Digital Character Development: Theory and Practice, 2/e (Hardcover)

Digital characters are a driving force in the entertainment industry today. Every animated film and video game production spends a large percentage of its resources and time on advancing the quality of the digital characters inhabiting the world being created. This book presents the theory and practice behind the creation of digital characters for film and games using software-agnostic descriptions that apply to any animation application. It provides insight from a real production environment and the requirements that such an environment imposes.

Digital Character Development: Theory and Practice, Second Edition covers the following key topics that are valuable to professionals across a wide spectrum of disciplines:

• Evolution and history of digital characters, which is critical to understanding the theory and techniques behind how characters are developed
• Contemporary issues, such as the "Uncanny Valley" phenomenon, that affect character design decisions
• Process of building characters: anatomical considerations, character motion systems, deformation (muscle and skin) systems, facial setup, and rig synthesis and construction
• Animation technology: keyframe strategies, curve interpolation, motion capture, procedural animation, artificial intelligence, crowd simulations, and interactive characters
• Future of digital characters, including research questions that remain outstanding and the challenges for work beyond them

The second edition of this book has been significantly updated to reflect the latest trends and innovations in digital character development. It includes interviews with 15 leading character development professionals that provide unique insights into the challenges and ingredients for success in this field. With rich illustrations and visual code examples throughout, this book provides a comprehensive roadmap to character development for both professionals and students.

數位角色是當今娛樂業的推動力。每部動畫電影和視頻遊戲製作都花費大量資源和時間來提升所創造世界中數位角色的品質。本書介紹了為電影和遊戲創建數位角色的理論和實踐，並使用軟體無關的描述，適用於任何動畫應用。它提供了來自真實製作環境的見解，以及這種環境所帶來的要求。

《數位角色開發：理論與實踐，第二版》涵蓋了以下對各個領域的專業人士都有價值的關鍵主題：

- 數位角色的演變和歷史，這對於理解角色開發背後的理論和技術至關重要。
- 影響角色設計決策的當代問題，如「詭異谷」現象。
- 角色建模的過程：解剖考慮因素、角色運動系統、變形（肌肉和皮膚）系統、面部設置以及骨骼合成和構建。
- 動畫技術：關鍵幀策略、曲線插值、動作捕捉、程序化動畫、人工智能、群體模擬和互動角色。
- 數位角色的未來，包括仍未解決的研究問題以及超越這些問題的工作所面臨的挑戰。

本書的第二版已經進行了重大更新，以反映數位角色開發領域的最新趨勢和創新。它包括了與15位領先的角色開發專業人士的訪談，提供了對這一領域的挑戰和成功要素的獨特見解。本書還提供了豐富的插圖和視覺代碼示例，為專業人士和學生提供了全面的角色開發路線圖。