Animating Real-Time Game Characters (Charles River Media Game Development) [Paperback]

Paul Steed (Author)

Book Description

Series: Charles River Media Game Development | Publication Date: December 5, 2002

Learn the basics of what makes a great character model and gain new insights to the many issues facing the character animator. Using the tried and proven methods found in Animating Real-Time Game Characters, you'll quickly bring your character animation to the next level. Find detailed coverage on modeling, rigging, and weighting real-time game characters using 3ds max and character studio. Explore effective keyframing techniques that focus on dramatic poses and proper timing. Discover how to work with and adjust motion capture data as well as what to look for when working with mocap studios. Get an inside glimpse at the process of taking a real-time game character from concept to export into a game technology. With the popularity of games like Quake III: Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Warcraft III, real-time gaming is here to stay. Whether you're a working professional or an eager novice, Animating Real-Time Game Characters will absolutely help you improve your character animation skills using 3ds max and character studio.

Editorial Reviews

Review

..".a well-crafted and deep 'how-to' book on creating an animated video game character from scratch."

About the Author

For the past eleven years, Paul Steed has been modeling and animating for hugely successful games such as the Wing Commander and Quake series. He is a regular speaker at the Game Developers Conference and serves on the Game Developer magazine advisory board.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (December 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584502703
• ISBN-13: 978-1584502708
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get way ahead of people learning to be animators with this!!, February 18, 2003

By 

Salamando "CG Artist" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Animating Real-Time Game Characters (Charles River Media Game Development) (Paperback)

Paul, I have to tell you: You rock!!

Thanks to your easy-to-understand-and-follow-book, I'm now way ahead of my character setup & animation class at my school (art institute of portland). Keep in mind, this was just in a matter of days I went from clueless to...well, not so clueless!!

For people wondering if this will indeed improve their character rigging and/or animating skills:

It will. If you're already comfortable in using Max 4 or 5, you can easily take Paul's walkthoughs of rigging your character of any kind with biped and using physique to attach the mesh to the biped and be well on your way to understanding how to rig any future characters you create for excellent and easy animation. Well, easy to a point, anyway. You know how it is. With Paul's excellent methods of key frame animation, as well as using mocap, you'll be able to create convincing animations that no one would scrutinize! Even Paul's short-but-sweet section on things to consider when building a mesh can even improve your modeling techniques and thought process of when designing a character for optimum animating, hence the title of the section, 'built to move.'

The one thing that makes Paul's books so nice is that you don't even have to use the packaged files to understand how to apply his methods of madness, you can just go straight from his examples and apply it to your own work and come away with the same oustanding results. I modeled my first character with Paul's book 'modeling a character in 3ds max' by just using his techniques and came away with a model better than almost everyone in my class that had previous modeling experience.

Like I said, you just plain rock Paul. Hopefully I'll gain the skills you have so graciously bestowed upon us lowly wannabe animators to reach your status in this industry as a top-notch realtime modeler/animator someday. So far, things are looking bright!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars animation weapon, April 23, 2004

By 

erik turchin (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Animating Real-Time Game Characters (Charles River Media Game Development) (Paperback)

This is the 2nd character studio book I have read. The other is the Discreet CS courseware manual. I think everyone should read them both if you want full knowledge of Character Studio. Paul's book does not cover many techniques that are implemented in the Discreet manual, but his book does indeed cover what the title implies. Game animation sets, and rigid vertex assignment. Two topics that are lacking from the Discreet manual. Paul's book successfully de-mystifies the process of manual vertex assignment via the Physique modifier. The first half of the book will give you great techniques for rigging a Biped to a mesh. His techniques are easily applied to a potential game sprite, or a straight render. The real power of this book comes from the subsequent animation chapters. The attention to detail that he drills into your head is perhaps the most valuable skill an animator can have. An outstanding chapter on pose-to-pose keyframing techniques is invaluable. It shows how easily and stylish animating in CS can and should be. There is also very valuable motion capture editing instructions that show you how to exploit mocap in combo with keys to realize the creative potential one has. There is also alot of Dope Sheet work that helps one become very comfortable with one of the more intimidating aspects of 3DS Max. If you can, read the discreet CS manual first, and then study this book to polish it all up.

5.0 out of 5 stars Still relevant in 2011, November 6, 2011

By 

N. T. Jones (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Animating Real-Time Game Characters (Charles River Media Game Development) (Paperback)

This book was first published in 2002. I bought this book back in 2003, read the whole thing cover to cover two to three times, and then put it back on the shelf having assimilated what I needed at the time. (Incidentally, I found a "Finding Nemo" movie stub in the book that was a bookmark from what I last read it in 2003.

Now, in 2011, I opened the book again and I'm finding it very relevant even though 3ds Max is now almost 10 years older than it was when Paul first wrote this.

Specifically, what I still like about this book are the following:

1. The amount of time and attention to detail that Paul puts into teaching certain timeless lessons, such as building shoulders, elbows, knees, etc. so that they deform properly (something that I can't seem to find in any other book I've seen),

2. The PHILOSOPHY behind animation approaches
3. Certain character animation best practices that apply to any software you're working with.
4. Good mocap advice
5. Great guidance in terms of using Track View for motion editing (another thing I haven't really found good resources for)

Another thing that's really good is the link Paul makes between the way a character LOOKS and how you should animate him/her/ it . He's a very intuitive artist and you can really see a certain amount of feeling that he puts into his approach to animation.

In my opinion , this book is much more priceless and timeless than his modeling only book: Modeling a Character in 3DS Max, Second Edition (Wordware Game Developer's Library). I have no more use for that book, as it's very dated, and not relevant to me anymore, but this book I will probably use much longer.

Lastly, the CD included with this book is excellent. You get to see Paul's animation for Betty Bad which are very, very good, and you can of course re-use these animations on your own biped to see how they're put together. Overall a great book. There need to be more CGI books on the market like this one.