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.

Must have!

"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.

The only one you NEED to own

This book is quite simply the only animation book worth it’s salt for lightwave users. If you have the animator’s survival kit & inside lightwave 7.5 then why haven’t you got this? It covers rigging & character setup, as expected, but also has a large section on life drawing with your model. Tim Albee draws on a wealth of experience to show you ,not only, better ways to work but why they are better. I guarentee that you will read this book & say "ahh, that makes sense" & will be producing better character rigs almost instantly.

Don’t be put off by the naff cover, treat yourself

The only one you NEED to own

This book is quite simply the only animation book worth it’s salt for lightwave users. If you have the animator’s survival kit & inside lightwave 7.5 then why haven’t you got this? It covers rigging & character setup, as expected, but also has a large section on life drawing with your model. Tim Albee draws on a wealth of experience to show you ,not only, better ways to work but why they are better. I guarentee that you will read this book & say "ahh, that makes sense" & will be producing better character rigs almost instantly.

Don’t be put off by the naff cover, treat yourself

Bringing polygons to life

With the complexity of 3D software available especially proffessional packages such as Lightwave it’s incredibly useful to find a book that covers the principles of good animaiton as well as the technical. Timothy Albee will have you setting up Ik chains, weighting points and creating full skelegon structures in no time while also teaching some of the fundamental 12 principles of animation that are often lacking in digital work. Wheather your a competant modeller or not this book demonstrates the power and impact that proffessional character animation can have on your work, even with simple models, and will pave the way for an endless library of fully poseable, controlable, virtual actors as well as the ability to bring them convincingly to life.

Bringing polygons to life

With the complexity of 3D software available especially proffessional packages such as Lightwave it’s incredibly useful to find a book that covers the principles of good animaiton as well as the technical. Timothy Albee will have you setting up Ik chains, weighting points and creating full skelegon structures in no time while also teaching some of the fundamental 12 principles of animation that are often lacking in digital work. Wheather your a competant modeller or not this book demonstrates the power and impact that proffessional character animation can have on your work, even with simple models, and will pave the way for an endless library of fully poseable, controlable, virtual actors as well as the ability to bring them convincingly to life.

Cool!

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.

Not for Newbies!

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.

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. He asked if he was "missing something" well he/she missed the entire boat.

Chapter 3 does start of with "You’ve got your character all ready to go ..." But the reviewer unjustly took this sentence out of context. The paragraph finishes with " ...Before you can animate him, you’ve got to set him up. And before you can set him up, you’ve got to prep him for the setup, and that means planning." Ch. 3 is about pre-bending the limbs of the character to help the IK. It is not about suddenly jumping into animating your completed character that the non-reviewer would lead you to believe.

Chapters 3 through 9 go into extensive details about the mechanics of setting up characters in Lightwave 7.x. The first 9 chapters are:

Ch. 1 About this Book

Ch. 2 Inverse Kinematics: It’s Strengths and Weaknesses

2.1 IK
2.2 IK’s Strengths
2.3 IK’s Weaknesses Lightwave-Specific
2.4 IK Setup Basics
2.5 IK Rules

Ch. 3 Prepping Your Character for Setup

3.1 Where is He Going to Bend?
3.2 Pre-bending to Help IK

Ch. 4 Boning Your Character

4.1 Adding Bones to Your Character
4.2 Spinal Controls
4.3 Hand Controls
4.4 Foot Controls
4.5 Fingers
4.6 IK System Skelegons

Ch. 5 Converting, Organizing, and Aligning (Bones)

5.1 Converting Skelegons to Bones
5.2 Organizing the Schematic into Something Helpful
5.3 Aligning the Spine, Pelvis, and Feet
5.4 Bone Hierarchy
5.5 Recording Pivot Rotations
5.6 Recording Bone Rest Information

Ch. 6 Putting IK to Work

6.1 Terminating IK Chains
6.2 Creating Goal Objects
6.3 Activating IK
6.4 Activating Individual Controllers
6.5 Deactivating Individual Manual Controls

Ch. 7 Point Weighting

7.1 Point Weighting Basics
7.2 Beginning the Point Weighting Process
7.3 Swapping Models and Testing Weight Mappings
7.4 The Use Weight Map Only Option
7.5 Finding Stray Points
7.6 Straightening the Feet for Animation
7.7 Putting Him Through the Motions
7.8 Tidying Up

Ch. 8 Using the Controls

8.1 The Model Itself
8.2 Root
8.3 Pelvis
8.4 Spinal Bones
8.5 Head
8.6 Hand Translation Controls
8.7 Hand Rotation Controls
8.8 Shoulder Controls
8.9 Elbow Controls
8.10 Foot Controls
8.11 Toe Controls
8.12 Knee Controls
8.13 The Fingers and Thumb
8.14 Notes on Modifying the Setup

The remaining 10 chapters, except ch. 15, deal with the generic techniques and theory of animation that can be obtained in any non-3d animation book. Ch. 15 briefly goes over the mechanics of digitigrade (quadrupeds,etc...) characters.

As a solo free-lance medical illustrator/animator of 10 years, it’s very difficult to come across such useful information without taking classes or working in a large studio with other creative types. I have every imaginable training video/dvd/CD, and book written about Lightwave (by Dan Ablan, Dave Jerrard, Doug Kelly, Patrik Beck, Ken Brilliant, Bill Fleming, Desktop Images, Class on Demand, etc...)

So far, I have not found any other source that comes close to what Timothy Albee has written for the Lighwave community. Kudos!

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 properly. Luckily I found this book. It took me thru the whole boning process from modler to layout to bone conversion to proper rotation and more. Amazing enough, the book knows were I had problems in the past and tells you how to correct it! In the past, other books went straight to the next step.
In short, I suppose if you’re already an animator, this book may not be telling you nothing new. But if you know your way around Lightwave but never got into bones/charater animation, I highly recomend this book. It’s well worth it!

A lifesaver for the new to lightwave animator

This is the book I wish I had read two years ago. Everything you need to know about Lightwave’s bones, IK systems and much, much more is covered by this excellent title. It also provides an invaluable insight not just in the technical aspects of character animation but in the art of animation itself. Highly reccomended to anyone wanting to dip a toe in the waters of character based animation or expand their skills in the field.

A lifesaver for the new to lightwave animator

This is the book I wish I had read two years ago. Everything you need to know about Lightwave’s bones, IK systems and much, much more is covered by this excellent title. It also provides an invaluable insight not just in the technical aspects of character animation but in the art of animation itself. Highly reccomended to anyone wanting to dip a toe in the waters of character based animation or expand their skills in the field.