Customer Reviews

3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (With CD-ROM) (Graphics Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book looks and reads so much like a textbook that it made me think back to my high school biology class. It's a big solid book, and walks through definitions of a lot of terms and concepts, but unfortunately it wasn't very useful or relevant to rendering 3D scenes.

I wish that more of the sections had been tied together or made relevant to 3D graphics. For example, the lengthy chapter on the anatomy of a human eye could have been copied from an encyclopedia or anatomy book, and just seemed pasted-in to this book, without leading into any conclusions or techniques related to making your own images.

Some of the most important parts of the lighting process (that I'd like to do more of in my projects!) weren't covered at all - there was nothing about matching the lighting from real-life background or combining and compositing your renders with real footage, there was nothing about casting and receiving shadows and reflections from real-world scenes, or rendering multiple layers and compositing them to build more realistic surfaces.

The actual images and sample scenes in the book were very basic - the author never moves to anything more sophisticated than lighting that same statue head and model of his desk scene, none of the images in the book are any more challenging or professional. (I give this book 2 stars to reward the author's effort, but if I were grading this book on how useful it was to me I only would have given it only 1 star, because it didn't teach anything new or useful.)

It is rare to find a single book, especially one that relates to some aspect of working with computer graphics, that covers its topic as thoroughly as this one. Too many books that I have read devote only a small and very basic section to lighting 3D scenes. Because of this, I believe many aspiring 3D artists view lighting as just that--illumination. Already this book is changing my perspective on the importance of careful consideration when lighting a scene, and to use light not only to illuminate objects but also to flavor a scene with mood and style. Rather than only teach you where and how to place lights, you will learn something of real light behavior, color theory, photography, and more, as they apply to 3D lighting.

The tutorials are well-done and not unnecessarily numerous. Although mostly in black-and-white, the images throughout the book are excellent, and the CD thankfully includes color versions of the book images as well as demos and plug-ins.

I would recommend this book to anyone, regardless of experience, especially if you have considered scene lighting to be a "final touch" more than an integral part of scene design.

I found Mr Gallardo's book extremely informative on the history, theories and science of light. Also, the light array models used in the tutorials gave me some nice insights for my own work.
Unfortunatley when I went to use the tutorials I found that the required plug-ins of the third party texture creator (Dark Tree) didn't work with 3D Max 4. The demo for the upgrade of this product wasn't available and I had to try to simulate the tutorial using Max's on material editor. I'm dissappointed that the author did not use these materials in the first place. I would also caution anyone utilizing these tutorials to have a decent computer to run them on. Some of the exercises use a lot of grouped lights along with raytracing and it can take some time to see the results.

I would like to second the Amazon Technical review. This is a fantastic book that covers everything from theory to application. For students who really want to understand the whys, whats and hows of lighting I think this book is indispensable. In fact I will be using this as a text for a lighting and materials 3D animation class that I teach.

Darkling Simulations now have their updated Max r4 plugin (Simbiont) as well as the updates for LW 6.5/7.0b and trueSpace 5.1 and are available online as a demo if you do not have Darktree 2.0. This update will make it possible to use the tutorial scenes with MAX r4.

This book should be thrown in the waste basket. I have no doubt that Mr. Gallardo knows his stuff, but he really can't explain it to an average MAX user. Majority of book was full of run-on sentences and prepositional phrases strung together. His writing style was so distracting, I had to throw the book in the waste basket to calm me down. I have the feeling that Mr. Gallardo had to fill those pages so the book will look more impressive. Don't impress me. Stop printing this book and save the forest.