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.Obviously, it is wise to start with a natural expression and make eachkey facial expression depart from that.By running the sequence backward,a return to the natural expression is easily created.Most animation programs offer a means by which audio files of the char-acter s voice can be inserted into the animation timeline.By doing this, youcan quickly assemble all the essential facial expressions required for lipsynching. 07_200505_Avg_ch07 9/5/03 11:34 AM Page 313Rigging and Animating Characters313Programs also enable a combination of skeletal and morph animation.Insuch cases, you might want to create bones for the upper and lower jaw, andperhaps one for the tongue, in order to control mouth movements, whereasmorphing is used to control finer touches.Of course, the jaw and tonguebones should be parented to the head bone.Animating a CharacterNow comes the most fascinating part of character animation: manipulatingthe character to produce a sequence of frames.This is done exactly the sameway as all other animations discussed thus far: by moving the various partsof the character and saving each pose as a keyframe on the timeline.But instead of flying logos or dividing molecules, character animationevokes the subtle aspects of real-world phenomenon with which most audi-ences are familiar.Everyone knows what a walk looks like, and althougheveryone has a different type of walk, a bad one sticks out like a sore thumb.I would like to take a moment to pay homage and also to recommend asuperb book for the study of character animation (and for many other ani-mation techniques as well).I would be a fool s dumb brother to try andimprove on the work of Richard Williams s book, The Animator s SurvivalKit: A Manual of Methods, Principles, and Formulas for Classical, Com-puter, Games, Stop Motion, and Internet Animators.Although Rick is a tra-ditional cell animator (best known for his masterpiece creation, WhoFramed Roger Rabbit), the techniques he reveals for character animationare precisely applicable to everything you will do in 3-D.Rick believes, and I concur, that today s animation artists do not spendenough time practicing their basic life sketching and other traditionaldrawing skills.Although many art schools and colleges have dropped lifedrawing from their curricula, this is a skill you can easily incorporate inyour daily routine by simply carrying a sketchbook and charcoal pencilwherever you go.SlidersMany animation programs enable you to finish off the rigging of a charac-ter by assigning any of the various channel controls to a graphical slider(see Figure 7-14).Therefore, instead of moving the leg gnomon up anddown, for instance, you can move a slider named right leg.By combiningthese controls into one slider, you can build fairly complex combinations 07_200505_Avg_ch07 9/5/03 11:34 AM Page 314Chapter 7314Figure 7-14A character face in3ds max rigged toa set of sliders(shown incolumns to the leftand right of themodel) thatcontrol variousexpressions.Thecursor is movingSlider 05 to anglethe right browdownward.that result in a control interface, which is fluid and useful for fast position-ing a character, such as a stringed puppet.I recall how master animator Patrick Starace once figured out how totake a simple musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) controller and,using a universal serial bus (USB) interface, connect it to the slider controlsof his Softimage installation.The MIDI controller cost about $120 andoffered 12 sliders that could be reconfigured to any of this character s con-trols.Twelve controls is quite a lot for a character like the lotus-posed, chip-eating Buddha that Pat created for a TV commercial and that wascompletely operated by the inexpensive MIDI panel.Replicate and ExaggerateYour skill in replicating the realism of the world around you or exagger-ating that realism to a controllable degree will make or break you as a 07_200505_Avg_ch07 9/5/03 11:34 AM Page 315Rigging and Animating Characters3153-D animator.Realism is often necessary to create believable charactermotion.The pose of a tired old man sitting on a subway bench that yousketch one Sunday morning may become the pose of a tuckered-out super-hero after a long bout with evildoers.With practice, you can begin to builda library of reliable images and develop the technical skill to replicatethem, but this skill will never develop if you don t practice sketching.If allyou know is the Wacom tablet and punching CVs to match someone else sdrawing, you will never fulfill your destiny as a creator.You ll get stuck inan assistant-level role, forever doomed to serve someone else s superiorcreative skill.Although sketching is the basic art form of the animator, sculpture is alsoessential in understanding the conversion of a 2-D creation into a plastic,3-D environment.Buy a big lump of clay and keep it handy.Use it to makea face or model a toy.Take a portrait you sketched and sculpt the face inthree dimensions.Sketching and clay modeling are two of the most inexpensive methodsfor developing skills that will prove highly valuable when you sit down at a$10,000 workstation.You may not be able to afford the workstation or beable to practice at one on a regular basis, but whenever you have a sparemoment, you can sketch and model [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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