Character animation

[Rafael Galindo]

I'll buy the book LightWave 3D 5.0 Character Animation F/X, I would like to
have some comments about this book, many people recommend it, so I would
like to know the pros. and cons. about this.

Thanks

Rafael

[Mark Wilson]

Rafael Galindo wrote:

I found it useful but not amazing. However I had done quite alot of animation
before reading this book so most of its tips I had found out the hard way. If
you have little experience then definately buy it. The one down side is that it
is for Lightwave 5.0 and not 5.5.

Mark 'Fly' Wilson

[Al Carnali]

I've found that most of the Lightwave books are lacking. The authors
tend to spend half the book just rehashing most of the information
available in the manuals. I really liked LightWave 3D 5.0 Character
Animation F/X. All of the information was fresh, no time was spent
covering the manuals. It contains many good tutorials. I did find that
some of the tutorials could have gone into more detail, there were a
number of times when I had to experiment to duplicate what the author
was trying to get at. This was kind of annoying. (This might actually
be a good thing because it forces you to think about what your doing).

- Al

[EileenRA]

>I'll buy the book LightWave 3D 5.0 Character Animation F/X, I would like to
>have some comments about this book, many people recommend it, so I would
>like to know the pros. and cons. about this.
>
>Thanks
>
>Rafael

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Several years ago I studied Chinese art, watercolor. One thing that I have
used in 3d character animation that I learned from studying Chinese art is the
way to get the timing, actions and character facial expressions. The serious
chinese artist studies the master for ten years, in all that time all they do
is copy the masters, thats it they just copy, then they go out on their own. I
suppose this is why most chinese art looks pretty much like the last guys. Many
on the group have suggested a good background in 2d art etc. and that is a good
foundation but I went it one more. I captured almost all of the disney cartoons
that I could get off TV and put them in the background of layout and practiced
imitating their movements, expressions etc. over and over again. In this way I
learned how the master did their stuff, I consider the masters of good
animation skills to be the old Disney artists. By doing these types of exercise
it helps the brain and eye to learn the timing as well as the motions that
cartoon characters use, its just more input to the brain that in time transfers
into your own head. I think they call this cybornetics. I think that timing is
the most important thing to learn in character animation. I have just recently
started with the more up to date types of cartoons, not limited movement but
the more advanced types like the Batman series etc. You'd be surpirsed just how
much you learn by copying the actions of the picture in the background and then
applying it to your character, its very useful.
Eileen Davidson

[Richard Smith]

Bravo! Excellent idea... hmmm.. my friend has cable with the cartoon network...
:)

[Kring]

>You'd be surpirsed just how
>much you learn by copying the actions of the picture in the background and
>then applying it to your character, its very useful.
>Eileen Davidson

I think that safely counts as a tip of the week. : )
-Kevin

[fernando bartra]

HI, I just got lightwave 3 weeks ago. I bought the book 'character
animation f/x in lw 5.0' and i think is the greatest. I work 2 days like
crazy, but I got a nice humanoid walk-cycle, and all the motion files I
created can be reused again and again. Without the book, there is no
telling how long it woulve taken me to learn to walk a character, probably
a few months. i'm impressing all my friends with my short avis 'character
playing with a ball'-'character walking on street'-etc, and even the
irc#lightwave ppl commended my efforts. The book is great for learning
basics, which for a begginer like me is invaluable. The only thing i wish
the book had, is instructions on how to properly bone a full human
character,

rednova

Rafael Galindo <rgal...@infovia.com.gt> wrote in article
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