Customer Reviews

Animating Facial Features & Expressions

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are serious about animating, then you need this book. Previous reviews have said that there are too many pictures and not enough tutorials.

This is true, however, pictures are what you need for a book on this subject! It illustrates over 40 facial expressions for realistic and cartoon humans, 40 more for cartoonish expressions (like getting wacked in the face with a pan), and illustrates each of the 16 visual phenomes (tongue and jaw included!) for real and cartoon humans. Furthermore, each of the expressions is described by moving 25 weighted morph targets through 4 essential regions. Because it describes, in detail, how much weight should be given to each morph target to yield a given expression, tutorials, in the traditional "step 1, step 2..." method, are not needed! All you need to do is get down the weighted morph targets, and it gives a thorough explaination as to how to get that done.

With all of these amazing illustrations, the price of the book is worth it, but the commentary he offers (you could probably read all the words of the whole 380 page book in 2-3 hours, even much less) gives valuable advice as to how to further make your animations more realistic.

This book offers a complete library of many facial expressions, AND, most importantly, how to get them!

I just bought this book and I find the content to be extremely useful and helpful. It focuses on a very specialized topic that almost all 3D artists focus upon at least once during a project.

My complaint, however, is that there should have been better editing of the book before going to print. I am running across many typos and grammatical errors -- way more than I would think would be acceptable for a published book with a retail price tag... There are also errors in some of the Figures -- discrepancies that show up between the text and the Figures they're referring to. I can see a couple of typos being acceptable, but as I keep reading, the errors make reading it difficult as they seem to stand out more than the valuable content.

In general, the content is very good, but try proof-reading the material first, okay?

I've bought more than a few excellent books, and more than a few bad ones. For the price they are asking, it should belong to the former catagory. You would think they would have some "guest" artists featured in this book, some who have made great looking models. One look at the cover (something I failed to do before buying) shows a few uglies that would fit right in a horror story, but not most animation. The models don't get much better on the inside. If you want to learn the material inside, start with a traditional drawing book -- it's much cheaper than most books on 3D, and more thorough. For lip sinc, try Digital Character Animation 2, volume 1, by George Maestri. I'm not buying another book by Bill Fleming, he doesn't have his act together.

I recently picked up "3D Creature Workshop" and "Animating Facial Features and Expressions". Now, typically, even the most entertaining novel can't hold my attention for more than an hour at a time before I leave it to hug the bookmark for a while. Putting these books down was the last thing on my mind. I read them both (cover to cover) yesterday afternoon. There's something to be said about that, and I think it goes along the lines of "you can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime." The theory in these books is something I so rarely find in artistic reference material. It forms enough of a foundation to develop individual style while learning from the tutorials, rather than the tutorials dictating the style.

Not only did I enjoy the read, I actually feel as though I bought and paid for a higher education. I would suggest to anyone who is serious about creating plausable characters and animation, that these books are solid stepping stones. Thank you for letting us stand on your shoulders.

This book is a priceless reference if you are into animating heads. There is complete details on all the facial muscles and how they move with example animations too. Plus an essential guide to head proportions. Before I bought this book my heads were always unrealistic and alien like, now they are a lot more accurate. In my opinion this book is an essential purchase for all animators.

I bought Animating Facial Features and Expressions today and I'm very impressed... I love the templates for the different expressions and the fact that they give you the percentages of differnt facial movements that make up the expression make this book priceless..

My only concern was that their wasn't enough reading material.. It was very short... But to some people that would be a good thing.. you see it's short and to the point.. and to some animators that literally have no time .. this is a blessing.. to me.. I ride the subway everywhere.. so I would have liked a little more reading content..

But with it's reading content aside.. I do believe no character animator should go without a copy of Animating Facial Features and Expressions.

This book clearly goes over all of the aspects needed for succesful facial animation. I was able to create phonemes for my 3d characters as well as a variety of facial expressions. After using this book, I created animations that had perfect lip syncs and strongly conveyed emotions. Another Fleming classic for my library.

For Lightwave 3D and Magpie users this book covers Human facial expressions (also a comic fish), with a lot of pictures , actually too many of them . The author could have used some space to give hands on step by step tutorials for the actual face animation process, also not mentioned is Morph Gizmo an essential Lightwave plugin for facial animation. Buy this book if you like to have a complete picture library of facial poses.

Well for a complete newbie in 3d facial modeling, this book was like a boon for me. Though it is not that great for advanced modelers, people starting out into animation can use this as a guide, though it could have been written in a much funkier manner, making the reader enjoy it.

tons of information and easy to follow for people who sculpt or draw!!