Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book uses easy-to-follow tutorials and color illustrations to show you how to model a low-polygon character, create a rig (no plug-ins required!), then animate the character, including facial expressions. It focuses on the tools you need to get a result, so you can learn quickly and put your knowledge into practice right away with your own characters and projects. In the first chapter, you'll start from scratch with a box, and model a fully animatable body including clothing. Then you'll model a head, face, and hair, and learn the tools you can use to create any character.

Chapter 2 covers rigging, the process of setting up controls for the character. You'll create an uncomplicated yet complete rig from start to finish with standard 3ds max tools like bones, custom attributes and parameter wiring. You'll rig the character so it can perform standard actions like raising its arm or making a fist with just a few mouse clicks. You'll also learn a few simple scripting techniques for customizing the rig. You can apply the information in this extensive chapter to any character rig.

Chapter 3 covers the use of the Skin modifier, showing you how to get smooth deformation with envelopes and vertex weights. You'll learn how to adjust tricky areas like hips and shoulders, and how to eliminate pinching at elbows and knees with angle deformers.

In Chapter 4, you'll animate the character using tried-and-true animation principles. Using your rig, you'll make the character walk, jump, and perform other classic actions. You'll also learn how to set up and use morph targets for facial animation, plus a simple technique for controlling a character's eyes.

Each chapter uses numerous tutorials and color pictures to take you through the process step by step. New concepts are explained in clear, easy-to-understand language, so you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. The result is that you'll be able to model, rig, and animate characters of your own design with 3ds max 6.