Softimage/Xsi Character Animation F/X and Design (Book ) [With CDROM]

This book really goes well beyond just using XSI to do character animation. The first chapter discusses fundamentals of XSI, doing a rushed but adequate job of it. The next several chapters discuss the "animation process", including things like the necessity of creating a character profile, storyboarding, style and color selection, etc. This stuff was genuinely useful and interesting, but not really the meat of the book.The really excellent information comes in the later chapters of the book, where he discusses the basics, tricks, and advanced proceedures for character rig setup (specific to XSI). He shows you how to create a rig, and then layer controls all over it. While some controls can be manipulated directly, he shows you how to hook most to sliders in organized property pages. He goes further to show how to created automatic animation (through expressions) such as automatically rolling the foot as the character takes a step, breathing, automatic muscle flexing, etc. He touches *very lightly* on control of clothes and the like. Beyond that, lip syncing and facial expressions are covered in fair detail, all in XSI specific discussions so you know right where to find the tools that you need to accomplish the tasks (you won't, however, get a comprehensive list of lip shapes for English phonetic sounds for example).He shows you how to make animated "clips" for use in the animation mixer, and then how to mix those clips together to achive a fluid animation. Lip syncing in the animation mixer is also included. There is enough detail in the animation mixer discussion that even if you know nothing about the animation mixer, you will be producing solid animations once you finish the book.Things that are *not covered* are features in XSI that are relatively unrelated to character animation, such as texturing and the render tree, simulation, etc. Hair isn't covered either (the book was written for XSI 1.5, not 2.0). Also, while modeling is discussed, the book does not go into great detail about the modeling of your character, as the focus is more on controlling the animation rather than building the character (he does mention several interesting points about why the animation stage is more important than the modeling stage, particularly for a new-comer like me). Finally, advanced features of XSI such as the ability to transfer animated clips betweem unrelated character rigs is barely touch on, and the transfer of envelope weights between characters is not mentioned. Overall, a *very* informative and useful read for those who *don't* have a rock solid knowledge of XSI and who really don't know much about rig setup and the animation mixer. Oh, and the CD has a couple *excellent* skeleton rigs pre-built with slider controls and all.

This book shows you everything you need to know about character set up and character animation in XSI.The first part of the book shows you how to develop your character and other things (storyboards,camera staging,lighting ect) you need to know about production and on the second part you learn all the secrets about character animation.The author guides you from a basic rig to an advanced rig with sliders, expressions and other powerfull features of xsi but it's not only that.He encourages you to dive deeper and explore all these cool features the pro's use.The new animation mixer is covered in depth and some advanced ways of facial animation are explained step by step.Even though this book was written for XSI users it's valuable for every serious animator who wants to explore powerfull character animation!

Thankfully, this book covers character animation very comprehensively and also goes into some of the preceeding tasks that often aren't covered. The first few chpters don't bother with the software but cover possibly more important issues such as character design, storyboarding and creating rough animations in various manners, which is much truer to how most animaton studios would work. I feel this is far better than jumping straight in and hitting the "ok, what next stage" since everything is pre planned. Elements such as cinematography are given a nice introuduction too to give the reader more angles to think about to improve their end product. The character set up stages are well thought out with consideration for areas which can cause problems. The ik setups are solid and flexible. The expressions add extra value too. Various controllers are used for facial animation in the later sections, so most areas are covered very well.... I think this one is a worthy addition.

Although the just of this book is character animation, the author goes in to detail about lighting, materials and even the basics of XSI. It was a great addition to my library and enabled me to get a quick jump in to skeletal set-up and constraints, not to mention the whole idea of character set-up, cinematography and scene planning. A definite "must have" for anyone that wants to animate with XSI or any other like program.

Don't let the "skimpiness" of this book fool you... at every turn, Maraffi shares with us his hard earned experience and observations. It offers both a "holistic" and specific, task oriented approach to the efficient production of character animation. His rigs are crafty, and truly reflect his unique approach to the software - this is where his mastery shines through. I can't wait to sink my teeth deeper into this bad-boy.