KanaWorks_AIBooks
We write up what we have tested in production. Our technical book series, KanaWorks Production Lab, is available on Amazon in English and Japanese.
Why Your CG Breaks
A Technical Artist's Field Notes
27 Experiments in Rigging, Compositing, Lighting, and Game Assets (Blender + Python)
Evidence before integration.
Collapsing forearms, floating feet, vanishing shadows. This book explains the "something's off" in CG with numbers rather than instinct. Twenty-seven fixed, reproducible experiments built with Blender 4.3.2, Python and NumPy isolate breakages you have seen in production, and each chapter gives the measurements, the mechanism in plain language, and a production verdict: ship it, test further, or keep for reference.
The Kindle edition is also available with Kindle Unlimited.
What's Inside
Every chapter comes with measurements, the mechanism in plain language, a production verdict, a list of what was not tested, the command to re-run it, and a short companion video.
Game Animation
Skinning, terrain IK, inertialization, retargeting, keyframe reduction
Compositing
Deep samples, lenses, projection, motion blur, Cryptomatte, keying, shadow catchers, screen replacement, defocus
Lighting & Camera
Light groups, light linking, shadow caustics, portals, rolling shutter
Procedural Assets
Fracturing, rigid-body handoff, normal baking, LOD, instancing, terrain, atlas guard bands
For intermediate technical artists, riggers, compositors and game developers who know their way around Blender and can read about 40 lines of Python.
Arthur, the lab's corgi engineer, leaves one short note in each chapter.
Videos
Book Details
- Title
- Why Your CG Breaks: A Technical Artist's Field Notes
27 Experiments in Rigging, Compositing, Lighting, and Game Assets (Blender + Python) - Series
- KanaWorks Production Lab, Book 1
- Author
- Kana Natsume (KANA)
- Publisher
- Tokyo AI Visuals LLC
- Published
- Paperback: Wednesday, October 7, 2026 / Kindle: Friday, October 9, 2026
- Length
- Kindle: 704 pages / Paperback: 460 pages
- ISBN-13
- 979-8160705583 (paperback)
- Japanese edition
- なぜそのCGは破綻するのか ― テクニカルアーティストのための検証ノート
Kindle: 711 pages / Paperback: 438 pages (ISBN 979-8160700342)