Articles about animation for games.

Animation Theory

• Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair
• 28 Principles of Animation by Walt Stanchfield
• Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer by John Lasseter
• Acting and Animation by Doron A. Meir
• Letters of Note - How to Train an Animator by Walt Disney

Animation Tutorials

• I want to be animator thread on the Polycount forum with a bunch of useful links.
• Pose to Pose Pop-Through Animation by Keith Lango
• The Walk Cycle tutorial by Dermot O’ Connor
• Animation tutorials by Mike Brown (theory, gimbal lock, rigging, walk cycles)
• The Animation Clinic: Animation Training for the Masses ($) by Keith Lango
• Spungella Many tutorials and links, great resource for Portfolio Tips, Animation Resources, and Rigs
• Great Links at AndyToons More links, Tutorials, Interviews with Great Animators etc.gathered by Andres G. Lazaro
• The Angry Animator Bouncing Ball, Walk Cycle, and Lip Sync Tutorials by Dermot O' Conner
• Manipulating Rigs at Animation Buffet (norman rig but can be applied to any rig) by Nair Archawattana
• Jason Ryan Animation
• TraptCG - animation tutorials as well as others.

Rigging

Rigging, or skinning, refers to the act of weighting a polygon mesh to a skeleton for the purposes of animation. The "mesh" is the skin, and it is stuck to the "bones" of the animation rig, which form a skeleton that can then be manipulated by an to pose and animate the character.

The skeleton rig can be a complex structure and is usually recreated to fit the unique requirements of each job. It is usually created by a or an Animator.

Skinning has also been used to refer to painting a color map texture for a 3D mesh, but this term is deprecated and hasn't really survived past the Quake 3 era.

• Creating Custom Characters for UT3 by Epic Games is an overview of how to setup characters for Unreal using 3ds Max. See also Creating Animations for the Unreal Engine: Character Setup and Rigging.
• Facial Rigging Tutorial by Alden Filion. Rigging up a control board with the help of a script.
• Facial Control Board Tutorial by Jesse Sandifer. A video tutorial that outlines the same method but walks you through it manually, good info to know.
• Wrinkle Map Wiring in 3dsMax by Mark "Vig" Dygert
• 3ds Max - Cloth Sim to Bones by Mark "Vig" Dygert
• Multi Layer Cloth Basics by Paul Hormis
• Creating Collision Meshes Using Conform Wrap by Paul Hormis
• Using Cloth to Simulate Chains by Paul Hormis
• Articulation by Brian Tindall, Character Technical Director at Pixar
• Rigging 101 by Javier Solsona Maya rigging tutorials and resources
• The Setup Machine Maya rigging made simple
• MEL Scripting for Animators from Insomniac Games

Free Rigs

• Animators: Free rigged characters online? from the Polycount forum

Motion Capture

Sources for free motion capture (mocap).

• http://www.animazoo.com/
• http://freemotionfiles.blogspot.com/
• http://www.mixamo.com/motions
• http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/ (bvh format for 3ds Max here)
• http://www.mocapdata.com/
• http://stockmoves.e-motek.com/

Blogs, Podcasts, Etc.

• http://www.navone.org/blogger/ Victor Navone's blog (The alien song guy who works for Pixar now)
• http://animationpodcast.com/ Animation Pod Cast
• Speaking of Animation - Podcasts with Industry Professionals on current releases by Ben Willis, Adam Strick, Jacob Gardner, Stephen Melagrano
• Carlos Baena's Blog
• The Yelling Rocket

Must Read Books

• The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas
• The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams
• Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield
• The Animators Workbook by Tony White
• Stop Staring by Jason Osipa
• Directing the Story by Francis Glebas
• Anamie - simplified Drawing/planning animation by
• Draw the Looney Toons by Dan Romanelli

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