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Lightwave 3D Professional Character Series

Course Length - Self Paced

Support Time - Unlimited

The courses come on a series of CDs. Each CD contains several hours of lecture material. The lectures are broken down into 10 to 20 minute sections making it easy to review.

All our Courses and CDs are now in QUICKTIME format, making them Mac and PC compatible

Would you like to see examples? Click HERE for over 4 HOURS of FREE Training.

Character Modeling      -    Was $150.00 - NOW ONLY $99.95

Character Texturing      -    Was $150.00 - NOW ONLY $99.95

Character Rigging         -    Was $150.00 - NOW ONLY $99.95

Character Animation   -     Was $150.00 - NOW ONLY $99.95

Complete Course           -    Was $550.00 - NOW ONLY $349.95

The Course Consists of the Following Sections
 

Character Modeling  - Modeling with subdivision surfaces, modeling with splines, controlling form and flow, constraining details, build a human character (focus on problem areas), modeling from scanned images.

Character Texturing - Basic texturing, UV mapping, alpha maps, procedurals, dividing a character into logical surfaces. Texture layering techniques.Using Sasquatch Lite. Organizing texture layers in your paint program.

Character Rigging - Bones, Standard and non-standard setups, skelegons, mixing bones and skelegons, weight-maps, vertex paint, sock-monkey, endomorphs, Inverse Kinematics, expressions and setup philosophies.

Character Animation - Making it all work together - Including complete models, textures, and character rigs to Animate. Basic animation timing covering the 12 principles of animation. Using the graph editor and motion mixer.

Also includes the most accurate and uptodate information on Lightwaves Bone Tools and IKBooster.

Online Support - As part of the course,each student receives UNLIMITED online support per module. In this support forum you will be able to post questions to other students and the instructor. You are encouraged to interact with each other, learn from or help each other . Students can post WIPs (works in progress) and critique each others work and have their work critiqued by an instructor. The group is an ongoing list and is key word searchable. This means you can read previous messages and search for answers. This is a great resource for students.

 

Heres what you actually get in each module!
Character Modeling - approximately 15 Hours

Modeling the Head
1. The Face
2. The Nose
3. The General Eye Region
4. The Lips
5. Facial features and proper Flow
6. The Back of the Head
7. The Neck
8. The Base Ear
9. Detailing the Ear
10. Finishing the Ear
11. Adjusting deatils on the Head
12. The Eyeballs
13. Starting the Eye Sockets
14. Finishing the Eye Sockets
15. Upper Teeth
16. The Lower Teeth and Mouth Interior

Modeling the Torso
1. Laying out the Basic Torso
2. The Shoulders
3. The Chest
4. The Buttocks
5. The Abdominals
6. The Arms
7. Leg Details
8. Leg Muscles
9. Final Adjustments

Modeling the Hands
1 The Base Hand
2 The Index and Middle Finger
3 The Rest of the Fingers
4 Finger Nails
5 The Palm
6 Finishing the Hand

Modeling the Feet
1 The Base Foot
2 The Toes
3 The Finished Foot
Putting it all Together
1 Attaching the Hands and Feet to the Torso
2 Attaching the Head

Modeling with Splines
1 Laying out the Head
2 Laying out the Face
3 Forming Correct Patches
4 Correcting Patching Techniques
5 Creating Polygons from Patches
6 Working with SubD's
7 The Back of the Head
8 Creating a Torso with Splines

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Character Texturing - approximately 20 Hours

Setting up surfaces and UVs:
1. Head and Arm Setup
2. Body Setup
3. UVMap Basics
4. UVMap Basics pt2
5. Head UV Setup
6. Head UV Setup pt2
7. Torso UV Setup
8. Arm UV Setup
9. Hand UV Setup

Texturing the Head:
10. Basic Head Textures
11. Head Skin Color
12. Head Skin Color pt2
13. Head Skin Color_pt3
14. Head Skin Color pt4
15. Head Skin Color pt5
16. Head Skin Color Final
17. Head Wrinkles
18. Head Wrinkles pt2
19. Head Wrinkles pt3
20. Head Eyebrows
21. Head Eyebrows pt2
22. Head Eyes
23. Head Veins

Sasquatch Hair
24. Head Hair
25. Head Hair pt2
26. Head Hair pt3
27. Head Hair pt4
28. Head Hair pt5

Texture Hair
29. Head Hair Textured
30. Head Hair Textured pt2
31. Head Hair Textured pt3
32. Head Hair Textured pt4
33. Head Hair Textured pt5
29. Head Eyelashes
30 Head Eyelashes pt2
31. Head Blending UVs
32. Head Ears
33. Head Mouth

Texturing the Hands:
34. Hand Details
35. Hand Texture Blending
36. Hand Flip UVs

Texturing the Arms:
37. Arm Textures
38. Textures Palm
39. Palm Wrinkles
40. Arm Details
41. Arm Veins Bump Maps
42. Arm Wrinkles Bump Maps

Texturing the Torso:
43. Torso Color Maps
44. Torso Color Details
45. Torso Bump Maps
46. Torso Last Details

Clothing:
47. Clothing
48. Clothing pt2

 

 Character Rigging - approximately 21 Hours

Bones basics
1. Bone Basics pt1
2. Bone Basics pt2
3. Bone Basics pt3
4. Bone Basics pt4
5. Bone Basics pt5

Basic Weightmaps
6. Basic Weightmaps pt1
7. Basic Weightmaps pt2

Boning in Layout
8. Layout Boneing pt1
9. Layout Boneing pt2
10. Layout Boneing pt3
11. Layout Boneing pt4

Skelegons and Mocap
12. Skelegons pt1
13. Mocap pt1
14. Mocap pt2

Deformations
15. Deformations pt1
16. Deformations pt2
17. Deformations pt3
18. Deformations pt3A
19. Deformations pt4
20. Deformations pt5
21. Deformations pt6

Weightmaps
22. Weightmaps pt1
23. Weightmaps pt2
24. Weightmaps pt3
25. Weightmaps pt4
26. Weightmaps Vertex Paint pt5

Introduction to IK Setups
27 Setting up IK

Rigging Philisophy - The "Whys" of rigging
28. Philosophy
29. Philosophy for Feet pt1
30. Philosophy for Feet pt2
31. Philosophy for Knees
32. Philosophy for Hips and Head
33. Philosophy for Eyes
34. Philosophy for Arms FK pt1
35. Philosophy for Arms IK pt2
36 Philosophy Tips

Motion Mixer and Morph Mixer
37. Motion Mixer
38. Morph Mixer pt1
39. Morph Mixer pt2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Character Animation - approximately 15 hours

Basic Motion

1. Basic Motion _Pt1
2. Deceleration Render Pt2
3. Acceleration Render Pt3
4. Basic Motion Bounce_Pt2
5. Basic Motion Bounce_Pt2A
6. Basic Motion Damped Bounce Curves Pt3
7. Squash and Stretch Pt4
8. Squash and Stretch Render Pt7
9. Anticipation and Follow Through Pt5
10. Overlapping Motion Pt6

The 12 Principles of Animation

11. 12 Principles of Animation

Lesson 1 - Anticipation

12. Anticipation Lesson 1

Lesson 2 - Follow Through

13. Follow Through Lesson 2
14. Follow Through Lesson 3

Lesson 3 - The Walk Cycle

15 Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt1
16. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt2
17. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt3
18. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt4
19. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt5
20. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Pt6
21. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Thin Pt7
22. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Thin Pt8
23. Walkcycle Lesson 3 Heavy Pt9


Lesson 4 - Animate to Audio

24. Line of Action Lesson 4 Pt1
25. Animate to Audio Lesson 4 Pt1
26. Animate to Audio Lesson 4 Pt2
27. Animate to Audio Lesson 4 Pt3
28. Animate to Audio Lesson 4 Pt4


Lesson 5 - Lip Sync

29. Animate to Audio Lipsync Lesson 5 Pt1
30. Animate to Audio Lipsync Lesson 5 Pt2

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read what students have to say about the course
 

Unsolicited Student Testimonials

The CDs arrived today. I just finished the mouth area, so I'm moving along pretty well. The CDs are great! Very easy to follow and understand. After all the rave reviews I expected a lot, and my expectations were exceeded. Great job with everything. - K.S.

The CD's are great so far. I am really impressed with your teaching ability! It's a real talent that most of us do not possess. I haven't gotten far enough into them to be really specific about it, but I am definitely

100% satisfied with what I've seen so far. I'll give you some more detail as I get further into it. - C.J.

I have received your CD's and have been studying them every chance I have. Excellent tutorials and techniques!...Thank you so much for sharing your techniques with us. - L.H.

I have seen some work done by people who have been learning from your CDs and I was very impressed.....I am very keen to sign up for these courses... - K.M.

The tutorials are excellent by the way. I have had to start over a couple times due to my own stupidity, but each time I do I get better at the modeling. I look forward to picking up the others in the series as soon as I finish up this set of CD's. - J.M.

I've been working through the character series this weekend and I must say that I'm mighty impressed. I would like to sign up for the rest of the series... M.K.

Well I've finally got a complete character, and have uploaded it for inspection.What excellent tutorials Larry, it's been a complete revelation to me, your methodology is amazing, and this is only as far as the modelling stage, I can't wait for the next CDs.Many more of the uses of lightwave's toolset are now apparent to me.Spin quads and the whole flow thing I find so cool, though I did get a bit carried away with spinning thing and think I lost some polys somewhere along the way. (Must backup more.)Onto splines. - P.D.

 

Due to the nature of our products, exchanges can only be given on defective CDs. Refunds will only be given on unopened CDs.