The LightWave 7.5 Primer

Rating:
Summary: Only useful for beginners
Review: Being a fairly new Lightwave user, I pre-ordered this book. I also own all of the Desktop Images training DVDs for LW 7 as well as a few of Class on Demand's training DVDs. By the time the book arrived I'd been using Lightwave for only about 3 months and it was already useless.

There is some good information in here, and the book is fairly light reading, but the book tries to be too general and doesn't provide enough coverage of specific topics.

In all fairness, this book would be the perfect textbook for an Intro to Lightwave class. However, if you can model, texture, animate and render a simple object then this book probably won't offer you much. You would be better off buying another book by the same author, "The LightWave 6.5/7.0 Project Handbook"

Rating:
Summary: Only useful for beginners
Review: Being a fairly new Lightwave user, I pre-ordered this book. I also own all of the Desktop Images training DVDs for LW 7 as well as a few of Class on Demand's training DVDs. By the time the book arrived I'd been using Lightwave for only about 3 months and it was already useless.

There is some good information in here, and the book is fairly light reading, but the book tries to be too general and doesn't provide enough coverage of specific topics.

In all fairness, this book would be the perfect textbook for an Intro to Lightwave class. However, if you can model, texture, animate and render a simple object then this book probably won't offer you much. You would be better off buying another book by the same author, "The LightWave 6.5/7.0 Project Handbook"

Rating:
Summary: Calling all Lightwave Newbies
Review: For any Lightwave newbies, save yourself some angst and get The LightWave
7.5 Primer (Patrick Beck)

Mr. Beck makes everything seem so clear and easy. I wish I'd had this when I
set out to learn Lightwave. I think this should be included with every copy
of Lightwave, especially now that the unwashed masses (like myself) are getting into 3D.

Rating:
Summary: It Doesn't Work
Review: The book seems well writen and I was really enjoying it until page 120. That's when the included CD is first called for use. I find that anything in LightWave format is not seen by my computer - a new Mac G4, duel processor with OSX 10.2.4. I was careful to read before ordering the book if Mac is supported. They say it is. I'll try it tomorrow on my PC, but my graphics machine is the Mac. If I can straighten this out I think I will highly rate the book. If not, well then I'll stick with no or one star!

This book doesn't explain it all. That takes more than 350 pages. It seems to skim the surface, and there's lots of surface to be skimmed! This is a four or five book program. The included program manual is very complete, but such a dry read you won't believe. Kinda like the early Photoshop manuals.

Rating:
Summary: It Doesn't Work
Review: The book seems well writen and I was really enjoying it until page 120. That's when the included CD is first called for use. I find that anything in LightWave format is not seen by my computer - a new Mac G4, duel processor with OSX 10.2.4. I was careful to read before ordering the book if Mac is supported. They say it is. I'll try it tomorrow on my PC, but my graphics machine is the Mac. If I can straighten this out I think I will highly rate the book. If not, well then I'll stick with no or one star!

This book doesn't explain it all. That takes more than 350 pages. It seems to skim the surface, and there's lots of surface to be skimmed! This is a four or five book program. The included program manual is very complete, but such a dry read you won't believe. Kinda like the early Photoshop manuals.

Rating:
Summary: A highly recommended instructional reference for the novice
Review: The Lightwave 7.5 Primer by professional animator Patrik Beck (Founder of Electric Crayon Studio) clearly, carefully, and accessibly instructs the reader in the fundamentals of using the LightWave toolset to craft three-dimensional animation. Individual chapters adroitly address the basics of LightWave, techniques for crafting surfaces with texture and luminosity adjusted to the right degree, animating object deformation, particles, hypervoxels, and much, much more. Numerous samples and black-and-white photographs enhance out the thoroughly "reader friendly" text. An accompanying CD-ROM offers a small but utilitarian library of files useful for undertaking the instructional projects of the primer, including images, objects, scenes, color versions of the book's figures, and rendered animations in MPEG and QuickTime. The LightWave 7.5 Primer is an essential and very highly recommended instructional reference for the novice, and has a great deal of informational value to offer even the more experienced LightWave user.

Rating:
Summary: A good start
Review: The Lightwave 7.5 Primer is a good book to introduce you to the Lightwave program. The thing I most enjoyed about the book was the quality of the tutorials. All files were easily found, and all the examples worked! This doesn't always happen with other books.
A 3D package is basically lots of programs rolled into one. Modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, rendering. All these could be there own area of study. Mr. Beck's book does a fine job of introducing the basics of each of these to the reader.
Only a few noticible typos and errors are found through the whole book. The appendices of CD content and system requirements should definitly be at the beginning of the book. And although the book is chatty enough and very approachable I found that it ended a bit abruptly. But these are basically nits I'm picking. After completing this book I feel more ready to dive into some of the other Lightwave books out there.