Jeff Lew Character Animation

[ross_coe]

Hey all,
Just been checking Jeff Lew's site, and it looks like his character animation DVD is now available for purchase at last!

http://www.jefflew.com/l3dca.html

I'll be buying a copy myself as soon as I can find 50bucks down the back of the sofa

[ross_coe]

PS: as well as the DVD, looks like there's gonna be divX downloads ready from the 10th November

[ross_coe]

PSS (or PPS....I can never remember )

Just noticed this as well....a review of this DVD on CG Networks by Tito A. Belgrave from 6th November:

http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_cust..._id=1753&page=

Definately worth visiting both sites if you havent already done so
And if you have....ach well never mind

[Fusion]

I already bought the DVD. Its really helpful with animation. Everything he talks makes you a very acurate animator. He goes into very small detailes about motion and the CG industry. And the examples make it much easier to learn. The only problem I have with it is there's no tutorials on rigging and skinning to set up your character for animation. He talks about how you should set up the bones but not to the point were it will help u start rigging. So basically the last hour of the DVD (shows u how to animate an already rigged character) is kinda useless cause unless u already have a complete character, it can't help. Now I don't want to bring the value of the DVD down with all these negative comments, it is an amazing DVD and you all should definatly buy it. 2/3 of the DVD definatly made me a better animator....for the future until I get a rigged character

[Tom-3DT]

Thanks Ross_coe, I think this was linked in November when I was on holiday, I will look into it, thanks for the info either way

Fusion, you can download many rigged characters from the 3dtotal free stuff section, they were the entries in the mascot competition we had, some are excellent.

[Fusion]

yeah, i could download them,true, but thats called cheating. It would be so hype to actually rig,skin, then animate a character from scratch. If any of you know were to get a good tutorial on rigging/skinning then im all ears/eyes.

[Tom-3DT]

for max?

www.3dtotal.com/tutorials

[Fusion]

Definatly!!!

[ross_coe]

fusion - i was wondering if what the DVD goes into about general principles of animation would teach me anything new from books like "Animators Survival Kit" by Richard William. I'm reading that at the moment, and it goes into a lot of depth about various techniques and methods...and although it is mainly about traditional hand drawn animation, the principles are more or less the same for 3D. So apart from the technical side of 3D animation, do you think Jeff Lew's DVD would give much more of an insight into the whole process???

I'll probably still get it sometime either way you can never have too much educational material at hand

oh....you can get the "yellow dude" and "green dude" models he uses here (rigged with animation master formats but not with max formats):
http://www.jefflew.com/dvd_freestuff.html
it might have been handy if they were on the dvd tho

Cheers Tom for looking into that.....but dont worry about it Hope you had a good well-deserved holiday too

[Fusion]

yeah, I have Animators Survival Kit, its pretty good for traditional animation but what you really want is Jeff Lew's DVD. It gives you insite that REALLY helps, like small adjustments in the way the character moves relitive to his size/weight can make a world of difference. He does go generally into rigging like you no how humans have an "s" curved spine, well he tells you to rig the spine linear so that you get accurate rotation in the chest. The whole DVD is like that, a lot of info and gives you insite on the industry, meaning the best ways to animate. And Its not all technical plus he gives really helpful guides (ex. pictures, animations of his own, etc.)

I checked out his site before hand and I was aware he posted downloadable models but when I import them they have A LOT and i mean A LOT of open faces, broken edges, unsmoothed surface, and can't be fixed with cap hole modifier. And I don't want to and fix every mistake myself cause I'll probably save time just re-making it.