Customer Reviews

3-D Human Modeling and Animation, Second Edition

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book was assigned for an introductory modeling course that I took at RIT last year. I and all of my (about 35) classmates had major difficulty with it. Our professors got so frustrated with it that they stopped giving us assignments from it within six weeks. If you're an educator, consider the following before giving this book to your class:

The modeling section is unbelievably vague. How do you model the interior of the human ear, or the human torso? Ratner frequently answers both questions (and many others) with, "cut polygons and move points," rarely saying where to cut or what to move. Simple tasks are covered in multiple steps, complex tasks are glanced over. The illustrations are uninformative, often jumping from a rough template to a fully articulated model in one or two steps. Worst, Ratner omits a lot of crucial modeling fundamentals. He never mentions edge-loops, the concept of topology following the contours of form, or the prevailing practice of using mostly quads (in fact, both the patch and subdiv examples are loaded with triangles). Incidentally, the NURBS/patch exercises are incompatible with Maya because of all the triangular patches.

Beyond the modeling section, the book is even less useful. It's not bad, just very incomplete, and what is there is not terribly well-explained. For example, Ratner touches on the principles of animation but gives no tutorials on how to employ them. (The only animation tutorial in the book is a walk cycle, and it's both simplistic and confusing.) Moreover, the example animations from book's accompanying CD are lacking in those fundamentals. Typical of beginners' CG, they show a poor sense of weight, their timing is off, and the characters MOVE, but don't ACT. They're not terrible, but they clearly need work.

Judging from all the glowing reviews, it's obvious that a lot of people disagree with me. Let me clarify what I mean to say about this book: it's not worthless, and it WILL provide someone new to CG with some basic information. However, you can find the same information and much more on any high-end CG website, free, better-written, and with much more detailed tutorials. And, if you want books that go even more in-depth than that, I'd recommend any of the alternatives other reviewers have offered up on this page, especially Richard Williams' definitive text "The Animator's Survival Kit." I would also recommend "Anatomy for the Artist" by Sarah Simblet.

If you want to learn how to model the human form, I defitnely won't recommend this book. I bought this book as a newbie modeller. But it didn't help me a bit. I learned more from reading about modeling and topology on diferent forums. And now I can say that about 90% of Peter Ratner's modeling theories are plain incorrect. He doesn't even mention edge loops. Even if it is mentioned because I missed it, still edge loops is a term that should have been mentioned 10 times or more on every page. It is one of the very pillars of modeling theory. Instead Peter Ratner tells us to extrude a polygon, cut it a few times and move the vertices around until you get the nose shape, or the ear shape or whatever. My grandmother could have told me that for free.
Anyway, the second half of the book was helpful though. But I must say that the second half (that's about animation and lighting and texturing) is standard knowledge that is explained far better in other books. The CD has a few nice artwork on it. Nothing I could have downloaded from various sites on my own. What could have been more useful was tutorials on how the authors of those images made those images.
If you are a beginner, skip this one! There are better books like "Stop starring", all the books from the [DIGITAL:] series from the top of my head.

Yup, review of books online is a lost cause. How many times have I bought a book which looked interesting and substantial only to end up with sloppy editing, crappy tutorials, poor writing, uninspiring artwork, and a huge dollar sign on its dust jacket that made me lose a quarter of my arm and leg?

More often than once. That was the case with this book.

Lessons learned? Reading reviews online is a tricky affair. Usually, the attacks are personal. They may find the book hogwash but it might just be the right one for you. Others might even have a violent reaction to the book not because it was really a trashy book to begin with but only because the reviewer misses the whole point. Imagine a raffia hobbyist reacting to a book on Javascript for Rocket Scientists and Engineers.

So no matter how advanced information technology has become there is still no better substitute for fondling the physical diomensions of a book in your local bookstore and reading it at length to have a better grasp of its usability. I know it is hard but walking is such a great exercise it will strengthen your cardiac muscles and save you hours of writing acerbic reviews of books which did not meet your expectations.

May I also remind you this book is a rehash of an old material the author has written almost eight years ago. Nothing much has improved. The author obviously is finding a way to resell an old book by coming up with a new cover but the change is clearly a cosmetic one as the contents are still MEDIOCRE.

You are better off buying Jason Osipa's book. I have it and it is brilliant both for beginners and professionals.

And, please, stay away from all Bill Fleming books on modelling and texturing digital characters. His models look so plasticky. With CGI written all over its pixels. I bought them a few years ago when I was still a fresh-faced newbie. Now they are under my bed gathering molds with my old copies of National Geographic.

I hope I helped you save some money. Support your jobless but very talented friends with it.

I had hope for this book; glowing reviews online and (admittedly) the slick cover compelled me to purchase this to learn about human modelling. While it seems to thoroughly touch upon many aspects of modelling techniques and tools and human anatomy, the book's diagrams are not very helpful and often jump steps. For example, the chapter on head modelling using polygons only shows perspective views, omitting the front and side views, and often skips several steps without much explanation as to why particular polygons were created. The rest of the book acts in a very similar fashion. The author's own models don't look particularly aesthetically appealing, as they look like they come straight out of Poser. This doesn't offer much encouragement. ~_~

For more comprehensive modelling and animation techniques, I'd recommend Maestri's "Digital Animation 2." It is much easier to learn from, and its full-color diagrams and easy-to-digest text help with the learning process.

The book is everything you'd expect from the title. It shows how to model and animate a human from start to finish. The book progresses much like a class. In fact it has a proposed class schedule on the back, which is also good for those who are learning at home. Goals w/o deadlines are only dreams.

It begins with some simple models to get accustomed modeling until it progresses to actual humans. It uses two different methods. One with surface/patch modeling. the other uses sub-d. He then progresses to teaching animation, with some classical animation principles, morphing targets for the face, boning and rigging a char, even hair and I think a bit of clothes.

What attracts me to the book is the theory behind all the actual instructions. The book devotes a chapter to anatomy, and consequently refers to it in the following chapters, and also addresses the theories behind animation. It tells you why as much as how. It's pretty much a classroom in a book.

That's also the downfall. If you are not willing to study, do not buy this book. It's not a tutorial that shows every single cut to make or point to move or face to extrude. It shows the basics and requires you to use the theory it teaches to adjust your model. If you are completely new to character modelling get Paul steed's book first. This book should be used as a supplement in a classroom, where a teacher would explain some of the details to the student, or by someone willing to research the info. The latter is not at all easy.

Lastly, it does contain nudity. So unfortunately, i wouldn't recommend this to minors. it's really unfortunate cuz many young ppl are starting in this field, and this book could really give them a jump start. hope that helps.

Oh and as far as my opinion, Excellent book. It's the best character modeling resource, i've found thus far, but it is still only a resource. In the end, learning the craft is still reliant on the student.

Also, all reviews displayed here from 2002 back are from the first edition, which I assume is significantly different.

I bought this book after reading all the reviews thinking it would help me finally make a good human character. Sadly it didn't. The section on modeling the simply stuff like the knife and cow are pretty good but when you get to the modeling of a human part it becomes so vague you have to guess at everything and the picture don't even help that much. You start of with the box and make some cuts then all the sudden it says make a general shape of the head with no help at all. He could have atleast showed it lined up with a referance picture. The guy that said the animations were poor on the cd was right. I mean body parts passing through each other is pretty bad. I know they are student animations but come on do you think thats usefully to me? Another thing that bothers me is the cover. Anyone that looks at this would think wow I can make something like that after reading this book but the fact is that model is created by the great Steven Stahlberg who is as far as I'm concerned the best human modeler out there (He should write a book). Look at the cover model by Steven and compare it to Peters enough said.

All Modelling concerns with this book aside, the biggest problem I have with 3-D Human Modeling and Animation is simply that the author's models are terrible examples of the human form.
Not very impressive. If you see this book - just skip to the human face blend shapes section and see what I mean: ugly, anatomically incorrect shapes. This problem permiates through the whole publication. Don't let the cover image fool you (not the authors.)

If you are new to character/organic modelling, I do not recommend this book. If your'e a little more experienced, there's a few chapters here that inspire especially later in the book. I found the reference section on hair shader variations quite handy.

The cover of this book suggests that the book will help you model and animate human characters with the same subtlety and expression shown in the picture. It turns out that apart from being a 3D human character, the cover shot is unrelated to the content. The book is a clumsy and uninspired walkthrough of basic construction techniques and theory, apparently aimed at the complete novice who won't know that the examples are poor.

The book takes you through the steps required to build and animate perfunctory human models, with some related theoretical instruction, but the examples are amateurish, and the reasoning behind the instruction isn't well-supported or explained. Techniques specific to the building of a human character aren't adequately addressed -- in fact, the book begins with the assumption that you've never modeled anything in 3D at all, and gives brief overviews of modelling techniques better illuminated elsewhere. Brief examples of storyboards, posing, making hair, and other ideas tangential to the key concepts are given, but even these are unsatisfactory.

One example summed it up for me-- to show how intial sketches may lead to a more detailed storyboard, a series of frames from the animation clearly rendered with a "cel shader" was photoshopped onto an array of pseudo-randomly rotated rectangles, with faux-paper wrinkles and drop shadows added, to make them look like a number of drawings on cocktail napkins. As in this example, nowhere in the book was any artistic sense or grasp of theory shown, things which I feel are essential to human animation, and I would guess that the result of studying this book would be more of the same Bryce and Poser cookie-cutter creativity in abundance online.

Perhaps the book may be useful for someone who has never taken an art class, drawn a figure, or used a 3D program before, but it's disappointing to someone looking for genuine insight into what may be the trickiest field in art.

This book is definitely at the top of my list as one of the most useful 3D texts that I have reviewed. It is so jam packed with information and illustrations that it will probably take me 3 years to go through it. It must have taken the author twice that long to study the complexity involved with computer animation.
I found that Mr. Ratner covers the most popular modeling techniques such as subdivision surface, NURBS, and
spline modeling. He has the reader start modeling simple objects and gradually builds up to humans. After learning how to model, he shows how to rig up humans for animation. Lighting and texturing is also covered.

Details such as making hair, teeth, eyes, etc. are also in the book and make it complete for the beginner and advanced illustrator to take note of his advice. He even includes an anatomy chapter. He must have been a med student at one time or had one of those plastic see through human figure models where you can take out individual organs. Another chapter tells how to make morph targets for facial expressions and dialogue. He tells readers which basic facial morphs are made (about 50) that lets them create thousands of others by blending variations of them. There is a lot of information about animation techniques and principles. The color insert has human model illustrations from well-known artist around the world. This book
has too much in it to do it justice in one little review.

First, I find the reviewer who penned the expression " idiotic critic " insulting. Since when have these reviews become personal attacks. Just because a person has a dissenting opinion, does not make him wrong or idiotic.

Second, I see that Amazon has supported the majority by striking the dissenter's review from the list. I have seen negative reviews on other publications that were not removed. If Amazon is " unbiased " , then why remove the review? It did not appear to be a personal attack, but one person's opinion of the book in question.

I have read the book in question and I find that the dissenter had some valid points. I found the modeling to be useful. The setup info was a little sketchy. The animation examples were disappointing. I think there was some misinformation about some of the principles of animation as I compared them to the principles defined in " Illusion of Life " and found that some differed, especially overlapping action, follow through and secondary actions.
It is good that some people found the book useful. I did not. Better to look at " Illusion of Life " or " The Animators Survival Kit ", for information on animation techniques.