character setup / character animation

[MCronin]

The Gnomon character videos are good. I've seen all the character setup videos except the facial rigging one. I'm sure the facial video is as good as the rest. A|W also has a DVD from Jason Schleifer at WETA that was presented at Siggraph last year, "Integrating a Ceature Rig into a Production Pipeline" that also is very good and more advanced than the Gnomon stuff. Jason says he did another presentaion at Siggraph this year that will soon be released by A|W on DVD as well. There are all sorts of rigging tutorials at highend3D as well.

For animation, the best thing you can do is to read 'The Animator's Survival Kit" and apply what you learn to 3D.

Someone posted these in General Discussion

http://www.premierpressbooks.com/inspiredseries.asp

Looking at the tables of contents for each book though, they look to be targeted more at beginners.

[kamsvag]

I attended Vancouver Film School, even though I'm from Sweden. They're realy good at teaching character animation. If you can't attend a school you should at least buy the character bundle from gnomon workshop. The stuff that they cover are realy great.

At Vancouver Film School (VFS) I learnt SoftImage, though switching to maya was easy. Once you know how to rigg a character for animation in one package it's not so difficult to make the switch.

:D

[m0ck]

I really think that you don´t really need a school, all you need you can find it here in inet or buying learning books or CD or DVDs
as:


The real one :), some might say maybe a little out of date but really usefull at least for me:

HUMAN INDIRECT SKINNING WITH FREE-FORM DEFORMERS IN MAYA 2.5 (http://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/charcterSetup/setup_1.3d)

If you can afford this I really think you should take a look at
Maya Techniques | Integrating a Creature Animation Rig within a Production Pipeline (http://store.aliaswavefront.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=385100&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=41107)

Maybe a little advanced things but a lot of learning.

Also:
Arm/Forearm set-up with IK/FK. (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/arm_ik_fk/arm_ik_fk.html)

Videos from Gnomon
Videos from Alias
And all the things you can find with http://www.google.com ;)

With the first two, mainly and the other links, some hours, testing, testing and testing I think you can achieve a really good Rig.

Hope it helps.

[kamsvag]

It's true you can find tutorials and books that cover the subject, but I would still recomend to at least take classes in classical animation. Only to get all the classical principals, they DO aply to cg-animation as well. There are some verry good books about classical animation I would recomend. 'Illusion of Life' is the best one out there, but Richard Williams 'The Animators Survival Kit' is also realy good, while I'm on it I should mention Preston Blair as well, his material is realy great.

Visit Keith Lango at http://www.keithlango.com/

He has some realy good stuff.

:thumbsup:

[m0ck]

Yes :) those books are really awesome, I was talking about the rig for animation I should recommend hours, hours, test, hours testing, test, hours ;) ... I´m kidding, here in Spain schools in general lack on a lot of things, but I don´t know how are schools there... in the World :) so we don´t have other chance than self-learning and hours of wasted life.


To finish you should also read:


Character Animation: Principles and Practice (http://www.comet-cartoons.com/toons/3ddocs/charanim/index.html)

Raul Garcia (http://hometown.aol.com/raulgarci/myhomepage/tutorial1.htm)

Of course those books and Carlos Baena´s Animation Material (http://www.mclinn.net/~carlos/anim_material.html)

Book Recomendations (http://www.mclinn.net/~carlos/anim_material.html)

;)

[Ibanezhead]

Learning Maya: Character Rigging and Animation

http://store.aliaswavefront.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=385088&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=41107&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

This is the best 3D book I have purchased. Get it! It covers every step of character setup, from start to finish...

Vic

[iC4]

thx all, will check this :)

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