Customer Reviews

Building a Digital Human (Graphics Series) (Charles River Media Graphics)

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This book is ideal for someone like me who has built a few human models before, but is looking for details in how to work smarter and better, but not harder and longer. This book truly covers every aspect of this process. Everything, that is except sexual organs. Minor details as tedious as eyelashes are covered if you need them. This book is advanced however, so your are best to know your 3d program well, your paint program well, and perhaps have modeled a few figures already in your past. If you meet those 3 requirements, then you should certainly get a wealth of information out of this manual. The whole book is quality, but the last 75 pages or so are gold in that they explain powerful methods for manufacturing a wide variety of characters based souly on the model you build in the first 2/3 of the book. Using these techniques allows an artist to spend their time building one quality base model, and in turn, spawn numerous unique variations off of it essentially allowing you to build 10 distinct models in the time it would take you to model 2-3 from scratch. Use the tools wisely, change some textures here and there, and you can quickly build a stable of wildly different characters in hours or days compared to weeks or even months. Finally, and probably the most important, is the anatomy lessons you learn along the way of building the model named Frank. This is probably a 3d book that will stand the test of time for a while. Many of the anatomy and concept lessons will not change that much any time soon if ever, so after you read it, using it as a reference for the next many years is probably a wise move. If you are just starting out in 3d, then your better off with something else because you will probably get lost and confused. If you are at least intermediate with 3d, then you should get this book no matter which of the more well known 3d programs you use!

If you are in organic modeling this book is for you. This is really great book. It's not for begginers it's more advanced. Here you have very nice tutorial how to model head, body (with hand, fingers etc.), hair and here you have one amazing thing "how to transform you male model to female".

Very very good book.

I used this as a class textbook and it worked fairly well. This is not a single program book so this will work well with whatever program you model with. Although, depending on what you model with, depends on if you need to go out and find plug-ins that will do what he does. The book is really good going through step by step. Although there are some occasions where he leaps forwards ahead with really telling you what to do. Also, sometimes when he gives instructions, there aren't any images to go along with them, so you have to end up guessing what to do.

This is modeling for realism/cinematics and if you want to use this book to model in-game characters, you are out of luck. The was he teaches you to model is extremely high poly (especially in the head). The CD doesn't do much for you, it mainly just has naked pictures of the guy he models on it so you can copy exactly what he does. The book does give good information on the differences between modeling men and women, although it is fairly brief. He does go into UV mapping pretty good as well as modeling hair. The book doesn't, however, go into modeling clothing fairly well, just a short chapter. The book also doesn't even mention rigging, which I think is a crucial part in character modeling.

If you want to learn how to model a detailed digital human,this is THE book for you! You start out with totally empty viewports,and if you follow the book you'll end up having created a model with an incredible amount of detail.

The author explains in great detail the process of modelling every body part (head,neck,arms,hands,legs,feet and torso) with anatomical references where they're most important.

I wanted a book which I could use as a definitive guide to model a detailed and anatomically correct human body or body part,and I'll look no further when I have to do so. It's also got a clever chapter about modifying the same model to create very different ones, and a good chapter about texturing and UVW unwrapping. Finally, it refers to cloth and hair (somewhat briefly) and,no,it DOESN'T cover rigging. But it does cover, extremely well, human modelling, which is what mr.Brilliant had set out to do,I assume. Very very good!

Given that you are already familiar with some type of modeling software, this book is the best resource you could have! The non-software specific approach of the book keeps it focused on the concepts of creating a good model rather than the user interface. Every detail of the body is covered with step-by-step diagrams, and a lot of it focuses on creating a topology that is animatable and will subdivide correctly (ie the mesh is mostly in quads). It also covers texturing, rigging, facial animation, both modeled and simulated hair, and simple clothing. The book discusses anatomy to the extent that it is needed to create a realistic model, and uses those concepts to demonstrate how the male model you create can be changed into a female, or into a fantasy character that looks completely different.

One thing that did make it a little difficult to use was that in the screenshots, the mesh was transparent and therefore you couldn't tell whether vertices were at the front or the back of the model. More screenshots with an opaque mesh would have made it easier to see the topology.

Overall, the explanations are concise and makes the task seem efficient, easy, and fun.

This book is great for the self taught person with significant insignificant questions. In completing this book, all those questions answer themselves. None of that "cutsie" just great tutorial. Instruction is easily to understand and follow. I've gone through the book a couple of times and discovered something new each time. When I finished with this book, I knew what I was doing and why.

Money well spent on this book.