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Title: Mastering 3ds max 4 by Cat Woods, Cat Woods, Chris Murray, Jason Wiener ISBN: 0-7821-2938-2 Publisher: Sybex Pub. Date: August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Best 3ds Max book BY FAR for the intermediate user
Comment: To put it mildly, 3ds Max is a daunting program to learn. Those looking for the ideal introduction to REALLY using the program - understanding its logical workings and wide range of capabilities - need look no further than this marvelous book. While it's suitable for beginners, it is especially superb for those with at least a passing familiarity with 3D modeling and complex software design (the authors, to their credit, are very clear about this). That the authors devote their first chapters to reviewing concepts and context (areas utterly lacking in slapdash software guides written on a "Topic X for Dummies" level) speaks volumes about their philosophy for the book: that you will learn not only how to use 3ds Max, but to 'understand' it, to get inside it.
That some might find the book anything but exceptionally well-written is a mystery, and suggests they've never encountered literature outside the driest of engineering texts. In fact, it's rare to find ANY technical material as thoughtfully laid-out and beautifully phrased as this. The book is sensibly divided into 14 chapters covering everything one might want to know about the program's capabilities, and an additional 6 on scripting, a nice bonus. Although it might seem frivolous to comment on it, the Index is the most comprehensive you'll encounter, making locating just about anything in the main body of the book a snap.
Also rare is the inclusion, in a book ostensibly covering so vast a terrain as this, of detailed treatment of a number of advanced, specialized topics, like character animation and post-production. These are presented in enough detail that the reader can use them right out of the box, and can 'learn how to learn' more on his or her own. In short, this is indispensable.
Rating: 5
Summary: As close to perfect as a 3dsMax book is likely to get
Comment: Because I needed to learn the program thoroughly for my dissertation work, this is the fifth 3dsMax book I've bought, and it's the first that's not been overtly disappointing. If someone wants to have every little feature laid out in boring detail, there are the official materials and release notes for that. This book is the literal opposite (others suggesting otherwise have clearly not read the book in much detail).
What is most impressive here is that the book is NOT a systematic, unstructured tour of the program, dutifully covering each minor feature. Rather, it is results-oriented: if you want to accomplish X, here is how you go about it. Although it is graphically-rich and amazingly clear, it is most certainly not a comic book version of a Max book, and is clearly targeted to the sophisticated user. Even though a beginner would find the book quite useful, it should probably be bought in conjunction with a primer or a book "introducing" 3dsMax.
The writing is sprightly and, although there are spots where the editing might have been tightened, it is well above average even in that regard. In fact, if anything, the book has a crisp literary feel to it that will appeal to most readers, but may not be the style of choice for really hard-core users. Still, this is preferable to the studied dessication of nearly all the other books I've seen on the topic.
Finally, the graphical illustrations are uniformly excellent, leaving little to the imagination. I'm hoping that this team sees fit to write such a guide for the next, inevitable incarnation of the program. I for one will be advance ordering it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Truly Exceptional! The only book which makes it, well, easy
Comment: I thought I'd never learn to use this program. It's HARD. Not impossible... but not easy, either. I'd almost given up when a friend told me he'd found this one book which made Max4 seem pretty tame; I was, frankly, skeptical. But, I've gone through the *entire* book (with the exception of small parts of the final chapters), and feel I have the measure of the program.
It seems that some others who've used the book claim to have had certain problems with it. All I can say is that this is the clearest documentation I've seen and, as for problems: zero. Although no MAX book is going to make the program trivial, this comes as close as possible, with no stumbling blocks.
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Title: 3ds max 4 Fundamentals by Ted Boardman ISBN: 073571066X Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 18 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: 3ds max 4 Workshop by Duane Loose ISBN: 0789725460 Publisher: Que Pub. Date: 18 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Advanced 3ds max 5 Modeling & Animating by Boris Kulagin ISBN: 1931769168 Publisher: A-List Publishing Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: 3ds max Animation and Visual Effects Techniques by Sanford Kennedy ISBN: 1584502266 Publisher: Charles River Media Pub. Date: 27 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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Title: Modeling a Character in 3DS Max by Paul Steed ISBN: 1556228155 Publisher: Wordware Publishing Pub. Date: 30 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
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