Service
Orthopaedic & Dental Animation
Orthopaedic and dental animation shows procedures as a sequence: the approach, the instrumentation, the placement, and the result. It is used where a patient needs to understand what is about to happen to them, or where a clinician needs to see a technique before performing it. This is a distinct discipline from molecular work. The anatomy is familiar to the audience, which makes errors more visible, not less — a surgeon watching an implant seated incorrectly will stop trusting everything else in the animation. Getting the approach, the instrument handling and the anatomical relationships right is the whole job.
What a procedure animation actually looks like
Procedure work starts with the sequence, not the anatomy. The operative steps are written out in the order they actually happen — approach, exposure, preparation, instrumentation, placement, closure or result — and confirmed by the surgeon whose technique it is before anything is modelled. Generic versions of a procedure are easy to make and rarely useful, because the value is in showing how you do it.
The anatomy is then built to the fidelity the audience demands. This is where orthopaedic and dental work differs from molecular animation: the audience already knows this anatomy. A surgeon watching an implant seated at the wrong angle, or an instrument held in a way nobody holds it, stops trusting the rest of the animation immediately. Familiar anatomy makes errors more visible, not less.
Patient-facing versions are treated as a separate edit rather than a simplification. The goal there is consent and confidence, not instruction — shorter, calmer, less graphic, and answering the questions a patient actually has: what will happen, will it hurt, how long until normal.
Can an animation be built around a specific technique?
Yes. Technique animations are usually built from the surgeon’s own operative sequence, with the steps and instrumentation confirmed before animation begins. The result is specific to how you do the procedure rather than a generic version of it.
What works best for patient education?
Shorter, calmer, and less anatomically graphic than a training piece. The goal is consent and confidence, not instruction, so the same procedure is usually recut rather than reused directly from a clinical version.
Can it be used in a clinic waiting room and online?
Yes, and that is worth planning for. A version without audio for a waiting-room screen and a captioned version for social both come from the same render if the framing accounts for it at storyboard stage.
What does a procedure animation cost?
Projects start at $3,000 for a 30-second sequence covering a single step or placement, and $5,000 for a 60–90 second procedure from approach to result. Multi-stage techniques with instrumentation detail and several reviewers sit higher. Runtime matters less than how many distinct steps the animation has to show correctly.
Does spine work differ from general orthopaedic work?
In practice yes, because the anatomy is less forgiving and the audience is more specialised. Approach, level identification and the relationship between instrumentation and neural structures all have to be right, and a spine surgeon will spot an error in any of them immediately. The process is the same; the confirmation step at storyboard stage carries more weight.
Who checks the anatomy?
A doctor. Addax is run by a practising-trained radiologist with a master’s in diagnostic radiology, so the anatomical relationships are checked by someone who spent six years reading them on scans. On familiar anatomy this is the whole difference: the audience already knows what a correct joint, root or root canal looks like, so there is nowhere for an error to hide.
What you supply
- The operative sequence as you perform it, step by step
- Implant or instrument CAD, or the product references you use
- Any imaging, operative notes or technique guides that already exist
- The audience: surgeons, referrers, patients, a clinic screen
- A clinician who can confirm the steps at storyboard stage
What you get
- A written step sequence for your correction before modelling starts
- A storyboard showing approach, instrumentation and placement as stills
- The finished animation in the formats you need
- A separate patient-facing cut where the project scope includes one
- The project files, so a technique update does not mean starting again