Monday, December 29, 2008

T0256 - CG Academy Animation Fundamental 1 The Core Principles


This DVD forms part one of a two part series that will introduce you to the fundamentals of animation in 3dsmax. In this first DVD, Simon, our instructor, will focus on the core principles of animation. He will teach you about such topics as timing and spacing, mass and weight, overlapping action, anticipation, follow-through and much more. This DVD sets the foundation for this series, and in DVD2 our focus will move on to character animation principles and skills necessary to bring a fully believable animated character to life.

This DVD is aimed at a user that is comfortable in navigating in 3dsmax and who has an understanding of its core features and toolset. This DVD will however teach you any animation specific user interfaces and features used, such as the Trackview/Curve Editor, the Timeline and so on.


  • CH01: What Is Animation?
    Simon starts with an introduction to what animation is, the phenomena behind it, the basic structure of how we will tackle our animation and so on.

  • CH02: The Bouncing Ball - Timing and Spacing
    We make a start on our first practical tutorial by looking at Timing and Spacing. Here we lay down the “back-bone” of our bouncing ball animation.

  • CH03: Trackview - The Curve editor
    As we now need to use the Curve Editor to take fine control of our animation, we take an in-depth look at the Trackview/Curve Editor.

  • CH04: TBB - Adding Mass and Weight
    Now we understand the Curve Editor better, we can start working into our bouncing ball animation, altering the Spacing to create a feeling of Mass and Weight in our ball.

  • CH05: TBB - Refining the Animation
    We wrap up this tutorial by taking another sweep over the animation, refining the balls bouncing motion. At the close of this chapter, we have our first complete animation.

  • CH06: FK and IK Setup
    For our next tutorial on overlapping action, we need to understand the differences between Inverse and Forward Kinematics. Simon runs us through those differences here.

  • CH07: Animating a Tentacle - Overlapping Action
    Now, using Forward Kinematics we animate a simple bone chain, and we offset each bones rotation in time to create the effect of overlapping action.

  • CH08: Floppy - Character and Animation Rig
    Now we have the principle of overlapping action under our belts, we will start a new pair of tutorials that will apply all we have learnt so far. Here Simon introduces us to the character we will be using to do so, “Floppy”. And the character rig we will use to control him.

  • CH09: Floppy’s Jump Cycle – Blocking
    So, we start once again by setting up the back-bone of our animation. We lay down key poses for Floppy in our blocking stage of the animation. Here we are going to create a hop cycle.
    CH10: FJC - Posing Floppy
    Having worked out our basic timing, Simon works into the key poses of Floppy to give a better feeling of Mass and Weight.

  • CH11: FJC - Adding Secondary Animation
    Now we have our core animation in place, we can introduce a new principle, Secondary Animation. We add new motion to Floppy’s ears based on his core animation.

  • CH12: FJC - Refining and Finishing Off
    And once again we finish off our animation by running through it once more and refining elements of the motion here and there.

  • CH13: Floppy’s Hop - Goals and Structure
    We start a new tutorial with Simon explaining what our goals are, and how we are going to structure our work to achieve them.

  • CH14: Floppy’s Hop - Creating the Two Hops
    We take the previously completed Floppy hop cycle and we cut it down to two complete hops. Starting on the ground, Floppy hops into the air, bounces, arcs into the air and lands.

  • CH15: Floppy’s Hop - Adding Anticipation
    But our animation is missing something… Floppy instantly leaps into the air, without gathering energy to do so. And when he lands and stops, he stops dead. So we start addressing these issues by adding a new principle here, Anticipation.

  • CH16: Floppy’s Hop - Adding Follow Through
    Having given Floppy some build up into his hops, we add a winding down in his energy here by adding another principle, Follow-Though.

  • CH17: Floppy’s Hop - Refining the Animation
    And once again we follow our animation structure to refine our animation at this point. Simon works out some issues here and there, and the result is our first full animation!!

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