Whether you’re creating animation for television, advertising, games, or multimedia, [digital] Character Animation 3 can help you bring your imagination to life. In this updated classic, both newcomers to digital animation and old hands looking to hone existing skills will find essential techniques for creating lively, professional-quality animation that are applicable to any software application. Combining the fundamentals of modeling, rigging, and animation with advanced-level information on characterization, directing, and production management, author George Maestri has created an essential resource for digital animators.

[digital] Character Animation 3 is packed with beautiful new artwork and Maestri’s invaluable expert tips. Along with clear instruction on the theory and practice of foundation techniques such as rigging, walk-cycles, and lip-synch–the tutorials and exercises in this book let you practice what you’ve learned. Maestri also offers in-depth information on creating nuanced characters that feel “alive” and win audience empathy and attention. The book’s final chapter guides you through the entire filmmaking process, from story development through voice casting and animation directing.

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New Riders' [digital] series is performing a tremendous service to the computer animation and graphics community. The newest addition to this family is [digital] Lighting & Rendering. Author Jeremy Birn has long been regarded as a talented computer graphics artist and generous writer, and he's been sharing his techniques and discoveries for years.

Using computer graphic and 3-D tools to create accurate images is easy; using them to produce beautiful, inviting, memorable images requires more than technical skill. [digital] Lighting & Rendering introduces reasons and techniques for using light, shadow, texture, and composition. The book is not software-specific, but demonstrates techniques that are applicable to almost any 3-D graphics application. It is assumed, however, that your 3-D software of choice supports such basic rendering features as soft shadows, light maps, colored gels, depth-of-field blur, motion blur, and so on.

The first half of the book discusses lighting and shadow: lighting workflow; light types; using lighting rigs, such as three-point lighting; shadows and shadow type; and light quality. Lighting–how it's used, where it's placed, the kind of shadow it casts, its intensity–is critical to any image, whether you're creating a photorealistic computer re-creation or a surreal fantasy picture. [digital] Lighting & Rendering explains not just how to use various lighting techniques, but why.

An outstanding chapter on color and its use through composition and lighting offers insight into how colors are perceived and how color affects a scene. The importance of color, hue, and saturation should not be underestimated, and the examples in this chapter, like in every other, drive home that point.

Additional chapters cover exposure, composition and staging, materials and textures, and compositing. There is no accompanying CD-ROM, but the platform-generic nature of the book (and of the subject matter itself) makes it unnecessary. The book is designed to educate and inform; it is up to readers to apply what they learn to their own projects.

Although fewer than 300 pages long, [digital] Lighting & Rendering is an informative and important book, useful to any computer graphics artist. Each page is filled with fascinating, immediately helpful information about the craft. The publisher spared no expense on the book's production, either–every page is in color, with at least one color photo per page illuminating the text. Mr. Birn's experience and insight are not to be underestimated, and this book is not to be missed. –Mike Caputo.

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A game is only as intriguing as the characters that inhabit its world. Game Character Design Complete demonstrates each step of modeling, texturing, animating, and exporting compelling characters for your games. You’ll learn how to model in 3ds Max from sketch references, texture in Adobe Photoshop, rig bones, and animate a character back in 3ds Max. Game Character Design Complete covers all aspects of character creation-from the technical to the artistic. Don’t worry if your artistic ability isn’t awe-inspiring. You’ll cover every aspect of the design process in easy-to-follow steps, including texturing and animating your character. If you have a working knowledge of 2D and 3D graphics, then you have all of the skills you need to begin creating cool characters for your games. (more…)

Dave Eberly's 3D Game Engine Design was the first professional guide to the essential concepts and algorithms of real-time 3D engines and quickly became a classic of game development. Dave's new book 3D Game Engine Architecture continues the tradition with a comprehensive look at the software engineering and programming of 3D engines. This book is a complete guide to the engineering process, starting with a walk-through of the graphics pipeline showing how to construct the core elements of 3D systems, including data structures, the math system, and the object system. Dave explains how to manage data with scene graphs, how to build rendering and camera systems, and how to handle level of detail, terrain, and animation. Advanced rendering effects such as vertex and pixel shaders are also covered as well as collision detection and physics systems. The book concludes with a discussion of application design, development tools, and coding standards for the source code of the new version of the Wild Magic engine included on the CD-ROM. Wild Magic is a commercial-quality game engine used by many companies and is a unique resource for the game development community.

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Digital animation has become essential part of commercials, corporate presentations, and filmmaking. Virtually every commercial on television, and most TV shows and films, use digital animation effects. Hugely reduced start up costs have resulted in small digital animation studios cropping up all over the country, and established video shops adding animation to their palettes. This is a one-stop resources for setting up and operating an animation studio - it deals with every basic digital animation technique in step by step methods, and covers each major software package available. It is designed to be a must-have resource for one of media's fastest growing markets.
From the Inside Flap
JOIN THE RANKS OF CREATIVE, HIGHLY PAID DIGITAL ANIMATORS!

MASTER DIGITAL ANIMATION — USING THE THREE HOTTEST PROGRAMS
Essential to today's commercials, feature films, games corporate presentations, and education digital animation is the hottest career prospect in the media creation business. In this new arena, creativity is king, not the size of your studio.

In the Digital Animation Bible, Videography and Digital Cinema magazine Contributing Editor George Avgerakis, a professional digital animator and videographer, gives you everything you need to get started, showing how any determined and creative reader can master this exciting new field by learning the fundamentals — and getting comfortable with any of the three leading software packages that form the common language of contemporary digital animation.

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"You may think you know OpenGL. As a software engineer with ten years of OpenGL experience, I thought I did. However, this book quickly convinced me that I was very much mistaken. David Blythe and Tom McReynolds have taught me much that I did not know, and in the process improved my company's products. This is a book for computer graphics enthusiasts, both amateur and professional. If you use OpenGL in your work, Advanced Graphics Programming using OpenGL will be your constant companion. Be sure to get your own copy, however - my copy is not leaving my desk under any circumstances!" Ian Ashdown, President, byHeart Consultants Limited.

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This introduction to 3D computer graphics emphasizes fundamentals and the mathematics underlying computer graphics, while also covering programming techniques using OpenGL, a platform-independent graphics programming environment. The minimal prerequisites make it suitable for self-study or for use as an advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate text as the author leads step-by-step from the basics of transformations to advanced topics such as animations and kinematics. Accompanying software, including source code for a ray tracing software package, is available freely from the book's web site.

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• The perfect desktop guide to AutoCAD Civil 3D 2008 from a trio of award-winning authors who are Civil 3D experts; their practical tutorials and real-world examples focus squarely on teaching vital Civil 3D tips, tricks, and techniques
• Covers the best methods for creating, editing, displaying, and labeling all of the elements of a civil engineering project
• Features in-depth, detailed coverage of surveying, points, alignments, surfaces, profiles, corridors, grading, LandXML and LDT Project Transfer, cross sections, pipe networks, project management, Vault, and data shortcuts
• Includes a valuable CD with all the tutorial files necessary to complete the book's exercises, as well as useful utilities and plug-ins, and a trial version of the Civil 3D software.

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Take your Maya skills to new levels with the sophisticated coverage you'll find in this authoritative Autodesk Maya Press reference and tutorial. From key basics through advanced techniques, our Maya experts provide the very latest professional-level instruction on Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited.

Early chapters offer a practical overview of Maya's interface. A "Quick Start" exercise lets novices create an animation the first day and covers the basics of node structure, keyframes, and basic lighting. Advanced users will broaden their skills with pertinent coverage for nCloth, mental ray integration, volume Fur rendering, advanced texturing tools, and enhanced MEL scripting. Practical tutorials reinforce learning with hands-on practice.

If you've been looking for a professional-quality and complete Maya resource to turn to again and again, this is the book.

• Render and store stills through the Render View window
• Learn techniques with nCloth's powerful cloth simulation
• Tweak and add drag-and-drop Fluid Effects for real-world effects

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Welcome to the exciting world of 3D graphics creation with DirectX 9! "Beginning DirectX® 9" is your introductory guide to creating realistic virtual worlds and characters for games. This true beginner's guide offers easy-to-follow instructions for getting your first DirectX program up and running. Then it's on to 3D concepts and Direct3D® as you use DirectX 9 to begin designing and building your own 3D worlds. Expand your DirectX knowledge with an introduction to sound processing with DirectSound® and user input with DirectInput®. Wrap things up as you complete a comprehensive project that shows you how to apply each new concept. Bring amazing fantasy worlds to life with the power of DirectX 9!

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