One technique is called rendering. Rendering is used “to create a 3-D scene from a 2-D image, a camera angle, and a light source” (474 in Computer Concepts). Algorithms are used to determine how the textures, colors, and shadows appear in the scene being made. Animation techniques are used to make motion in the rendered scenes. Instead of manually making different images to make movement, animators now use computers to generate the “in-between images” (474 in Computer Concepts).
Another technique is morphing which can be seen in movies such as Terminator 2. The animators have start and end points that are rendered into digital images, then the computer puts in all images that go in-between, and they change the images by putting in small differences to make it less-than-perfect.
In The Matrix movie, John Gaeta made bullet time. Bullet time is when you produce sequences where time slows down and then goes back to normal. The Matrix movies are the best example of this since most of the fight scenes contain bullet time. John Gaeta did this by having a computer “trigger a circular array of more than 100 still cameras in sequences” (475 in Computer Concepts).