Purushothaman Raju

Character Rigging and Advanced Animation

Bring Your Character to Life Using Autodesk 3ds Max

Purushothaman Raju
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
ISBN 978-1-4842-5036-5e-ISBN 978-1-4842-5037-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5037-2
© Purushothaman Raju 2019
Standard Apress
Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media New York, 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation.

This book is dedicated to the most special women in my life, Rajeshwari (mom) and Rashmi (Wifey), without their support this book would not have been possible.

Introduction

Character Rigging and Advanced Animation is a book for people who are familiar with 3ds Max at a basic level and want to learn character rigging and animation. The book is split into three major modules, which are further split into chapters.

The first module is the foundational module. In this module, the book begins by baselining the importance of the 12 principles of animation with reference to classical real-world examples. It uses famous movies/animation shots to help you understand keyframe and graph editors, which will help you obtain fluid motion in animations. Practical examples are used to explain which feature suits a particular scenario.

The second module is the backbone module. In this module, you are introduced to deformation tools and their use in character animation. Further chapters introduce you to driven animations, constraints bones, bipeds, and the CAT tools available in 3ds Max 2019.

The final module, the lifeline module, is where you bring your character to life by applying the principles you learned in the previous modules. You will be guided in how to use advanced concepts to retarget animation from one character to other characters or rigs. Once you have completed the exercises and followed along with the book, you should be able to create characters rigs for bipeds or quadrupeds with ease and animate them for lifelike motion.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Spandana Chatterjee for putting my name forth for such a wonderful opportunity, Divya Modi for pushing me to complete the book, as the deadlines were missed time and again, all the while being patient, Siddhi Chavan for proofreading the chapters and providing valuable feedback that made the book better in terms of readability and Olivier Henley for tech reviewing and providing me with valuable feedback to improve the book.

I would also like to thank Mel Naoke, from EndlessReference.com, for providing me with the content video and for permission to use their content in Chapter 8 .

Thanks to all my friends and family members who supported me while I wrote this book. Special thanks to everyone else who was a part of this book.

Thanks to you all.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1:​ Beginning Animation 1
The Principles of Animation 1
Squash and Stretch 2
Anticipation 4
Exaggeration 5
Follow-Through Animation and Overlapping Action 7
Secondary Action 8
Arc 9
Appeal 10
Timing and Spacing 11
Slow In and Slow Out 13
Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose 14
Staging 14
Summary 14
Chapter 2:​ Creating and Refining Animation 17
Preparing for Animation 17
Setting Up the Project 17
Setting Up Duration and Frame Rates 20
Creating Animations 22
Creating Keyframes 22
Understanding Keyframes and Tangents 23
Curve Editor 28
Invoking the Curve Editor 28
Working with the Curve Editor 30
Understanding Graph View:​ Curve Editor 33
Creating Keys Manually in the Curve Editor 34
Tweaking the Graphs 36
Tangent _​Auto 36
Tangent _​Spline 37
Tangent_​Fast 38
Tangent_​Slow 38
Tangent_​Stepped 39
Tangent_​Linear 39
Tangent_​Smooth 40
Mini Curve Editor 41
Dope Sheet 45
Summary 50
Chapter 3:​ Advanced Animation Tools 51
Getting Started with Hierarchy 51
Setting Up a Hierarchy 51
Setting Up a Pivot 56
Constraints 58
Attachment Constraint 59
Surface Constraint 63
Path Constraint 64
Position Constraint 65
Link Constraint 67
LookAt Constraint 69
Orientation Constraint 71
Engine:​ Mechanical Animation Using Constraints 72
Summary 75
Chapter 4:​ Bones Rigging 77
Bones 77
Creating a Skeletal Structure 81
Bone Chain Hierarchy 89
FK/​IK 93
What Are IK and FK?​ 93
Simple IK Chain 96
IK Chain for a Leg 97
IK Chain Constraints 100
IK Chain for an Arm 103
Custom Attributes and Wire Parameters 108
IK Chain for the Spine 115
HI Solver/​HD Solver 117
Summary 118
Chapter 5:​ Bipeds 119
Getting Started with Bipeds 119
Creating Your First Biped 119
Summary 150
Chapter 6:​ CAT Rigging 151
Understanding CAT Rig 151
Creating Your First CAT Rig 151
Creating a CAT Rig from Scratch 154
Saving and Loading a CAT Rig 161
CAT Rig Layers 162
CAT Rig:​ Motion Path 173
Summary 174
Chapter 7:​ Skinning for Animation 175
Skinning 175
Skinning Bones 175
Skinning Bipeds 196
Skinning:​ CAT Rig 204
Summary 212
Chapter 8:​ Animating:​ Walk and Run Cycle 213
Analyzing:​ Walk Cycle 213
One Stride/​Half a Cycle 214
Two Strides/​Complete Cycle 215
Arm Locomotion 216
Upper Body Locomotion 216
Head Locomotion 218
Animating:​ Walk Cycle 218
Animating the Walk in Place 218
Animating the Walk Away 223
Animating:​ Walk Cycle Loop 225
Analyzing the Run Cycle 228
Rotomation 229
Quadruped Run/​Walk Cycles 235
Summary 242
Chapter 9:​ Morph Animation and Facial Rigging 243
Morph Animation 243
Working of a Morpher 244
Facial Animation 250
Emotions:​ Facial Expression 250
Phonemes 257
Audio Lip Sync:​ MorphTarget 264
Hybrid:​ Facial Animation Using Morphs and Bones 270
Summary 274
Index 275

About the Author and About the Technical Reviewer

About the Author

Purushothaman Raju
../images/477189_1_En_BookFrontmatter_Figb_HTML.png

has over 17 years of experience in multiple domains comprising online gaming and academic coaching. During his tenure in academics, 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 an associate senior professor teaching 3D, multimedia, and post-production at NICC International College of Design, Bangalore.

 

About the Technical Reviewer

Olivier Henley
../images/477189_1_En_BookFrontmatter_Figc_HTML.jpg

holds a BFA from Concordia University and a BEE from Polytechnique Montreal. He regularly works as a software contractor for Autodesk Inc. and has previously evolved within Ubisoft Entertainment SA as a generalist game programmer on titles such as Rainbox Six: Siege, For Honor and Your Shape: Fitness Evolved. He also invented some original work on temporal filtering (patent US8884949B1) for the Microsoft Kinect camera. In his spare time, he likes to do carpentry, welding, and multimedia art installation, as well as build web servers and maintain an Awesome list about the Ada programming language.

 
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
13.58.8.127