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Introduction to TA Facial Animation |
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TA Facial Animation is an animation package that is designed specifically for creating facial animation - dialogue (lip-sync) and the facial performances that let 3D animated characters become convincing actors! Blending sources like Traditional Animation and Puppetry with the best in modern graphics programming, TAFA offers animators a real-time environment in which you can see and interact with your animation in real-time! (Often at frame-rates of over 110 fps [frames-per-second] on most "game-level" systems!) TA Facial Animation is a Morph-based animation tool. Meaning that it blends target shapes you've modeled into your character to produce an infinite palette of unique variations! You create these shapes in your 3D modeling tool of choice, saving your models as LightWave® Objects, (.LWO) that store Morph Targets as an embedded part of the object file itself. (Version 1.5 of TAFA is scheduled to expand the object file format to directly support the other major 3D applications.) Explore the "Mr. Cool" model that ships with TAFA to get ideas for what Morph Targets you may need to get your own Characters talking and acting... ...Or use Mr. Cool as a base, "pulling points" for your own human characters, and have all Mr. Cool's Morphs already a part of your model!
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| (For in-depth exploration of how to plan and create facial morph targets, see Albee's sixth book on computer graphics and animation, LightWave 3D [8] Character Animation - available at your local book-seller.) | ||
