Stop Staring: Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Itﾽs an amazing time for 3D animators. Itﾽs now possible to do things that were never before possible. Prime among them: realistic 3D facial modeling and animation.
While realistic facial animation is now doable, however, the techniques have typically been viewed as complex and daunting. Stop Staring will change that.
Few people know more about the subject than author Jason Osipa. He served as Lip Sync Technical Director for the cult classic Reboot; as animator for Surreal Softwareﾽs The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; as Technical Designer for Mainframe Entertainmentﾽs Barbie as Rapunzel.
Stop Staring reflects Osipaﾽs breadth of experience. Youﾽll find examples in a many styles here, and coverage of the entire process -- from design and modeling through proper rigging, and beyond. Many of Osipaﾽs ideas can be found in no other book.
He starts with the basics of animated lip sync. Traditional CGI lip sync has traditionally been frustrating, and facial motion capture or automated sync arenﾽt quite there yet. But with Osipaﾽs help, lip sync becomes an easy entry point to full-fledged facial animation.
As he says, ﾽpeopleﾽs mouths donﾽt do that much during speech. Things like smiles and frowns and all sorts of neat gooey faces are cool, and weﾽll get to them later, but for now weﾽre just talking sync. Plain old speech. Deadpan and emotionlessﾽﾽ Mouths go ﾽclosed/openﾽ (jaw movement) and ﾽnarrow/wideﾽ (lip movement).
Youﾽll be surprised how much you can get away with, knowing just that much. Which helps Osipa make crucial points about whatﾽs important, what isnﾽt, and how to simplify facial animation without compromising realism. When it comes to lip sync, for example, some sounds -- visimes, or ﾽvisual phonemesﾽ -- need to be represented visually. (Think ﾽooﾽ as in ﾽfood.ﾽ) Others, you can usually ignore.
By the end of Chapter 1, youﾽre creating quality lip syncs yourself. Osipa turns next to eyes, brows, and eyelids, which express your charactersﾽ emotions. Animators tend to spend too much time on brows, not enough on eyes and eyelids. Youﾽll control the continuum of alertness vs. sleepiness, even learn about the contribution each eyelid makes to emotion.
He then introduces landmarking: the art of finding the real cues for the impressions we get. (They often donﾽt come from where you think.) This is crucial for understanding the relationships amongst facial features, so you can precisely control your characterﾽs ﾽacting.ﾽ
In Part II, youﾽll build a model of a mouth that can do anything your real mouth can do; in Part III, youﾽll do likewise for eyes and brows. Part IV brings the whole face together. Osipa covers connecting features; skeletal setup, weighting, and rigging; creating facial interfaces, and more.
In addition to scores of examples throughout, Stop Staring contains a color insert to demonstrate what you can do with color and shading. Thereﾽs a CD full of models, textures, lip sync samples, finished animations, and related resources. (You can use Stop Staring with any tool, but Osipaﾽs examples were created in Maya, and his book is ﾽAlias-Wavefront Approved.ﾽ)
If youﾽre a serious animator, this book needs to be in your library. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In this book, professional animator Jason Osipa teaches you how to achieve realistic facial modeling and animation. Using detailed practical examples complemented with high-quality images and a touch of humor, Osipa leads you from design and modeling to rigging and animation. The CD and full-color insert demonstrate techniques you can use to fine-tune your facial animations.
SYNOPSIS
Over the past few years, 3D animation has become increasingly sophisticated. Done right, facial animation can now breathe life into inanimate 3D objects. As a result, industry and consumer demand for believable facial modeling and animation has grown dramatically.
Stop Staring is the first book to focus on this tricky yet satisfying art. Here, author and professional animator Jason Osipa shares what he's learned through several years of firsthand professional experience, offering a practical, heavily illustrated guide to one of the most challenging aspects of 3D animation.
In the course of the book, Osipa takes models in a variety of styles all the way from design and modeling to proper rigging and animation. His humorous, engaging approach combined with the book's professional-quality examples and depth of discussion make Stop Staring accessible to a wide audience while still invaluable to even advanced animators.
We're proud to announce that this book is an "Alias-Wavefront Approved" title. Although much of its content applies broadly to 3D work in a variety of software packages, Maya is the focus for all software-specific examples.
Stop Staring is printed on quality coated paper for crisp image reproduction throughout. It features a color insert showcasing the subtleties that color and shading provide in creating realistic facial features, plus a CD with models, textures, lip-synching samples, completed animations, and other related files to help readers complete their own facial animations.
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