Introducing Character Animation with Blender

EBook Description: Introducing Character Animation with Blender, 2nd Edition is written in a friendly but professional tone, with clear descriptions and numerous illustrative screenshots. Throughout the book, tutorials focus on how to accomplish actual animation goals, while illustrating the necessary technical methods along the way. These are reinforced by clear descriptions of how each specific aspect of Blender works and fits together with the rest of the package. By following all the tutorials, the reader will gain all the skills necessary to build and animate a well-modeled, fully-rigged character of their own. The character built over the course of the tutorials is included as a .blend file on the companion website, for the reader to experiment with and learn from.Introducing Character Animation with Blender, 2nd Edition is inspiring as well as educational. A color insert includes sample characters and frames from animations by many of the Blender community�s most talented artists, which help to illustrate the impressive potential of the software. From the Back Cover Find source files for the tutorials in the book, useful Blender links, and much more on the companion website. www.sybex.com/go/introducingblender Tap the power of Blender, blend in your creativity, and build memorable animated characters with this practical guide from Blender guru Tony Mullen. Covering the new Blender 2.5, this book offers clear, step-by-step tutorials, a complete discussion of all tools, and illustrations that will both enlighten and inspire you. Follow all the projects and you�ll soon have the skills you need to build and animate a well-modeled, fully-rigged character of your own. A full-color insert presents dazzling examples from some of the most talented artists in the Blender community. * Get up to speed on Blender 2.5′s extensively redesigned user interface * Master organic mesh modeling tools and build a complex character mesh * Fashion skin, hair, and clothing with material shaders, textures, and slots * Use Blender�s new Rigify add-on to create complete, professional-quality character rigs with ease * Learn to sync lip movements with a sound file * Understand function curves, keyframes, and the basics of animating * Learn to link assets and use Armature proxies to organize your productions * Analyze the Blender short film, Sintel, and read what its creators have to say Animate a rigged character to get him running Use particles and subsurface scattering to create hair and skin Explore open content from the Blender Foundation Open Movie Projects

In Character Animation Fundamentals with Maya, author George Maestri employs the basic principles of animation to bring to life simple 3D characters in Maya. Starting with an overview of the character rig, the course provides guidelines for arranging stock characters into strong poses and explains how to generate locomotion between poses in a modular fashion. The course includes step-by-step instructions on animating realistic gestures, walks, runs, facial expressions, and dialogue, and culminates with an animated scene built entirely from scratch. Exercise files accompany the course.

"The Animator's Workbook: Step-By-Step Techniques of Drawn Animation"

The Animator's Workbook offers a complete course on the principles and techniques of drawn animation. Stressing that animation is a subtle and exacting art form which breathes life into inanimate drawings, Tony White, an award-winning animator, covers every aspect of the process. He provides technical information and explains in easy-to-follow text and step-by-step illustrations, how to capture movement, expression, and emotion. He shows you how to convncingly animate birds and animals and explores special effects - wind, water, fire, and solid objects - that can add realism, drama, and atmosphere to animation.

This book takes the mystery out of the animation process and provides sound, reliable guidance and information. Topics include:

Content
The Process of Animation
The Animator's Toolkit
Inbetweening
Head Turns
Walks
Runs
Realistic Touches
Technical Information
Exaggerated Action
The Animal Kingdom
Dialogue
Animated Effects
Backgrounds

Learning 3D Character Animation with Jeff Lew

From the Lead Animator of Matrix Reloaded, the �Learning 3D Character Animation with Jeff Lew� series is one of the few real character animation classes on DVD. There are so many how-to videos on the market showing you how to setup a character or model a character in a specific 3D software package, but very few training videos showing you actually how to animate a character in 3D. This 3-part DVD series will teach you strong fundamentals necessary for creating great character animation in any 3D animation software package.

"Graphics and Animation on iOS: A Beginner's Guide to Core Graphics and Core Animation"

This introductory text teaches programmers in Cookbook style how to write iOS apps that take advantage of Core Graphics and Quartz Core and the SDK?s great graphical capabilities, such as using custom fonts, loading and using colors, drawing gradients, moving, scaling and rotating images and whatnot.

Character Design for Games and Animation

In this second of two DVDs, Cameron Davis discusses how he brings a character to life by fleshing out the design in Adobe Photoshop . Not merely coloring, the design continues to evolve in the digital stage. Cameron takes you step-by-step through this process, covering Photoshop techniques, color studies and color theory, and understanding the psychology of audience reaction.

Computer Facial Animation

This book integrates all aspects of computer-generated facial animation including computer-based visualization techniques, three-dimensional character animation, anatomical, and psychological considerations and discusses them in the framework of promising applications in entertainment, human-computer interface, research, and education.

Core Graphics and Core Animation

Jazz up your iPhone and iPad apps with some slick graphics and animation-and keep users from looking elsewhere. This short and concise book shows developers with even little Cocoa programming experience how to create impressive graphics and animation effects with relatively easy coding. Learn how to incorporate smooth animations and draw images in your apps to achieve the classy look you want.

The recipes in this book include step-by-step instructions and simple code solutions that you can put to work right away.

Learn basic concepts for adapting to different screen sizes
Construct, set, and use colors
Draw text, images, lines, and rectangles
Add shadows to shapes
Create and draw gradients
Learn how to animate and scale, rotate, or move views

About the Author
Vandad Nahavandipoor has developed software using Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, Assembly, Delphi, and .NET for many years. As a staff member of a company that is a global leader in mobile money solutions in London, he has worked with some of the world's biggest brands-such as Visa and US Bank-to deliver mobile applications to their customers. Vandad brings an interest in management, leadership and entrepreneurship to his work, believing in the synergy that is achieved as a result of cooperation and working together in a team.

Cartoon Smart - Animation

Just add talent! Award-winning animator Tony White brings you the ultimate book for digital animation. Here you will find the classic knowledge of many legendary techniques revealed, paired with information relevant to today's capable, state-of-the-art technologies. White leaves nothing out. What contemporary digital animators most need to know can be found between this book's covers - from conceptions to creation and through the many stages of the production pipeline to distribution. This book is intended to serve as your one-stop how-to animation guide.

Character Rigging and Animation 3dsmax

Rigging a character is an important and challenging part of the video game and VFX workflow. Sergio Mucino, accomplished video effects and games artist discusses how to use �layered rigging� to create both simple and advanced character rigs. The rig is the �user interface� to your character � it must be clear and precise to allow as much control as possible when animating your character.

The session begins by demonstrating technical character rigging workflow and introduces skeletal design for advanced skinning deformations. It continues with topics such as advanced controllers, wires, expressions, scripts and embedded procedural animation. It finishes with skinning and morphing of facial expressions, the use of proxy geometry, and muscle-based deformation system.

Exploring Animation Principles in Maya 2011

In this collection of lessons we will learn about the animation principle of Staging.
What is Staging? How can it be used to improve the quality of your animations? We will answer these questions as we cover tips and techniques for using this principle to make sure your animations are presented in the clearest way. By the end of this course, you will have a deeper understanding of the principle of Staging, which will help add more entertainment to your work.

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