Character Rigging and Advanced Animation: Bring Your Character to Life Using Autodesk 3ds Max

ISBN-13: 9781484250365 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 280 str.

Purushothama Raju

Spis treści

MODULE 1: FOUNDATION MODULE

 

Chapter 1: Beginning Animation

Chapter Goal: The goal here is to get the reader familiar with the base concepts of animation and principles of animation to help them get the best result when they move ahead into further chapters.

Sub -Topics: Each principle will be dealt as a sub topic with a total of 12 principles

1. Squash and Stretch

2. Anticipation

3. Staging

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose

etc

 

Chapter 2: Refining Animation

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to help the reader familiarize with curve and dope editor to refine simple animations applying the principles learnt in previous exercise.

Sub - Topics

1. Understanding Keyframes and types

2. Graph Editor and tools

3. Curve Editor and tools

4. Constraints and options

 

MODULE 2: BACKBONE MODULE

 

Chapter 3: Advanced Animation

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to help the reader familiarize with driven keys, constraints, and hierarchy.

Sub - Topics

1. Hierarchy and layer panel

2. Setkey and timeline basics

3. Constraints and types

4. Engine: Mechanical Animation using Constraints

 

Chapter 4: Bones

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to familiarize user with bones and explain the needs of it and build a complete rig in the process from scratch.

Sub - Topics

1. Basics of human anatomy for rigging

2. Forward kinematics and inverse kinematics

3. Bones and bone tools

4. Bone weights and skinning

5. Creating a simple foot rig

6. Creating a worm rig

7. Stretchy rig

8. Creating an arm rig

9. Foot rig advanced

10. Bipedal rig

11. Quadruped rig exercise

 

Chapter 5: Biped

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to familiarize the reader with Biped rigging system known also as character studio, the reader will be able to rig and animate a 3d model

Sub - Topics

1. Understanding & customizing biped

2. Biped skinning

3. Footstep and freeform animations

4. Loading and using Mocap data

5. Working with motion flow & motion mixer

 

Chapter 6: CAT Rigging Tools

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to familiarise the user with CAT tools and use them for rigging the character or 3d model.

Sub - Topics

1. Understanding CAT rigs

2. Editing CAT rigs

3. CAT rigs hierarchy panel

4. CAT rig: Muscles

5. Understanding CAT rig IK system

6. Animating a CAT rig

 

MODULE 3: LIFELINE MODULE

 

Chapter 7: Morph Animation

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to help the reader familiarize with morphs and get believable face animation using morphs

Sub - Topics

1. Fundamentals of Morphing

2. Morpher in 3ds max

3. Understanding phonemes for animation

4. Facial animation using Morpher

 

Chapter 8: Walk and Run Cycles

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to guide the reader animate a walk and run cycle of the character rigged in previous exercise.

Sub - Topics

1.      Understanding key poses

2.      Personality - timing & spacing

3.      Biped Walk and Run

4.      Quadruped Walk and Run

 

Chapter 8: Facial Rigging

Chapter Goal: The goal here will be to guide the reader to create and animate a cartoon head using custom rigs

Sub - Topics

1. Understanding facial anatomy

2. Facial rigging a guided approach

3. Setting up controllers for animation

4. Animating phonemes

O autorze

Purushothaman Raju has over 17 years of experience in multiple domains comprising online gaming and academic coaching. During his tenure as academic faculty, he has trained and mentored more than 800 students on diverse projects in the field of multimedia. He holds an advanced professional diploma in multimedia. Currently, he works as associate senior faculty teaching 3D, multimedia and post production at NICC International College of Design, Bangalore.

Blurb

Gain a thorough understanding of animation and character rigging using Autodesk 3ds Max to create realistic character animations. This book is split into three modules that are subsequently divided into chapters. The first module is the foundation module: in this module you’ll cover, among other topics, the 12 cardinal principles of animation with reference to classic real-world examples and famous movies/animation shots. Using these, the further chapters explore using key frames and graph editors to obtain fluid motion in your animations. Practical examples are used to better explain which feature suits a particular scenario. 

The second module, called the backbone module, introduces you to deformation tools and their use for character animation. Further chapters cover driven animations, constraints posed by bones, bipeds, and the CAT tools available in 3ds Max 2019. 

The final module, the lifeline module, encourages you to bring your character to life by applying principles learnt in the previous modules. Here you will be guided on how to retarget animations from one character to other characters or rigs.

On completing Character Rigging and Advance Animation, you will be able to create character rigs for bipeds and quadrupeds with ease, animating them with life-like motion.

You will:

• Understand the 12 principles of animation
• Set up an animation-ready character rig from scratch
• Master the deformation tools available for animation