3ds max 6 Animation: CG Filmmaking from Concept to Completion (Consumer) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Coming up with a story idea for a film is the most nebulous, ethereal, and intangible step of the entire process, while simultaneously being the..." (more)
Key Phrases: using ads max, shaded camera view, sub object mode, Material Editor, Light Tracer, Curve Editor (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Bring your animation career to life with this one-of-a-kind guide illustrating in detail each step of production of a short film. Follow examples and situations proposed by the author designed to facilitate coverage of most aspects of CG animation, touching specifically on important areas such as contemporary character modeling, convincing body animation and dialog driven emotional facial animation. It also covers the creative areas of character design drawing, storyboards, and art direction.

From the Back Cover

Learn all the fundamentals of 3-D graphics and animation, including preproduction, modeling, texturing, animating, rigging, lighting, and rendering. This helpful resource provides detailed instruction on a broad range of disciplines and techniques used in the 3-D field. Follow a real-world example using the author's short, character-based animation step-by-step through production. Learn to animate emotionally rich characters--a hot commodity in today's marketplace as game and film producers are transitioning to increasingly complex animated characters. This remarkable book links together all the seemingly unrelated skills and techniques required in the exciting world of 3-D animating in a clear and easy-to-follow reference.

• Create your very own character-based CG animation
• Use contemporary techniques to create models that work for both real-time and rendered animation
• Schedule and plan like a producer, and design your animation like a director
• Create realistic, detailed, convincing body animation
• Learn dialog-driven emotional facial animation
• Create custom character controls for flexible character rigging without plug-ins
• Learn preproduction techniques including scriptwriting, art direction, and storyboarding
• Create animated effects with 3ds max 6's new Particle Flow
• Craft camera shots with cinematic lighting and render with Global Illumination and HDRI
• Learn a complete approach toward CG filmmaking with 3ds max 6 as the anchor

Barrett Fox has more than eight years of real-world animation production and seven years of experience teaching and writing about 3-D animation. He has written, produced, animated, and directed dozens of widely variegated 3-D animated projects.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (December 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072228938
• ISBN-13: 978-0072228939
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #207,786 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "from Concept to Completion" is TRUE!, October 15, 2004

By	Ignacio McGuire (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book on completing a project, it helps in every respect, lots of tutorials, references, information, examples etc....
One thing is not mentioned, to complete these projects, you will need more then 3DS Max 6, you will need to have Adobe PREMIER to make/edit the movie, for special effects & more, you will need COMBUSTION 3, even though it is not necessary but it will be essential for a complete animation, you will need to have a sound editing software like Cakewalk's SONIC or something similar and of course Adobe Photoshop.
I am very happy with the book, and have already started planning & sketching a storyboard plus modeling the environment I will use, my characters are almost ready, but because of this fantastic book, I didn't know about the sound editing and the movie editing outside of 3DS Max requiered to finish a movie, now with this book I will complete my animation project.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superior Instructions, June 24, 2004

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

This manual may very well be the best available at this time. It will give you high-level skills in all areas of 3D production. To get the most value out of this book, I would reccommend being already well versed in 3DS MAX. This book will not be worthwhile to a complete beginner, so either take a 3D class or two, or read some beginner material first. I liked how this book makes you do alot of the work the pure, no plug-in way. For example, most people(and I assume the author as well)would prefer to use Biped as oppossed to a custom rig, but learning how to build you own custom rig is something a motivated animator SHOULD want to do anyway. Same goes for the custom attributes and paramater wiring of the bones system. Biped already has all that built in, but learning to do it from scratch is invaluable in my opinion. The modeling sections are great, although maybe some NURBS or patch modeling could have been included. Also very unique to this book is the first 100 or so pages that speak only to the planning and creative aspects of the field. Again, very wothwhile. The only complaint I have is simply a logistical one. Unless you have 3DS MAX 6, you cannot open any of the proj files. Many people including me still have version 5. Maybe retro 5 files could have been burned on the cd as well. Don't get me wrong, if your motivated you can still do everything without opening any project files. I did. You can still used the texture files, ect... If you buy this book, be prepared to work. Some days, you may spend 3-4 hours working, and only cover 5-10 pages of the book, that usually means you are learning this stuff the right way. This is because unless you have already worked in a high-end production facility, even if you know MAX well, most of the methods, techniques, and workflow taught in this book will be new to you. It gives you all the "Big Boy" production styles. Real professional methods. So if you want to go up to the next level, study this book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, well-written and very helpful., February 20, 2004

By	Eric Grotke "egrotke" (San Francisco, California United States) - See all my reviews

This is a great book, and considering how any job doing 3d automatically requires a demo reel, it is a crucial book for anyone trying to make a career of this. It is very well written and encouraging, the author is clearly a teacher and not just a guy passing along information. The book follows the author's project while guiding you along with suggestions for your own work.
There is detailed coverage of every step of the CG filmaking process. It begins with the all of the skills required for traditional animation: scriptwriting, storyboarding and sound recording. The sections detailing construction, rigging and animation of facial expressions and speech were particularily impressive and useful to me. But really there's a lot of thought put into every section and the depth of information here is staggering. It very cool to see how a quality project like this gets put together, step by step.