Animating Real- Time Game Characters-P7: My intent in writing Animating Real-Time Game Characters has been to share my work methods, thoughts, and ideas about animating real-time characters in 3ds max 4™ and character studio 3®. Any factor that affects the animation process using these two tools has been covered. | Chapter4 Weighting a Character Using Envelopes 169 FIGURE Say buh-bye to Bikini girl for now The order in which you apply Physique and adjust weighting is also more important when primarily using envelopes. If Physique is applied to all the mesh objects of a character at the same time then any envelope settings are applied across all the objects even if they re hidden or unselected. For that reason when dealing with a higher resolution character you need to achieve as much of the weighting via envelopes as possible before resorting to manually entering the weighting values. It saves time and effort. THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU ANIMATE 171 172 Animating Real-Time Game Characters f you go to the definition of animation you ll find is The act process or result of imparting life interest spirit motion or . activity. In order to fully understand that definition in order to impart life into your characters you need to be alive yourself. You need to have the innate ability to recognize what looks right and what doesn t fook right when a character is moving around. You need to breathe life into your characters they re not going to take on life by themselves. Do this by opening your eyes to everything and everyone around you. Watch movies with the sound off to better concentrate on movement without the distraction of noise. Grab a book on stage-acting or even body language to see how physical movement becomes communication. Take the act of animation seriously. This attitude this mental aspect of animating characters may feel a bit melodramatic but it s required if you want to stand out from the pack. So take a moment to consider some of the elements to be thought out before animating your real-time game characters. KNOW YOUR CHARACTER Successful character animation whether it s for rendered or real-time purposes relies on many factors the skill of the animator the complexity of the character being animated the time available to do the anima-tions .
