In Closing

Character animation is a lengthy subject, and we have only scratched the surface. Subjects like motion blending or full-body IK animation are left for the reader's research. Animation is an evolving subject, and new techniques are being devised constantly. Today, the tide seems to be moving away from keyframed animation, and FK and IK are becoming more widely used. Physically based characters that keep self-balance and implement correct joint rotation restrictions are beginning to surface for real-time games. After all, the CPU is free from most rendering tasks, and that benefits animation engines. On the other end of the spectrum, many hardware-assisted animation algorithms are surfacing. Right now, shader-based multibone skinning has become a reality, and some demos show the incredible potential of this scheme. But there's much more. A few books the size of this one are available, devoted entirely to character animation. Luckily, some of them are listed in Appendix E, "Further Reading."