Creating Interactive 3-D Actors and their Worlds

The good news? You no longer need a programming degree or an enormous bank account to build and animate sophisticated 3-D characters. Modeling and animation software has never been friendlier or more affordable. Until now, the bad news has been the scarcity of information required to take full advantage of the awesome power of today's more accessible 3-D programs. Thankfully, here's the book that remedies this problem. 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 3-D Actors and Their Worlds is the key to gaining the technical proficiency that will help your creativity flourish. Features: Discusses the growing number of tools that let you achieve sophisticated results using drag-and-drop code modules. Offers easy accessibility to beginners but is also 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 3-D rendering. Covers development of human-like behaviors, interactivity between characters, and virtual cameras. Is applicable 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.