Customer Reviews

Cinema 4D 9/9.1 Handbook (Charles River Media Graphics)

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

 

 

Aimed at the beginner through intermediate user, this book uses a series of tutorials to lead you through the design and implementation of several projects using Maxon's Cinema 4D. Through these projects, most of the features of the program are illustrated and the reader quickly understands what the program is all about.

To be sure, Cinema 4D has so many features and capabilities that they cannot all be covered in a book even twice this size. Instead the book attempts to teach the core, fundamental capablilities of the program and leave the reader to experiment with the other features by himself.

The CD of the book is more complete than usual. It has a Demo version of the program for both Mac and PC. It has all the images used in the book. There are some extra tutorials that come from earlier versions of the book. These files can (mostly) be downloaded from the Maxon web site, but having them here on a CD is a lot faster and more convenient than downloading.

I really like the writing style that the authors use, for me it comes across as clean, easy and yet conveys the information I wanted.

I have read this book from cover to cover. I was asked by CreativeCow.net to write a review for it. You can check out the review there. Suffice it to say, this is by far one of the best books I've ever read covering a 3D app; in this case, Cinema 4D. If you're just starting to get your feet wet in Cinema 4D, then this is THE book for you. As the above reviewer pointed out, the accompanying CD comes with a demo as well as all the images from the book in full color. So, if you can't make out the details from the picture in the book, you will find a clear, full color version of the same image on the CD. The books is intended for beginners and is extremely well written to meet your needs as a beginner. Of special note, is the coverage of character modeling, boning, skinning and animation. The coverage is quite extensive and will enable you to create a complete and fully-animatable character. I could not recommend a better book for beginning Cinema 4D users then this one.

This book, like Tony Alley's "3D Modeling with Cinema 4D R9" is geared towards beginners. Unlike Tony Alley's book, some of the lessons are disorganized and do not clearly outline an approach to modeling, animation, lighting, or creating materials. The examples are fairly good in the beginning of the book, but towards the end, the author has individual paragraphs for each animation tool but never clearly describes how to use them. By attempting to cover so much material, the author leaves out details that gives one a somewhat muddy understanding of the program.

This book has great tutorials on beginning to model and good descriptions of the functions of Cinema 4-D through those tutorials. It does leave some features/buttons out. However, the walkthrough practice modeling it gives you, knowledge of basic buttons and the knowledge of how to go about exploring the rest of the functions, as well as the fact the tutorials are easy to follow, easily makes up for it not being a modeling dictionary. If you're just starting modeling or just want a layout for the basic features of Cinema 4-D, I highly recommend this book.

I took a class on maya in college a year ago, spend most of my time in maya. When I received a full copy of cinema 4d I thought ill give it a world & see what the fuss is about.
This book is pretty simple, I was amazed at how simple 3d can be. As a Maya user, there is no node based system, no user control, no history in cinema that iv come to know in maya.
cinema turns 3d from a high end user to a hobby. some may find this strange, im one of those that want that level of control maya has to offer however for anyone just starting out who doesn't want to know the why behind modeling & whats really going on then cinema 4d is your flame & this book will guide you in a world of fun.

The projects are ok, short & to the point, you get a well coverage of modeling, animation, rigging, rendering even cloth & toon. after browsing the book I must say it would take anyone a month to learn cinema & another month to master cinema using what you learn in this book which is unheard of in Maya. I highly enjoyed this book, found it less detailed keeping the reader more on skill then brainy concepts that make you feel as if you just earned a P.H.D. If you buy this book, congrats!

This book makes learning Cinema 4D easy. The book has a good flow to it, and continually builds upon itself to help you remember the basics.

As a fan of two previous versions of the C4d Handbook I looked forward to working through the tutorials in the v9/9.1 book. The enclosed CD (necessary for the tutorials) refused to load and/or allow its files to be copied for use in Cinema 4D. I returned the CD to the publisher with explanation and received a new CD. Same problem. Returned it and got a third CD. Same problem. Very frustrating. The book looks well written as usual. Too bad it is usless to me.