Creating Interactive 3D Actors and Their Worlds

Until now, the bad news has been the scarcity of the information required to take full advantage of the awesome power of today's more accessible programs. Thankfully, here's the book that remedies this. Inside, you'll find nearly two dozen step-by-step tutorials covering key character animation techniques. Focusing on interactivity, behaviors, and environmental cohesiveness, all these tutorials have been specially designed to let you teach yourself using the application of your choice.

Whatever your character animation aims, Creating Interactive 3D Actors and Their Worlds is the key to gaining the technical proficiency that will help your creativity flourish.

Features

• Devoted to the growing number of tools that let you achieve sophisticated results using drag-and-drop code modules.
• Easily accessible to beginners but filled with valuable information for more experienced animators.
• Helps you teach yourself to build and populate Web-based virtual environments, assign tasks to actors, develop and test interactivity, implement artificial intelligence, and carry out real-time 3D rendering.
• Covers development of human-like behaviors, interactivity between characters and virtual cameras.
• Open to a wide range of Web-based animation uses: games, architectural and medical applications, real-time visualization, scientific research, story telling, virtual reality, and more.
• Includes numerous full-color illustrations.
• Includes tutorials with Macromedia's Director 3D 8.5

The enclosed CD features full-featured, time-limited copies of three of today's most popular modeling/animation programs: Life Forms 3.9 (Mac and PC), Virtools 2.0 (PC), and Deep Paint3 D (PC). You also get all the files relating to the book's 22 tutorials-including 3D models, textures, behaviors, and motion files-plus links to a rich selection of software and user resources on the Web. Included are textures from Marlin Studios.

Contents

• Chapter 1: Some Points About This Book
• Chapter 2: Digital Conversation Pieces
• Chapter 3: Production of 3-D Characters
• Chapter 4: Organic Modeling
• Chapter 5: Character Animation
• Chapter 6: Interactivity
• Chapter 7: Behaviors