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3-D Human Modeling and Animation, Third Edition
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$ 45.65
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| Item Number |
2414719 |
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Item Description...
Overview
This updated guide to the modeling of the human body takes readers through the entire modeling and animation process for both male and female figures and is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing framework files in various file formats, sample textures, and exercises to reinforce techniques.
Publishers Description
3-D Human Modeling and Animation Third Edition All the tools and techniques you need to bring human figures to 3-D life Thanks to today's remarkable technology, artists can create and animate realistic, three-dimensional human figures that were not possible just a few years ago. This easy-to-follow book guides you through all the necessary steps to adapt your own artistic skill in figure drawing, painting, and sculpture to this exciting digital canvas. 3-D Human Modeling and Animation, Third Edition starts you off with simple modeling, then prepares you for more advanced techniques for creating human characters. After a brief overview of human anatomy, you'll delve into the basic principles of proportion and structure, along with the different body parts. Exploring human modeling, texturing, rigging, and lighting leads you to more advanced techniques for digital figure animation. Filled with?detailed, practical information about creating and animating 3-D human models, this updated Third Edition now features more than 500 full-color images that detail, step by step, the modeling and animation processes for both male and female figures. Most helpful of all, the included DVD features QuickTime tutorials tied to the modeling chapters and provides detailed color images from the chapters so you can get a quick start in bringing your visions to fruition! |
Item Specifications...
Pages 400
Dimensions: Length: 9" Width: 7.4" Height: 0.8"
Weight: 1.75 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date May 4, 2009
ISBN 0470396679
EAN 9780470396674
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Availability 1 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 05:57.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Kind of an odd book Feb 5, 2010 |
I've been looking for a book about 3D character modeling for a while now, particularly one that doesn't just tell you what to do, but why you're doing it. Unfortunately, while this book has some strengths, it really isn't what I and I think many people are looking for. For one thing, it has some pretty strange errors in it that are pretty fundamental in 3D modeling, particularly in Maya, which appears to be the program the author is using in his examples. The final models for both the male and female characters both have open polygons- for anyone who doesn't know what those are, they're polygons with 5 or more edges. Most 3D programs, especially Maya, won't process any face with more than 4 and it's a pretty solid rule in modeling that you work with either triangles or 4-sided polys. This really is a serious problem- Maya won't rig a model that contains these shapes. They tend to render oddly and your UVs will lay out poorly, if at all. I haven't finished the entire book yet, but I'm about half way through and I haven't yet seen even a mention of the term 'open polygon', or an acknowledgment of the issues such a feature will cause.
Also, the author rarely offers a meaningful description of what he's doing in his screen shots. He often describes edges as 'wrong' or an edge flow as 'bad', but doesn't tell you what's wrong or bad about it, which is important if you ever intend to apply the lessons in the book rather than copying directions, which is how he describes a poor student and poor artist.
The first couple chapters demonstrate basic modeling techniques, which is good. He makes, again, an odd decision to render his final pieces with unusual and unrealistic materials. For instance, he models a chicken in both NURBS and polys and renders the character in a red and yellow glass texture which makes the form almost impossible to make out. Overall, there just isn't a good explanation why the test objects have the materials they do- they really don't help you understand the form or technique better and for a beginner, especially, I can see them being very confusing. The texture of the human characters is unnerving as well- granted, skin is extremely difficult and he's painting the skin and not using sub-surface scattering, but the textures are pretty weird.
He also introduces each chapter with strange monologues. One was about the oppressive conventionality of society and how people who dislike your work are motivated by fear of the unknown. I suppose that makes sense, but he doesn't contextualize it and it feels like you're reading a page out of someone's diary. In another, he offers some harsh criticism of some students who need constant direction, which feels almost like a rant describing students who would surely recognize themselves if they read the intro.
There is some good, useful content of the book, though. He includes a chapter about anatomy, which every animator and character modeler really needs to have a strong foundation in. He clearly states that this chapter isn't meant to be comprehensive, and it isn't, but it is a decent overview. The design of the book could have been way better, but he includes lots of images so you can follow along. The way he illustrates added and subtracted geometry isn't terribly easy to read, but despite the unresolved polygons I was interested in his modeling process and did learn a few things. I think the untextured models look fine, the female moreso than the male. His consistent comparison between the poly and subdiv models was nice to see as well.
As I said, I haven't read the entire book, but the sections about texturing and rigging aren't relevant to me personally since I don't use these processes. If you use this text, I'd recommend you use it in conjunction with other 3D texts. | | |  | Need HELP modeling 3D characters?? Aug 21, 2009 |
| This book is fantastic!! I go to school for computer animation and cannot model. My teacher recommended this book and now I have some of the best models in class. This sounds very much like a cheesy infomercial but too bad it's all true. This book shows step by step how to create male and female models that look good and can be easily rigged. It goes step by step on all the different parts such as hands, feet, eyes, teeth, and so on. So if you just need a little help or want to teach yourself how to model 3D character this is a MUST buy. | | | | ***Six Stars!*** Jun 15, 2009 |
A friend brought this book to my attention last week so I came here to see the reviews. If the older reviews are confusing, then I hope my post clarifies some things.
3D Human Modeling and Animation is currently in its 3rd edition released May 2009, so I'm not sure why we're seeing reviews as old as 1998. Go figure. And of course different authors speak to specific readers. Bearing all that in mind, this current edition is a gem.
It begins with some basic skills that a modeler should be proficient with - modeling a hammer, a small TV stand, some cartoon animals then some cartoon people. His material choices are strange - glass cartoon chicken with caustics, office chairs made of car paint - I guess to illustrate that 3D has no boundaries. All three major surface types are discussed and illustrated in the examples, though the meat of the book is polygonal.
A chapter on human anatomy follows. It does not pretend to be comprehensive but its inclusion highlights the importance of the awareness of "real world" anatomy. Each subsequent chapter begins with sociological discussions (no joke) which at first glance seem wholly unrelated to the following topic. When I'm slinging vertices around, mouse clicks and keystrokes become automatic and my mind begins to drift, so I imagine he's providing food for thought in anticipation of this.
His workflow goes from the head down for characatured female and "realistic" male models respectively (the males have appended information at the end of relevant chapters, each of which will increase realism at the expense of polygon weight). Each written step has an accompanying picture with new edges / vertices highlighted and edges to be removed are "X-ed", so there is no question what your mesh should look like at any given stage. This is a profound relief from the last book I used which often had me wondering what happened between steps. I feel that this is important because even though I consider myself an experienced modeler, the human body is a whole new level of complexity and the thoroughness of the text / pictures goes a long way towards building confidence.
And you'll need it because the ear alone has 49 steps! No worries because as the book continues, I find several " why didn't I think of that?" moments which are insightful and exciting. The full color illustrations and renderings inspire the imagination. The text is Maya-centric but the workflow should transfer to comparable modeling and animation systems.
Fingernails, detailed teeth and eyelashes are included, in addition to polygon and dynamic based hair, UV mapping, a blurb on lighting / surfacing, facial blendshapes (which I'll speak on in a moment), rudimentary rigging, "pose space deformers", and rudiments of animation. The included CD focuses mainly on animation so unfortunately you won't know how "poly heavy" the models are until you complete them (edit: couldn't find them on a Mac right away but the low-poly version is less than 8000 polys, subdivided mid-res mesh is slightly below 30,000. Ratner's models hover around the 100K level which is far too dense for my workflow).
When working with the facial blendshapes, I'd probably recommend a companion text. Overall, I believe this book is geared towards beginner / novice "technical director". Because all the blendshapes are used with the blendshape editor instead of an interface, animation can become a bit tedious. Additionally these blendshapes are "top-down" - global blendshapes for a smile, one for a frown, so forth. This will lead to a lot of "counter-animating" to get the correct shape. Consulting four different books - this one, Stop Staring, Learning Maya / MEL Fundamentals and the Art Of Rigging Volume One - has led me to believe that an expression powered visual interface controlling "bottom-up" blendshapes (a blendshape for individual facial muscles) would be much more efficient and flexible.
With that, Stop Staring chapter 12 probably has the best overall explanation here, especially the advantages of using expressions. But the discussion on expressions assumes that you already know them - hence my recommendation for Learning Maya / MEL Fundamentals. Stop Staring's animation interface is not as immediately intuitive to me as the Art Of Rigging Volume One's. The AOR interface looks like face and the interface ITSELF deforms as the controls are moved =) I'm told this book is no longer in print but is available as a PDF.
At the moment I can see no weak spots or disadvantages. I'm just an ordinary guy who's found an extraordinary human modeling book. | | | Write your own review about 3-D Human Modeling and Animation, Third Edition
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