In this update to his best-selling character modeling book, professional modeler and animator Paul Steed shares a number of tips, tricks, and techniques that have made him one of the industry’s most recognized 3D artists. Modeling a Character in 3ds max, Second Edition provides readers a professional-level skill set as it chronicles the creation of a single low-poly real-time character from concept to texture mapping, and gives insight into the process of creating a high-resolution character. Learn how to model with primitives; use extrusions and Booleans; mirror and reuse models; optimize the mesh; create and apply textures; loft shapes.

The book gives an introduction into the theory and practice of the transdisciplinary field of Character Computing, introduced by Alia El Bolock. The latest scientific findings indicate that “One size DOES NOT fit all” in terms of how to design interactive systems and predict behavior to tailor the interaction experience. Emotions are one of the essential factors that influence people’s daily experiences; they influence decision making and how different emotions are interpreted by different individuals. For example, some people may perform better under stress and others may break. Building upon Rosalind Picard’s vision, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions and how different characters perceive and react to these emotions, hence having richer and truly tailored interaction experiences. Psychological processes or personality traits are embedded in the existing fields of Affective and Personality Computing. However, this book is the first that systematically addresses this including the whole human character; namely our stable personality traits, our variable affective, cognitive and motivational states as well as our morals, beliefs and socio-cultural embedding. The book gives an introduction into the theory and practice of the transdisciplinary field of Character Computing. The emerging field leverages Computer Science and Psychology to extend technology to include the whole character of humans and thus paves the way for researchers to truly place humans at the center of any technological development. Character Computing is presented from three main perspectives: ● Profiling and sensing the character ● Leveraging characters to build ubiquitous character-aware systems ● Investigating how to extend Artificial Intelligence to create artificial characters

Explains how to use Maya to create a variety of believable 3D characters, presenting a series of concepts, programming techniques, and Maya tools, as well as hands-on exercises.

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.

Maya is the most powerful and popular 3D graphics software in the film industry and is being increasingly adopted by games developers. Modeling believable human and non-human characters is an absolutely vital skill for 3D artists in both industries, and this book-and-DVD package shows them exactly how to do just that.

"Character" has become a front-and-center topic in contemporary discourse, but this term does not have a fixed meaning. Character may be simply defined by what someone does not do, but a more active and thorough definition is necessary, one that addresses certain vital questions. Is character a singular characteristic of an individual, or is it composed of different aspects? Does character--however we define it--exist in degrees, or is it simply something one happens to have? How can character be developed? Can it be learned? Relatedly, can it be taught, and who might be the most effective teacher? What roles are played by family, schools, the media, religion, and the larger culture? This groundbreaking handbook of character strengths and virtues is the first progress report from a prestigious group of researchers who have undertaken the systematic classification and measurement of widely valued positive traits. They approach good character in terms of separate strengths-authenticity, persistence, kindness, gratitude, hope, humor, and so on-each of which exists in degrees. Character Strengths and Virtues classifies twenty-four specific strengths under six broad virtues that consistently emerge across history and culture: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each strength is thoroughly examined in its own chapter, with special attention to its meaning, explanation, measurement, causes, correlates, consequences, and development across the life span, as well as to strategies for its deliberate cultivation. This book demands the attention of anyone interested in psychology and what it can teach about the good life.

Features step-by-step tutorials presented by character modelling master artists.