LightWave 3D is one of the most popular 3D tools on the market today, offering the most complete set of tools, the best-looking and fastest out-of-the-box renderer, and one of the most powerful IK engines available. Professional director/animator Timothy Albee discusses how to use LightWave to build strong, dependable character setups, and provides proven, hands-on tools for mastering the complex mechanics of animation. Additionally, he covers the importance of storytelling and acting through animation—the subtle mastery that brings characters to life.

This book:

* Shows the complete crafting of powerful and reliable character setups.

* Explains Inverse Kinematics as it pertains to character animation.

* Uses LightWave’s tools to create character rigs that allow you to migrate animation from one character to another.

* Describes how to apply point weighting to create believable character skinning.

* Illuminates basic and advanced animation techniques that are the cornerstones for skilled animation such as anticipation, overlapping action, gesture, and silhouette.

* Outlines key steps for taking a scene from start to finish.

* Teaches time-honored acting techniques for helping you "become" your character.

About the Author

Timothy Albee has been using LightWave 3D since 1991 as a studio animator. Founder of Exile Films and co-founder of Studio Mythos, his credits include Walt Disney feature animation, Babylon5, and numerous theatrical-release and television commercials. He has also worked for Activision.

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Customer Reviews

13 Reviews

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
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Average Customer Review

3.8 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Must have!, Nov 17 2003

By	"froggyplat" (USA) - See all my reviews

"Lightwave3D 7.0 Character Animation" is a must-have for anyone trying to learn how to rig and animate in Lightwave3D. Timothy Albee takes all the mystery out of how to properly set up a character, including tips on modeling for rigging, weight maps, skelegons, bones and IK. It also shows you methods to circumvent Lightwave's quirky process of rigging to ensure the most stable rigs possible: the kind that animators like to use. On top of that, a good portion of the book is dedicated to animation techniques, including some great chapters on posing and conveying weight through your animations. And, the CD has a lot of useful content, including all the necessary supporting files to get you rigging or animating right away.

One thing that could make this book even better is a complete demonstration of weight maps on a character. However, that could take an entire book on its own, and there is sufficient information to teach you the method. In any case, the info in this book saved me hours of guesswork...I highly recommend it.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Cool!, Mar 1 2003

By	Yakov Smirnoff (Cincinatti, OH) - See all my reviews

This book is great. Lots of good information, and a cool character to boot.

My only complaint is that I wish there was a little more step by step to actually posing and animating the character between setups.

Other than that - add it to my library! This, along with Dan Ablan's titles round out my LightWave learning.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Not for Newbies!, Feb 14 2003

By A Customer

When you read the first chapter you'll be lead into a false sense of comfort that newbies will be animating by the end of this book. Not true. You may successfully make it through the exercise in chapter 2 (though it didn't work for me) and even be impressed of the level of detail they show you in how to navigate the menus. But by chapter 3, you'll be lost. I got as far as opening the model included in the CD-ROM. The next section (p. 28) says "1. Pre-bend your model's arms..." and that's the end of my learning. All of the sudden you've got select portions of the model that you are working with, but the book never explains or shows how to get there (this part is pre-bending the shirt, and only is working with the shirt as if the rest of the chacter doesn't exist). If I could just figure out how to get that select part of the model on screen, I would be happy. Of course the book doesn't say HOW to pre-bend the arms of the character either, just to do so to make it look like the figure... This book is a waste unless you've got some modeling or animation experience.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars One reviewer missed the boat!
In response to the anonymous reviewer with the title "Not For Animators" dated Sept 13 2002 - It's painfully obvious that this reviewer did not read the book thoroughly... Read more

Published on Feb 8 2003 by Gary E. Chike

4.0 out of 5 stars Takes the mystery out of bones
I had Lightwave for about two years, and found if you put the time into it, you get the rewards. However, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get skelagons/bones to work... Read more

Published on Jan 7 2003

1.0 out of 5 stars Not For Animators
This book is not for mid level to experienced animators looking to learn character animation on Lightwave. Read more

Published on Sep 13 2002