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Title: 3ds max 4 Media Animation by John Chismar ISBN: 0-7357-1059-7 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Benchmark for All Tutorial-Style Computer Text Books
Comment: This book is a fantastic example of how all computer text books should be structured - Step-by-step tutorials that demonstrate experienced solutions to real-world projects. I know I speak for many people when I say that I learn by DOING, not by reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text and lengthy descriptions of "what this app can do for you". No one likes to attempt to digest a "features description" manual and try to piece together the various complexities of a high-end application like 3DS MAX from various disjointed sources. I need a seasoned, talented professional, with years of industry experience, to step me through exactly how an application performs various industry tasks, e.g. how to make a 30-second TV spot from scratch, how to make a highly-professional News program opener, or how to make robotic-looking voting machines animated together in a 3-camera shoot. John Chrismar performs this tasks with a detail and finesse that is extremely hard to find in the computer textbook industry. I look for this style in every computer book I pick up, but don't often find it, if at all. The industry giants on the programming side of the industry, like Wrox Press, should use John's book as an example of how to write an effective computer textbook. Don't waste my time with information overload, stuffed together losely by a quasi-team of 6 geeks. SHOW ME how you solved a problem with the application or programming language, from start to finish, while I follow along, bit by bit, line by line, click by click. Show me how to build a genuine and valuable creation using the tool you are teaching me to use. This is exactly what John does.
I started with the last of three tutorials and worked backward through the book, because the News Program Opener tutorial looked the most intriguing. I learned more about 3DS MAX after that one tutorial then I had by reading the documentation or from any of the other three 3DS MAX books I own. I saw someone else mention that there were some small mistakes and missed "figure" numbers on the screenshots here and there, but this did not detract from completing the tutorials in the slightest. Two extra seconds of thought got me passed these minor editing oversights very easily, and they were very minor in comparison to most computer textbooks.
It was beyond refreshing to witness and practice along with a professional at work from beginning to end: from importing your vectors from Illustrator, to cleaning up the splines, to extruding, modelling each piece, assembling, naming conventions, creating materials, shortcuts, to animating, adding a soundtrack, right down to post-production and final render. I absolutely can not stand books where Step 1 is "Import our half-finished Design #643.2 from our accompanying CD-ROM". Not the case with this book. You are stepped through the process, end to end. When you are done with each tutorial, you have a finished work of media art THAT YOU CREATED and a head full of usable, retainable 3DS MAX knowledge that can be carried into any job or hobby.
Excellent job, John. You have gained a new fan. I will purchase your other books, regardless of topic. :D
Thank you.
Rating: 5
Summary: No other 3DS book has even come close. Really!
Comment: Every 3D Studio book other than these Media Animation books are more or less useless. The author's try to cram every nook and cranny of 3D Studio Max into the book. They stretch what could be an easily understood one-sentence explanation into an entire page or even chapter. The result is the knowledge of tools without the know-how to use them efficiently. Don't get me wrong, this book also explains the tools, (I've been using max for years and didn't even know some of the tools I used for project 3 in this book existed until the author showed me) but it does so as you are working on projects in the book: you learn as you go. This book, 3D Studio Max 4 Media Animation, and the media animation book for MAX 3 are truly the most useful books for 3D Studio. I have learned more from these books, than every other 3D Studio Max book combined. The author, unlike most, gives you explanations on how to make things look great and stand out. He doesn't hold back his 'secrets' to avoid anyone reaching his creative level like I feel a lot of authors do sometimes. What I like the most about this book is that it's not made up of 500 little scenes. He doesn't show you how to render a scene with fog, and then let you sit there wondering what the hell to do with it while he moves on to the next snippet like every other book. He has 3 large full-blown projects in his book. You actually create something useful, professional, and finalized. Most books tend to skip over the important things that actually make animations look realistic, not this Author... Realistic lighting, animated lens flares, realistic textures (in depth), transitions (combines multiple movies into one and animates them with crazy transitions) and so many other important things are covered in each of the projects. Most of all, he makes scenes in such a way that they are easy to build, and have unbelievable results. YOU WON'T come to a line where he is vague and tells you to do something, and you spend 5 hours trying to figure out what he was talking about. "Where's that tool? Is that a typo? That menu item isn't in my version! My outcome is completely different!" That usually always happens to me when I'm following a different book, or an online tutorial. It won't happen in these books. He shares his style, and shares his thought process while you are working through each project. He is a professional. The only thing this book lacks, is a successor. But I hope, in time he will release another book. His books just keep getting better. I would also recommend that you buy his first book: 3D Studio Max 3 Media Animation. If you're like me, your usually apprehensive about buying books for software that is for an older version, but that doesn't matter in this case. His previous book is built just like this one. It has other projects though, and you learn how to use other tools and techniques. Anyhow, back to this book. If you buy this book, I guarantee you will be extremely thankful, just like me. Thanks John Chismar.
Rating: 5
Summary: best so far - waiting for any new Chismar release
Comment: I am a beginner user of Viz and Max and will be using it for architectural 3D rendering. What I look for in a text book are lengthy tutorial exercises. I want to know step by step everything that I have to do to reproduce what the author is showing. This book is great for that. There are three main excercises that go the full length of the 550 pages of this book. As an example the 2002 voting machine tutorial goes from pages 182 to 315, covering each step of the construction. Chismar even includes alternate means of construction to show why one method works better than other methods.
I am looking forward to an updated book by Chismar on the lastest release of Max. I have not heard if one is being made.
One slight drawback...Chismar does not deal with the possiblities of drawing and rendering for architecture. If the new release of Max does include the architectural functions of Viz, then there will be a need for tutorials on those items. None the less the command structure of the software for Viz and Max is virtually the same, so learning that part from Chismar's book is still very important.
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Title: 3ds max 4 Magic by Sean Bonney, Laurent Abecassis, Marcus Richards ISBN: 0735710937 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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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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Title: 3ds Max 6 Animation and Visual Effects Techniques (Graphics Series) by Sanford Kennedy ISBN: 1584503343 Publisher: Charles River Media Pub. Date: 24 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
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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: 3ds max 4 Bible by Kelly L. Murdock ISBN: 0764535846 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.99 |
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