Customer Reviews

Bryce 4 f/x and design: Discover What's Behind the Coolest Effects from a Respected Bryce Professional

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

 

 

This is the sort of computer book that gives computer books a bad name. Most of it is a (sub-par) rehash of the user's guide that comes with Bryce4. A whole chapter is given to what EACH of the supplied textures looks like. Jeez! Give me a break! It's just obvious filler. But, this chapter is one of the highlights. Wait until you check out the color "gallery". To say that most of the gallery images are amatuerish is to give amatuers a bad name. They're just awful. If this is the kind of work we'll learn to produce by reading this book, then I have one word of advice: RUN!

I have a real problem that I have been aching to get fixed and that is....

In the Bryce 4 F/x book on Page 312 is a tutorial about making a flying device fly. It is called "Wild Ride" (chapter 7)

I viewed the quicktime video which displays the flying device turning corners while flying.

The first thing that the author tell me is to import is the"Between 8 and Mobius Ribbon Path" in the document. That lets the flying device move along a path. The path is a figure 8 type pattern, but when ever I try to get the flying device (a kind of an eggshell with a hole in it) to turn the corners, it won't.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why I can't make the flying device turn so I can set the animation further along the path. It mentions simply to drag the flying device to were you start. But you are supposed to set two key frames I believe, one to start and the other at the finish. So I try to follow all the instructions to the letter of the law but the darn flying eggshell will under no circumstances obey my command to turn around the bend of the figure eight type corners. The whole figure eight Mobius ribbon path turns with with flying eggshell:(.

Because the instructions in the book are not clear I can't get both seperated were one is independant of the other so I can move the eggshell seperately.

In other words, this book is filled with areas were he leaves out key steps in order for one to do the projects. I am have not gone over all the tutorials, but I find that this book is not a real great step by step "learn" type book!

I bought one of his other books and I found it to be some what the same way. there is some neat drawings of bugs etc. I don't feel it would be right for me to knock his artistic talent. But I craaaaaaaaaaaaave a well written (with nice pics) book on things I love to learn. And I swear, I believe this book does not deliver this. This is coming from a newbie at animation. But I believe I know a good tutorial type book when I see one. One such example is Adobe's Classroom in a Book. I bought the Premiere 5.1 book and it delivers big time. Øf course this is coming from a newbie at that as well.

But never-the -less, you get a feel for a good book. I just hope somebody that will be writing a book on Bryce well glean out something of what I am saying. Because it is so true, beginners NEED good books to learn from! Step by step tuorials with plenty of photo's and images, .mov's of what they are trying to get across. They shouldn't leave out steps, that is vital to the life and blood of a good tutorial book. Ever single step should be accounted for,. O how I crave a good tutorial book! Calling all Bryce 4 writers! We need you!

William Furner

I bought this book in Australia, so it WAS expensive. I should have ordered it through amazon.com ...But, it's too late to worry about that.

My review:

1. Too many silly pictures.

2. Too wordy.

3. Too little on "tips and tricks"

To be fair, the silly pictures are there to show you the capability of Bryce. Just like those steak knife adverts showing a guy cutting tin boxes and shoes with the knives, these pictures (I agree with the reviewer who said the graphics were hideous. They really are!) serve their purpose well. You don't cut tin boxes with steak knives and you wouldn't use Bryce to create stupid pictures like these. I can't wait to read Kitchens' yet-to-arrive book.

Overall comment? Save your money! RTFM!

There is not much to this book. I supposed someone who has never used Bryce could find some use, but you can pretty much figure out all of this books lessons and examples just by playing around with the program. This is not a book I would recommend buying.

Once bitten, twice shy: after making the mistake of purchasing the Shamm-Man's previous book on Bryce 3D and really regretting wasting my money ...I took a good close look at his newest book to see how bad THIS one could be...I wasn't dissapointed. More of the same as last time: lame tutorials, lame "examples" so cheesy that they could easily turn a novice interested in Bryce *away* from trying it it all. I wish I could give this book *no* stars as a rating....

Save your money: there are MUCH better free tutorials on Bryce usage on the web.

I'm afraid the only part of the book that I found any use for was the part not written by Shamms Mortier. I'm talking about the section where various artists comment on how they created the pictures in the colour plates section. Unfortunately even this section is mostly made up of pics by the author, and I'm afraid I do not share his tastes in colour, among other things.

I have often noticed how people will look everywhere for information on a software, except where they should start: the manual. The Bryce 4 manual is certainly not perfect and there are a lot of advanced features that are not covered, but it is a great introduction to Bryce and 3D in general. You won't find anything in this book that you cannot find in the Bryce manual, except for the occasional mistake.

Ignore this book. Buy the Susan Kitchens book (published 31 October 2000) instead. I haven't yet seen Susan's book, but I'm still using her Real World Bryce 2. Mortier's book is supporting a broken table leg.

This book was a waste of money. Not only were the tips and tricks vague and largely incorrect, judging from the Authors images, he did NOT spend any time learning this program. He did, however, manage to acquire images from the Bryce list from some of the better Artists. Personally, if I had been employed with Metacreations, I would have paid him NOT to publish this book. Save your money, buy Susan Kitchens book

While I have found the book to be quite excellent (very impressive even at first skimming), my disappointment came with the Appendix. Here it claims that there is an update to Bryce 4.0 to 4.1. MetaCreations does not have an update to 4.1. I confirmed this with them. Other than that, I think that the advanced beginner and the more experienced will be able to get something out of the book (or at least off the CD-ROM--objects, textures, materials, etc.) Enjoy Brycers!

I see many people have put this book down. I have had to wonder if they were expecting a beginning guide or tutorial. I got exactly what I was expecting out of this book. That was a better understading of Bryce 4 and tips and tricks that I was unaware of.