3D Studio MAX R3 In Depth: Take Your MAX Skills to the Professional Level

Rating:
Summary: Descent book, Aimed at lower-end users
Review: This book contains a goodly amount of information concerning the basic functionality, and some of the slightly more advanced features, but it describes the use of tools that any user with even a few months of the experience would have already had a great amount of experience using just in basic scene-creation. Topics like bump-mapping, attenuation of lighting, and the effects panel are over-covered. This book is biased toward the begginer that wants to know how to exploit the most out of basic functions that are included with MAX. If you understand the basics of MAX, buying this book would be a waste of cash.

Rating:
Summary: very good Max 3 overview !
Review: This book covers a lot of material and takes you through most of the features of Max 3. After, reading the book you should really feel very comfortable with MAX and all thats left is to exercise your skills. There is only one important topic that this book doesn't cover in depth and is quite important: NURBS curves. These are the most powerful and flexible way of desigining models in max3, but they are also the most complex. Anyways since NURBS is an advanced subject, you should only consider learning them after mastering the basics. There is also one thing that you may not like about this book: Its only 700 pages, but it takes quite a while for you to read it. But I guess you can expect that, because of all the exercises the book tells you to do and all of the many many features of MAX 3 that it covers. In conculsion, this book is great for any Max3 newbie!

Rating:
Summary: Mike McReynolds is Awesome
Review: Who is Mike, well....he's the dude who did the chick on the cover of the book and some stuff inside....man that Rob Polevoi dude is pretty dope too. He is like is the bomb..seriously... I'm in his class and my mind is like totally inspired to do great stuff. I actually learned something in his class... He taught me how to make a box..and what a metanurb is...wait that's lightwave..nevermind. Well, getting back to Mike, he is like my idol.. I want to be just like him. Maybe some day if I try really hard, I can make chicks with cool hair too. -CPC

Rating:
Summary: Great start to 3dS Max
Review: You should be a bit familiar with 3dS Max to get the most out of this book, but even if you aren't, it won't take long for you to catch up. Not only does the book do a good job of demonstrating the methods by which certain effects can be achieved, it teaches how to do them properly (i.e. using a lens flare instead of a cleverly positioned omni light source). Great book for all beginner and intermediate graphics artists. More advanced users will probably not get much out of this book, however.

Rating:
Summary: Great start to 3dS Max
Review: You should be a bit familiar with 3dS Max to get the most out of this book, but even if you aren't, it won't take long for you to catch up. Not only does the book do a good job of demonstrating the methods by which certain effects can be achieved, it teaches how to do them properly (i.e. using a lens flare instead of a cleverly positioned omni light source). Great book for all beginner and intermediate graphics artists. More advanced users will probably not get much out of this book, however.