Leverage expert advice, step-by-step guidance, and comprehensive visual aids to pave your way towards excellence in the art of 3D character rigging with the help of this part-color guide Key Features Learn how to use automatic and manual weight painting to merge skin and bone Enhance any rig with a sweeping host of automatic controls and aids for animation Keep your rigs efficient and clean for an optimal end user experience Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionIn the intricate world of 3D character rigging with Blender, aspiring artists often find themselves grappling with the daunting challenge of achieving results akin to seasoned professionals. This book is your guide to overcoming that very challenge, providing you with the necessary knowledge and skills to excel in this complex art form. As you embark on this creative journey, this book will guide you through a carefully crafted flow. Beginning with the basics, the first part of the book will teach you how to add structure to an empty canvas and master the art of weight painting in Blender. You'll delve into the intricacies of rigging humanoid characters, gain a deep understanding of the essential buttons and techniques, and discover invaluable success-boosting tips. Starting with simple mesh deformation using a single bone, you'll progress steadily toward the mastery of fully rigging a human character, all while comprehending the reasons behind each step in the process. Furthermore, the book leaves you with a selection of advanced techniques, fully explained, paving the way for a natural progression in your artistic journey and allowing you to continuously refine and enhance your skills. By the end of the book, you'll excel at crafting character rigs, seamlessly meeting professional pipeline demands in diverse teams and studios.What you will learn Understand the basic terminology of rigging and learn how to create and modify rigs Find out how bones interact with topology Get to grips with weight painting through the mesh Know when and how to add constraints such as Inversion Kinetics, Point To, and Child Of Make rigs visually appealing with advanced techniques such as shape keys and bone drivers Familiarize yourself with advanced techniques used by industry leaders Who this book is for If you are an animator, modeler, or someone who wants to start rigging with a solid foundation, then this book is for you. You’ll need no prior knowledge of Blender to get started with this book, as we’ll go step by step with shortcuts and UI pointers provided.

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Master the Newest Blender Techniques for Creating Amazing 3D Characters: From Design and Modeling to Video Compositing Now fully updated for Blender 2.78b and beyond, Learning Blender, Second Edition, walks you through every step of creating an outstanding 3D animated character with Blender, and then compositing it in a real video using a professional workflow. This edition covers the powerful new selection and modeling tools, as well as high-efficiency improvements related to other parts of the project such as texture painting, shading, rigging, rendering, and compositing. Still the only Blender tutorial to take you from preproduction to final result, this guide is perfect for both novices and those moving from other software to Blender (open source and free software). Author Oliver Villar provides full-color, hands-on chapters that cover every aspect of character creation: design, modeling, unwrapping, texturing, shading, rigging, animation, and rendering. He also walks you through integrating your animated character into a real-world video, using professional camera tracking, lighting, and compositing techniques. The rich companion website (blendtuts.com/learning-blender-files) will help you quickly master even the most complex techniques with bonus contents like video tutorials. By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to create outstanding characters for all media–and you’ll have up-to-date skills for any 3D project, whether it involves characters or not. Learn Blender’s updated user interface, navigation, and selection techniques Create your first scene with Blender and the Blender Render and Cycles render engines Organize an efficient, step-by-step pipeline to streamline workflow in any project Master modeling, unwrapping, and texturing Bring your character to life with materials and shading Create your character’s skeleton and make it walk Use Camera Tracking to mix 3D objects into a real-world video Transform a raw rendered scene into the final result using Blender’s compositing nodes Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.

Annotation Blender is an open source 3D graphics application that can be used for modeling, rigging, animating, rendering and thousands of other things. While modeling characters isn't the biggest of your worries, animating them to make them feel as-good-as alive is what differentiates a professional from an amateur. This book offers clear, illustrative, and easy-to-follow recipes to create character rigs and animations for common situations. Bring your characters to life by understanding the principles, techniques and approaches involved in creating rigs and animations, you'll be able to adapt them to your own characters and films. The book offers clear step-by-step tutorials, with detailed explanations, screenshots and support files to help you understand the principles behind each topic. Each recipe covers a logical step of the complete creation of a character rig and animation, so you're not overwhelmed with too much information at once. You'll see numerous examples and screenshots that guide to achieve various rigging and animation tasks, logically separated so you can understand each in detail. The rigging topics are divided by each region of the body (torso, limbs, face, eyes), and further separated by the specific topic (neck, fingers, mouth, eyelids, etc) for clarity. All rigging tasks are accomplished with the built-in tools in Blender, without the complexity of coding custom Python behaviors or user interface elements. The animation topics deal with common situations found in real world productions, showing good practices to understand and overcome the challenges.

Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you’ll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

This book is a comprehensive guide to using Blender to create character rigs for games, breaking down the technicalities of rigging tools and techniques into easily digestible chunks. It provides all the tools needed to go from a static character model to an animation-ready, high quality, and fast performing game rig. Written to be accessible and easy to follow, the book covers character rigging theory that is supported by industry standard examples of how to apply that theory to character rigs for video games. It demonstrates the reasoning behind rigging decisions followed by instructions and examples on how to apply that knowledge to rig creation. It includes chapters that focus on the character deformation techniques that raise the visual quality of the model and subsequently of the animation and game it will be used in. This book will be vital reading to those studying games animation as well as early-career rigging artists, character animators, modeling artists, technical animators, and technical artists.

Whether you're a professional Character TD or just like to create 3D characters, this detailed guide reveals the techniques you need to create sophisticated 3D character rigs that range from basic to breathtaking. Packed with step-by-step instructions and full-color illustrations, Body Language walks you through rigging techniques for all the body parts to help you create realistic and believable movements in every character you design. You'll learn advanced rigging concepts that involve MEL scripting and advanced deformation techniques and even how to set up a character pipeline.

Unlock the secrets of Blender animation in this part-color guide with professional animator and Blender tutor, Sam Brubaker and leverage advanced techniques to become a 3D animation professional Key Features Master the essentials of 3D animation through engaging step-by-step exercises Go from linking and posing a character to using a nonlinear animation editor Discover unique insights and top tips that you won’t find in the Blender documentation Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionCompletely free and open source, Blender, with its supportive community and powerful feature set, is an indispensable tool for creating 3D animations. However, learning the software can be a challenge given the complexity of its interface and the intricacies of animation theory. If you want to venture into 3D animation but don’t know where to start, Realizing 3D Animation in Blender is for you. Adopting a practical approach, this guide simplifies the theory of 3D animation and the many animation workflows specific to Blender. Through detailed exercises and a sharp focus on the animation process, this book equips you with everything you need to set out on your path to becoming a 3D animator. It’s much more than just an introduction; this book covers complex concepts such as F-Curve modifiers, rigid-body physics simulation, and animating with multiple cameras, presented in an easy-to-follow manner to avoid common pitfalls encountered by novice animators. By the end of this Blender 3D animation book, you’ll have gained the knowledge, experience, and inspiration to start creating impressive 3D animations on your own.What you will learn Become well-versed with the simple rules of keyframing and interpolation Understand the function and behavior of Blender's animation curves Bring a character to life with Blender 3D character animation Utilize multiple cameras and the video sequence editor for advanced shot composition Get to grips with Blender's mysterious non-linear animation tool Explore advanced features such as physics simulation and camera techniques Who this book is for This book is for anyone seeking guidance in the world of 3D animation using Blender. Whether you’re an aspiring 3D animator, a beginner or intermediate-level Blender user, or a visual media producer looking to expand your skill set, this resource will prove invaluable. As long as you have basic familiarity with Blender and have the software already installed on a computer that meets system requirements, you’re ready to dive into this book. While prior experience with Blender’s animation tools is not necessary, having at least modeled a scene, added simple shading and lighting, and rendered a few still images will be beneficial.