The following 3D tutorials were designed as a series wherein each tutorial builds on the previous one, and we recommend that you follow them in sequence. Also available is the Beginners Tutorial, created by Steven Sahyun while working at Oregon State University.This tutorial is designed to be a step-by-step guide showing the novice user how to use the 3DJoy program to create a simple object, make it look nice, make it move, and how to then use that movie in a web page. You'll also find useful tips and techniques in the Expert and Tech Reports areas. |
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Modeler is recognized in the industrial and product-design fields for its powerful, CAD-accurate, and intuitive modeleling, and has expanded its offering into character and object animation. Its capabilities are best exemplified by the space-visualization work of Bob Sauls, of John Frassanito & Associates, for NASA and Dreamworks. From the shuttle docking to the exploration of Mars, Bob's work has had numerous showings on the national news and the Discovery Channel. The Modeler Tool Use tutorial is your gateway to designing the virtual worlds of your imagination. The 3D tutorials were designed as a series wherein each tutorial builds on the previous one, and we recommend that you follow them in sequence.This and the following tutorials presented on the website are based on tutorial and descriptive materials developed by Peter Ratner, Professor of Fine Art and Animation at James Madison University. He has been using Modeleer and Presenter to train budding 3D animators at James Madison University for the past three years. His abilities to use this 3D and to train others is demonstrated, not only by the quality of the 3D images and animation created by him and the publication of his definitive work on modeling and animating the human form (titled 3-D Human Modeling and Animation and published by John Wiley and Sons), but also by the success of his students, some of whose works are presented in the JMU Student Examples area. The Modeler Tool Use tutorial provides you with the basic knowledge to set up the modeling desktop to suit your needs, and with a working knowledge of the Lathe, Extrude, Sweep, Path Extrude, Skin/Loft, and Bevel Extrude tools. |
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The ability to properly use hierarchical grouping and set rotations is crucial for effective design and animation. The Hierarchical Grouping tutorial provides you with the basic knowledge to set up and properly use hierarchical groups and to define and change rotation points and set rotations. |
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The Render and Animation tutorial introduces you to camera and light setup, describes how to use RenderMan and shaders, and takes you through the steps to set up a character animation. Presenter provides fast ray-trace and Phong shading and outstanding support for RenderMan, the rendering technology used by major studios like ILM and Pixar. |
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Presenter provides powerful and extensive texture-mapping
controls. The ability to properly use these controls is crucial for effective rendering
and animation and can make your modeling tasks less complex. The Texture Mapping
tutorials created by Bob Sauls provide you with the basic knowledge to apply texture
maps directly or as stencils, to use them to cut freeform holes without having to
do constructive geometry, and for applying animations as maps onto objects for the
purpose of creating special effects like fire. |
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The Human Animation Intro tutorial provides you tips that will improve your effectiveness in creating characters that look and move realistically. The ability to use templates is important for maintaining facial and body proportion. This makes the job of creating realistic human models much easier. Developing the appropriate hierarchical structure is important for effective character animation. This tutorial shows you the steps to follow for importing and setting up templates, and provides a detailed list of hierarchical components that make up the human model. |
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The Morph tutorial shows you how to do character animation. The use of 3D in character animation is growing. The movie Toy Story and the TV program Reboot are prime examples. One of the most difficult things to do in character animation is to sync the lips and other facial features to the words spoken. Presenter not only makes it possible on the Macintosh: it makes it easy. Its Digital SoundStage™ animation and sound capabilities offer a powerful, new 3D morphing technology, Multi-Target Morphing. This morphing capability works with the 3D Digital Clay™ sculpting and Directional 3D Sound™ capabilities to provide powerful facial animation, muscle flexing, character reshaping, and lip motion, synced to sound.For this example, we will create the mouth model and the targets in the Modeler module and then match the lip movement to the sound 'Oh Boy'. |
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The Head Sculpting tutorial provides you with the basic knowledge to set up and properly use the 'Open Vertical Splines Method' for modeling a human head. This technique was excerpted from Peter Ratner's book 3-D Human Modeling and Animation. The tutorial demonstrates how to use templates to create the contours of the front and sides of the head.In this example, you will outline the front and side contours of the head using vertical open splines; add additional splines to define the full shape of the head; and then surface these splines, using the Loft tool to form the mesh that encompasses the head. This technique can also be used to model the human torso; animals; cartoon characters; and most organic shapes. |
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Presenter's powerful upcoming character, facial, and lip-sync capability is enhanced by the 3D Digital Clay™: sculpting to provide powerful facial animation, muscle flexing, character reshaping, and lip motion synced to sound. This new morphing technology will allow Presenter to offer the same I.K. (Inverse Kinematics) and Bones effects that workstation products do, but in a more productive and intuitive way that is also faster, less memory intensive, and less expensive.Presenter users can animate faces by blending the combined targets of multiple objects. The power this has over morph products that provide only single-object morphing becomes clear when you have to model a face, body, or arm as a single object before you can animate it. When coupled with Presenter's inbuilt 3D-sound capabilities, multiple-object morphing offers complete and dynamic command of the lip-syncing process. It handles any number of objects with any number of targets within its dialog box, letting you select any number of targets and apply any "weight" as a percent from -200 to + 200. The Lip Sync tutorial provides you with the basis for creating facial expressions and lip syncing in Presenter. It covers the basic mouth positions for the spoken sounds and illustrates how these are combined with sound to produce a lip-synced animation. |
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It's well-known that 3D character animation presents one of the toughest challenges for desktop animators. Usually considered the domain of high-end products like Wavefront and SoftImage on expensive workstations, demand for this technology has been increasing steadily, especially since the release of Disney's Toy Story. Inverse Kinematics (I.K.) has been the primary technology used in providing joined motion for control of movement of the body and limbs. But character animation has had limited success on the desktop. Most desktop I.K. implementations are difficult to learn and use, often producing strange results such as limbs' being placed in unrealistic positions. Compounding this is that the skin at bend points doesn't look natural because it either is wrinkled or has a severe line of intersection.As an alternative, we are currently developing an advanced Behavioral Kinematics™ technology that will make it easier to do professional facial, character, and lip-synching animation. This new technology lets you blend individual object instances into behavioral expressions for character, facial, or lip-sync animation. Since all key target instances are preset and the blended expressions have been previewed in real time to determine behavioral accuracy, the resulting animations provide more predictable motion and smoother surfacing at the bend points then are possible with most applications using only I.K. technology. This new Behavioral Kinematics will provide you with the ability to combine a variety of morph instancing targets (utilizing both reshape and rotate operations) into behaviors manipulated by a single control slider. This instancing capability for creating a variety of behaviors and expressions enables you to define a complex facial expression or body movement that can be applied at any frame of an animation. This technology offer the same I.K. (Inverse Kinematics) and Bones effects that workstation products do, in a way that is not only more productive and intuitive and faster, but also less memory-intensive and less expensive. In the Behavioral Kinematics tutorial, you will see how simple it is to combine the separate components that make up a human arm and to have the combination of realistic finger, hand, arm, and muscle movements controlled by the simple movement of sliders. |