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Summary: This book is good to eat.
Review: I served this book with a little cream chowder and it simply made our evening. Splendid.
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Summary: This was the answer to my prayers
Review: I'd been struggling with 3D lighting for quite a while and was never happy with the results. When I got Jeremy Birn's new book, I read/skimmed it cover to cover, then went back and closely read the chapters most pertinent to my situation, sat down at the computer and after about 10 minutes of experimentation got the results which had eluded me for so long. This is a great book! Very clear, very detailed, yet easy to understand.
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Summary: As a beginner I have found this most helpful
Review: I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and this book has done more to clear up technical issues about light and color than anything else I've seen. The straight dope, no fluff and plain language, everything explained from the ground up, but it never reads like a beginner's book. Highly recommended.
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Summary: As a beginner I have found this most helpful
Review: I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and this book has done more to clear up technical issues about light and color than anything else I've seen. The straight dope, no fluff and plain language, everything explained from the ground up, but it never reads like a beginner's book. Highly recommended.
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Summary: One of the best "art books" I've encountered.
Review: If you aspire to be a 3D artist (3D modeling, animation, rendering), and you've never had traditional training in drawing or photography, I highly recommend that you study this book. It covers many important topics that you may have missed out on. This book includes color theory, light (and shadow) behaviors, composition and many other topics that are vital to all forms of art, including 3D computer art.The author compares computer-world aspects of lighting and rendering to their real-world equivalents and demonstrates that a photographer's tip can be a 3D artist's tip (and visa versa). This makes the book more than just an excellent computer 3D rendering book; this book is also a great addition to any photographer's bookshelf. Each topic is wonderfully illustrated with color images that depict exactly what is being discussed; clearly and without distraction. For example, you can see for yourself what the different properties, capabilities and shadow types are among point lights, area lights, spotlights and so forth without having to wade through technical jargon or executing tests with your 3D software. These types of lights are demonstrated on simple spheres, on a flat surface, instead of full 3D scenes, allowing the reader to see the vital details quickly instead of being forced to study the image and draw conclusions. The author guides you through selecting the most effective light type, the number of light sources to use and where the lights should be placed into your scene, depending on what your objectives are and how much time you have to render the final work. This makes the book a great guide to have on hand during the setup process of your 3D scenes. For example: if you like the appearance of global illumination or radiosity but do not have the time to render your work with those time-consuming advanced features, there are ways of simulating the results with the standard features. Other topics such as post processing, compositing, reflection, caustics, global illumination, and exposure are also clearly explained and illustrated. The book is also software-agnostic. Meaning, topics and techniques in the book are applicable to practically all 3D software packages (Lightwave, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Carrara, etc). The author also explains some of the differences between the popular software packages to make applying the text to your software easier (for example, different software packages have different names for the same things). Overall, I highly recommend this book for artists of 3D computer rendering and photography. I can think of no downsides to this book except maybe that I would not mind it being longer. However, "short" sometimes equals "sweet" and that may be the beauty of this book. It is not a five hundred page technical manual; it's a well paced, excellently illustrated, and easy to read handbook for two important topics that have many interesting facets. One note of caution: if you are expecting a "recipe book" or "perfect lighting in five simple steps" you may be disappointed (and I feel that such instant recipe books are not really as helpful to artists seeking to fulfill their own visions). This is an art book in the sense that it tries to teach you how to look at the world and to reproduce what you see with every detail. It's about learning how things look and why; not a set of steps to produce a limited set of results. I'm off now to go get the companion book "Texturing and Painting."
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Summary: The Method Behind Success
Review: If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of a consistent workflow to 3d illumination, this is the book to have. Although chapter about compositing is shallow, the basics are well covered. A nice acquisition to your library!
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Summary: How to SEE the light and make your world look real!
Review: If you're a hobby 3D graphhics artist or thinking of entering into the world of computer graphics, then this book is an essential resource to give you that realism factor often missing in artists works seen today. The Book is superbly presented in glossy paper format with excellently reproduced colour images that generously fill the book as examples of how to achieve the right lighting for that perfect shot you were trying to setup but till now had no idea of how to achieve it. This volume is a how to for novice and advanced artist alike, brilliantly guiding you through the ins and outs of rendering the most perfectly realisticly shaded 3D image possible. Chapters guide you through Lighting workflow, three point lighting, Shadows (a must),Qualities of light, Colour, Exposure, Composition and staging (worth the price of the book alone), Materials and rendering algorithms(tips to turn a good work into a masterpiece)and Compositing(the absolute icing on the cake). There is a Lot one can learn from this volume and dare I say that it has to be if not the best then one of the very best presentations on this topic I've ever had the good fortune to study from.
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Summary: Amazing - The Most Useful, In-Depth CG Book I've Bought
Review: Jeremy Birn puts everything together in one book that you need to produce professional quality photo-real renderings. Overall the skill-level is fairly advanced and non-condescending - although the beginning of each section seems to start with basic definitions that most readers probably already know, most sections pick up to a more professional level a few pages later and strike a good balance between being useful and being readable. I'd say that about 10% of the contents of this book are unique "golden nuggets" - original tips and explanations that I hadn't seen anywhere else - stuff that doesn't appear in software manuals, is skipped in other books, and is worth the price of the book by itself (thanks to Mr. Birn for a new approach to making shadows-only lights, and a technique luminance-equalizing tiling maps I was just using today!). 30% of the info in this book is what you'd expect to find in any good cinematography text, only Birn explains it all along with useful translations into 3D- this is the main guts of the book, and it's beautifully executed. Maybe another 30% is art theory, color theory, and other tips on what makes a better-looking final rendering - any good artist should know this stuff, and this is one of the best-written overviews of the material I've seen. Another 30% is info from the computer science, image processing, compositing techniques and other technical info - here the book really shines for explaining & illustrating advanced algorithms in non-nerdy terms. Web sites that discuss some of the topics the book covers (such as Photon Mapping as an alternative to conventional Radiosity) require really hardcore math, whereas Birn explains it all clearly with production-oriented pros and cons of the techniques. This book is a real find - one of the few books that has actually improved my 3D work in meaningful ways. I highly recommend it, and extend my thanks to Jeremy Birn for sharing his knowledge with other artists.
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Summary: phenomenally clear
Review: Jeremy says his book is for the 3-D artist, but everyone I'm showing it to on the technical side (programmers, researchers, etc.) is having a ball with it too. The explanations are so clear, and the illustrations are so visually compelling that you can't help but learn from it. I flipped through this one up in a bookstore, and in five pages I knew I wanted to buy it. (That really doesn't happen very often.) Even if you know everything in this book already (I didn't), it would be great to have around to explain a technique to someone else. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Excellent theory
Review: Overall excellent.
This book describe many real-life and digital concepts regarding lighting. When describing a real-like concept, the author makes comparisons with 3D lighting. He gives tips how to apply some of these concepts into a 3D scene, and some good workaround for problems oftenly encoutered in 3D lighting. The explanations are clear, very well illustrated. The book structure is well designed.
What is also interesting is that the author covers texturing and compositing. Not that much, but give some tips to make good maps and renders.
However, since this book is not limited to a specific software, the author does not go deeply into practical applications. After learning the theory, the reader has to learn by himself. The basics of this book are definitely great, but there is a slight lack of tutorials. The author limits himself to tips and things to observe. I know that no two scenes are identical, but more specific exercises would have been a good plus.
Still, it remains an excellent theory book, clear and well written.
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