Customer Reviews

3D Studio Max F/X: Creating Hollywood-Style Special Effects

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Die hard internet junkies may recognize Bell's name from the 3D Studio mail lists and newsgroups, and already know that he is funny, helpful, and incredibly knowledgeable about 3D Studio. For those who haven't seen him anywhere on the internet, you're in for a treat.

While this book is definitely not a "Newbie's Guide to MAX", it will help anyone with the fundamentals of MAX down into making the ordinary scenes look incredible.

Lighting and scene layout are given thorough treatment throughout the text giving you the foundational elements for doing any serious 3D scene work.

Jon covers lasers, outer space effects, warp (or hyperspace effect, as Jon says, it depends on your religion),explosion, shields, underwater caustic effects, and space warp concepts.

A CD accompanying the book contains all the models, textures, and animations used in the book, and some to spare.

A final plus, is the addition of numerous internet resources conataining information about 3D Studio MAX.

Want to blow up your starships underwater while they try to jump into warp? You need this book

This book shows new ways of building 3D effects. It opened my eyes to a hole new way of using MAX that comes to use in all kinds of projects. If you allready know how to use the max, this book gives you a little extra, that other books does not. This is an extra book, that supliment the inside collection greatly.

I have been interested in 3D graphics, and especially 3D Studio Max, for a few months now. Jon Bell assumes that you already know your way around Max, so this book would be difficult for people who are new to the program to understand.

I myself was amazed at what was possible with Max after reading this book. The CD Rom that is included with the book comes with the cinemas created in the tutorials, along with many texture maps, and other goodies.

If you are willing to read through this heafty book, you will gain valuble Max Skills that can be applied to many other scenes besides just space and underwater scenes. You'll have fun with this book!!

This book is definately a book that will give you a spark of imagination. It will also tell you how to put on the screen. This book is a major asset to my Graphics collection and definately worth the money. Buy it and you won't be dissapointed!!

This book was very good at pin-pointing very useful special effects, from underwater effects to space. Laid out very logically, this book easily steps you through what had to be hundreds of trial and error hours experimenting and tweaking. It generalizes in all the right places. Thanks go to the Author for reaching back to the rest of us and making it fun.

Although slightly longwinded in some areas, this is the only book on 3DSMAX, that I've read, and come away with a little more knowledge. It actually has ideas in it, and some practical ways of applying them to animations. It's more than just a glorified sixty dollar advertisement for the wonderful features of 3dsMAX. Probably the only book so far that I would actually recommend buying.

The tutorial are ver well organized. The models used in the examples are a little complex

This was the second book that I had ever picked up on 3D Max, and I'm glad I did! This book dosen't have the technical overview of Max, but a number of tutorials that walk users through on the creation of some cool special effects. This book is a must have for anyone trying to get a grip on special effects in Max. Truly satisfied!
Matthew Mascheri

Not as much info in this as the size and price indicates. While it contains some interesting effects tutorials, there are a lot or repetitive sequences. A couple of the step by step instructions don't quite work as described and demonstrated by the CD-ROM .AVI. The combustion plug-in can be acquired for free in many areas on the Internet.

Jon Bell is proberbly an exelent 3D modeller/animator, but this book is far from the quality of Inside 3D Studio Max. The tutorials are a bit oldfasioned, and the book is way to thick compared to the information in it.