Datasheet

10 Chapter 1: Introduction to Computer Graphics and 3D
Animation
You can make or break your scene with animation. We all have an innate sense of how
things are supposed to move on a visceral level, if not an academic one. We understand
how physics applies to objects and how people and animals move around. Because of this,
viewers tend to be critical of CG’s motion if it’s not lifelike. Put bluntly, you know when
something doesn’t look right, and so will the people watching your animation.
To animate something properly, you may need to do quite a lot of setup beyond just
modeling. Depending on the kind of animating you’ll be doing, you may need to set up
the models for however you’ve decided to animate them. For example, for character ani-
mation you’ll need to create and attach an armature, or skeleton, to manipulate the char-
acter and to make it move like a puppet in order to do your bidding.
Taking the models you’ve spent hours detailing and reworking and giving them life is
thrilling and can make any detailed modeling and setup routine well worth the effort.
Chapter 8, “Introduction to Animation,” and Chapter 9, “More Animation!” cover
animation techniques in Maya.
Lighting
CG is fundamentally all about light. Manipulating how light is created and reflected is
what you’re doing with CG. Without light, we wouldn’t see anything, so it makes sense
that simulating light is the most influential step in CG. Lighting can drastically alter the
look of your scene; it greatly affects the believability of your models and textures and cre-
ates and heightens mood.
During the lighting step, you set up virtual lights in your scene to illuminate your
objects and action. Although you can set up some initial lights during the texturing of the
scene, the serious lighting should be the last thing you do, aside from changes and tweaks.
Figure 1.2
Texturing adds
detail to an other-
wise flat model.
900215c01.indd 10 3/11/11 10:13:13 PM