toon rendering.
The toon shader was then applied by connecting it to Map to Material or a similar material setup. Once connected, Arnold is ready to render outlines and toon-style shading.
With toon rendering active, Masahiro focused next on shaping the edges and line work.
He lowered the Angle Threshold to increase the number of detected edges, then adjusted Edge Width to control overall line thickness. While fine-tuning these settings, he recommends adding color to the outlines or slightly darkening the base color texture and using it as the edge color, making the results easier to evaluate.
Overall line thickness is set using Edge Width in the render filter settings, while Edge Width Scale in the toon shader allows for more precise adjustments. To add visual variation, Masahiro connected noise or gradient nodes to Edge Width Scale, creating subtle changes in line thickness across the model.
Once the outlines were established, attention shifted to shadows.
Masahiro adjusted shadows by connecting a Ramp shader to the toon shader’s Base Tonemap. To achieve a look closer to Japanese anime, he set the ramp’s colorinterpolation to Constant, creating clear, step-like transitions between light and shadow instead of smooth gradients.
For additional stylistic expression, dot or cross-hatch nodes can be connected to the Ramp shader, allowing shadows to appear as dots or cross-hatching, similar totechniques used in manga illustration.
A Workflow Built for Experimentation
What SWITCH demonstrates isn’t just speed, but flexibility. By reducing the technical overhead typically associated with animation and motion capture, Flow Studio made it possible to move quickly from idea to execution.
For Masahiro, this meant spending less time troubleshooting setup and more time experimenting with storytelling, timing, and visual style.
Making Space for More Creators
Projects like SWITCH show how AI-powered tools are opening doors for a wider range of creators. Indie artists, students, and small teams can explore animation workflows that once felt out of reach, now with far fewer obstacles in the way.
With Flow Studio, attention shifts away from setup and technical overhead and toward creative choices — making it easier to try ideas, iterate quickly, and learn by doing.
That spirit of experimentation extends beyond a single project. Join the Creator Community to see what others are making, share ideas, learn, and get inspired from fellow creators pushing their work in new directions.
Sometimes, a short deadline isn’t a limitation. It’s an invitation to try something new — and with Autodesk Flow Studio, you can start experimenting with your own footage today.