Model, Rig, Animate! with 3ds max 6 [Paperback]

Michele Bousquet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2003

This book uses easy-to-follow tutorials and color illustrations to show you how to model a low-polygon character, create a rig (no plug-ins required!), then animate the character, including facial expressions. It focuses on the tools you need to get a result, so you can learn quickly and put your knowledge into practice right away with your own characters and projects. In the first chapter, you'll start from scratch with a box, and model a fully animatable body including clothing. Then you'll model a head, face, and hair, and learn the tools you can use to create any character.

Chapter 2 covers rigging, the process of setting up controls for the character. You'll create an uncomplicated yet complete rig from start to finish with standard 3ds max tools like bones, custom attributes and parameter wiring. You'll rig the character so it can perform standard actions like raising its arm or making a fist with just a few mouse clicks. You'll also learn a few simple scripting techniques for customizing the rig. You can apply the information in this extensive chapter to any character rig.

Chapter 3 covers the use of the Skin modifier, showing you how to get smooth deformation with envelopes and vertex weights. You'll learn how to adjust tricky areas like hips and shoulders, and how to eliminate pinching at elbows and knees with angle deformers.

In Chapter 4, you'll animate the character using tried-and-true animation principles. Using your rig, you'll make the character walk, jump, and perform other classic actions. You'll also learn how to set up and use morph targets for facial animation, plus a simple technique for controlling a character's eyes.

Each chapter uses numerous tutorials and color pictures to take you through the process step by step. New concepts are explained in clear, easy-to-understand language, so you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. The result is that you'll be able to model, rig, and animate characters of your own design with 3ds max 6.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Author Michele Bousquet is a technical writer for Discreet, Inc. and an award-winning animator. She has been writing about and teaching 3ds max since its first release. Her recent publications include Harnessing 3ds max 5 and Mastering the Art of Production with 3ds max 4.

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Many Worlds Productions (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970683081
• ISBN-13: 978-0970683083
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,429,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid book, but shouldn't be read by itself, May 22, 2004

By 

J. Seagull - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Model, Rig, Animate! with 3ds max 6 (Paperback)

I used this book as one of two textbooks for an undergraduate "Intro to Character Animation with 3ds max" course I taught in spring 2004. Both I and my students generally found it to be a good resource in the classroom. The book's step-by-step walkthrough of the complete setup of a character is quite thorough, and covers a lot of ground.

As with any book that takes a step-by-step, button-by-button approach, it was sometimes difficult for my students to grasp the long view of _why_ the reader is doing what they are told to do, and to get back on track with the tutorials when they miss a step. For this reason, I used George Maestri's _Digital Character Animation 2, Volume 1_ as the other text for the class, a book with exactly the opposite problem (it avoids any software-specific references entirely).

The modeling chapter guides the reader through an effective general technique for creating a character through subdivision modeling from a reference drawing, although I feel the approach fails to leverage the best features of Max's Editable Poly object, guiding the reader in places (like creating edges for the character's collar) through elaborate triangle-centric workarounds that are easily bypassed in a couple of clicks with a newer tool. This is the exception rather than the rule, however, and it is telling that all my students personalized their "skater" character extensively without being asked to - they felt they had enough control of the process by the end of chapter 1 to use 3D as a creative tool. The character, especially in the facial modelling, could also stand to end up with cleaner topology at the end of the tutorial - Bousquet is not an adherent of the "edge loop" modeling philosophy.

The middle of the book, the rigging and skinning chapters, are definitely the strongest. Bousquet guides the reader through creating a fairly advanced rig, with side examples to demonstrate principles of complex concepts (wiring custom attributes, e.g.) before implementing them in the rig itself. The book's rigging chapter alone is worth the price of admission, if that's what you're looking to learn.

The book's real weakness, if it has one, is the very brief section on actually animating the character. After 178 pages of modeling, rigging, and skinning, character animation, including walk cycles, facial animation, and some fancy labor-saving tricks, is covered in a mere 47 pages. Again, Maestri's book, which is almost entirely about principles and not technology, was a great complement in this regard, providing lots of exercises missing from this book, but useable with this book's rig.

Overall, I would recommend this book, and will use it again in class, but it needs to be read in context in order for its best points to really shine.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great start for character animators, March 8, 2004

By 

"visualz1970" (orlando, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Model, Rig, Animate! with 3ds max 6 (Paperback)

this is a great resource for max users of all levels. this goes into all the primary toolsets and features to animate characters of all kinds. this is not a book on Character Studio but, instead, a more broad approach to using and creating character models, bones rigs, IK systems and skin envelopes.

this is not a basic, "first look" at 3ds max, but is a great first resource for people lookign to expand their max skills to including custom created character rigs in 3ds max.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Model,Rig and Animate, March 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Model, Rig, Animate! with 3ds max 6 (Paperback)

For those of you just learning 3D and want to venture into the world of characters creation and rigging this is a great start. This book would also be suitable for someone that is already familiar with 3DS Max but has yet to use the character tool sets.

The book is layed out in simple easy to understand tutorials that explain the basics of whate the title suggests. Although it covers the animation tool sets I wouldn't consider this a learning book for the principals of animation since this is something that takes years to learn and is best done in 2D.

As always Michele does a great job making hard tasks easy. I would also recommend this to teachers looking for a concise tutorial book for the class room.

Paul Neale
Technical Director