Customer Reviews

Digital Character Development: Theory and Practice

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

 

 

The book offers a high level algorithmic view of how to compose a digital character. It is independent of specific software packages. O'Neill describes the algorithms in terms of flow charts rather than pseudocode. Implicitly, when he talks about these algorithms, it should be understood that your underlying software is sophisticated enough that you can implement them. A minimum amount of expertise is required to map from the book's methods to an actual implementation.

The narrative is largely a fluid read. General principles are given, and you are not drowning in long code extracts. The book seems best suited for someone already making characters.

A key idea is to get an understanding of human anatomy. Two reasons. The first is for realistic depictions of human characters. But even when you have monsters, say, these are often in humanoid form. So it still helps in this case to have a deep understanding of the range of "natural" looks and movements, in order to plausibly deviate from these. In other words, humanoid means you start with a human template.

The book presents a unified and coherent view of character development.

Pros:
This book provides a clear overview of the rigging for animation in both movies and games. The exposition is good and the author's experience shows in specific explanations of non-obvious issues in rigging.
There are also some instructive and attractive diagrams.

I came away with a good general picture of the architecture of a character rigging system.

Cons:
Needs more detail. The algorithms included in the book are unhelpful, mostly going something like: "for each bone, rotate bone, done". The focus in this book is not on the mathematical details, and the author aims at high-level pseudocode but unfortunately somewhat fails. Some practical algorithmic information and more diagrams could make the book great.

Needs editing. Many of the sentences in the book are slightly garbled. The meaning is usually fairly clear on repeat readings, but clauses are out of place and this disrupts the flow of reading and understanding of the (rather good) exposition.

I've got a massive stack of books relating to rigging sitting on my bookshelf. Most deal with the specific and step by step process of rigging a particular character in one specific program or the other.

This book has been open on my desk since purchasing it and hasn't spent any time on my shelf at all. The reason for this, I came to discover was that this book dealt with the "why" rather than the "how." As a freelancer in New York, I have to work with and adapt to a variety of software packages, each with similar building blocks but functionally different user interfaces. Understanding the core principles of rigging and why we do the things we do in any 3D software.

And of course if you're a fan of well bound books like me, it's nice to know that this one will last a while as it's quite well bound... entirely unlike my stack of perfect-bound technical guides.