3ds Max 6 Animation and Visual Effects Techniques (Graphics Series)

Rating:
Summary: Money Well Spent
Review: I love this book! It makes sense of things in 3ds Max that I couldn't quite grasp before. I'm finally getting over the learning curve for lots of stuff in Max! Ya, this book is was made for more experienced people but I'm mostly a novice and it all seems to make perfect sense for me. I would have to recommend this book for anyone who likes animation and modeling.

Rating:
Summary: Money Well Spent
Review: I love this book! It makes sense of things in 3ds Max that I couldn't quite grasp before. I'm finally getting over the learning curve for lots of stuff in Max! Ya, this book is was made for more experienced people but I'm mostly a novice and it all seems to make perfect sense for me. I would have to recommend this book for anyone who likes animation and modeling.

Rating:
Summary: Worst looking renders I've seen in a published tome
Review: I'm stunned that the author claims to have success in this industry given the absolutely horrible work he passes off as being professional in quality. I'm very serious that I have not seen such poor quality in ANY other book. I teach 3D and have seen much better work from novice students. My only conclusion is that the author completely lacks the capacity to be self-critical of his own work given that he obviously believes his film-in-progress merits serious consideration. Do not be misled into thinking that any of the work shown in this book would be acceptable commercially.

Rating:
Summary: A great book if you aspire to make cheesey renderings and FX
Review: This book actually told me how to build an entire scene, including the characters and buildings. It was fun and informative. Exactly what I was looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Good info I couldn't find elsewhere
Review: This book actually told me how to build an entire scene, including the characters and buildings. It was fun and informative. Exactly what I was looking for.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible Book
Review: This book misses a lot of what it teaches by not including much of what you see in the book (models, etc....), I agree with most of the other reviews here, I have this book that is why I do not recommend it, better get the book by Barrett Fox on 3DSMax6 on how to complete an animation project. That is a great book.

Rating:
Summary: A great book if you aspire to make cheesey renderings and FX
Review: This book presents a good overview of the CG industry, with a few topics I've not found elsewhere. However, it is discouraging to work through a book that is filled with cheesey looking renderings. That's right, horrible. I don't mean to flame or be destructive in my criticism, but if you could only see the color plates contained in this book, you would treat the author with skepticism at best. I still can't understand how someone who obviously knows the tools he uses very well, i.e. MAX and Combustion, can turn out such B-rated models and renderings. This book is a good example that no matter how much technical knowledge you have, computer software, no matter how advanced, will never make up for an utter lack of artistic talent. Sanford Kennedy is very technically knowledgeable but his artistic skills are virtually noexistant. Try checking his website for an example of the 'great' renderings you can aspire to if you buy this book. 90% of the pages aren't even up, or have been under construction since 2001. www.sanfordkennedy.com

Rating:
Summary: I learned so much from this book
Review: This book was indespensible for me. I didn't have a handle on this material before I picked up Mr. Kennedy's book but his clear teaching style really helped me through it. All the tutorials and animations were very helpful and related directly to the text. I was pretty pessimistic that I could get a solid handle on this software before I bought the book, but now I am feeling pretty good about it. I would reccommend the book highly.

Rating:
Summary: Appalling...
Review: This is appalling, the models are terrible, the animation amateurish, and the texturing ugly (horrible misuse of procedural textures). Avoid if you can, there are many fine books on Max, this is NOT one of them.

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: Up-to-date sprung to my mind when I skipped through this book. It follows the paradigm of building a short animated film from scratch using all the latest features of 3ds Max 5.1 and Character Studio 4. It even has a chapter devoted to Combustion 2.1. Some of the chapters I was most impressed with were the human body modelling chapters. Finally someone has added a FULL tutorial on how to model a human body from scratch! The effects chapters are amazing too, thick, hollywood explosion techniques! Woohoo! I would say this book is aimed for someone who has used Max for quite sometime and knows a little about modelling. But I recommend this book to anyone that has Max!