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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A generous update from the 1st Edition, October 3, 2006
This review is from: Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
The author has extensively updated this industry standard since its first release six years ago, and the result is a book that should absolutely be on every Color & Light Artist's shelf. What was a very good reference is now even better, with more sage advice, clear and logical insight regarding lighting different kinds of scenes (e.g. indoor, outdoor, daytime, nighttime), more information on technologies that have become popular in recent years (such as global illumination), and the addition of complementary materials at the author's web site. I have been using the 1st Edition of this book as a required text in my rendering classes for several years, and this much anticipated new version ties in even better. Even if you already own the 1st Edition, you are likely to find this update a worthwhile purchase. I would love to see this book's sister, Digital Texturing & Painting, rise to the same level of insight and clarity.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific, the best book I've read on the topic!, May 31, 2006
This review is from: Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
This book is amazing! It opened my eyes to so many things about lighting and rendering it's as if I've had a full course in lighting design, one in rendering, and some cinematography and color theory along the way. The best part is the way it keeps giving you new ideas, from other ways to add colors with different lights to tricks you can do in compositing.
The book is brilliantly simple, clear easy-to-understand writing throughout, even when describing very technical subjects like Polynomial Texture Mapping the author manages to keep the text readable, relevant, and useful, and he has lots of good pictures of things (renders, screenshots, diagrams, and photographic examples), to help pin down issues like the specific things to look for in adjusting subsurface scattering skin shaders. I've read the book cover to cover ~ and I'm going to be keeping it around my desk for years as a reference as well!
Most of the book is not software-specific, especially in terms of lighting techniques or creating texture maps the advice will work for anyone. The book only mentions 3D Studio Max (what I use) once in a while, and only has a few screenshots of settings in Max (along with lots of references to Maya, Renderman, Mental Ray et cetera) but still the whole book was completely useful to me, actually more useful because of its content than most of the software-specific books they keep cranking out with 3D Studio Max in the title.
The lighting challenge scenes are great, you have to download them yourself (there's no CD with the book...) but it's absolutely amazing that the author himself looked at my work and gave me feedback (spot-on feedback too!) when I posted my test render on the discussion forum. I'd have bought 10 books if it I had to, to get direct interaction with a top lighting expert working at Pixar! This book deserves more than 5 stars to reflect the amazingly generous author whose support goes above and beyond just writing a terrific book.
Kudos and Congratulations for such a great book, Mr. Birn!
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading Indeed, July 8, 2006
This review is from: Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
As above, i've just finished reading the book cover to cover whilst lighting and (waiting for) renders at work and was thoroughly impressed. It covers an incredible range of topics from the very basics of lighting theory (which we can all use a reminder of every now and then!) through to some more complex ideas and concepts.
With the associated website (3drender.com) where there are numerous lighting challenges to download and particiapte in (the author himself critiques the work!) this will certainly improve your skills and also just give you a bit of nudge into looking at the world through the eyes of a 3D lighting artist.
Don't mistake me, this is not a specific piece of training material, but it is an invaluable source of reference, from the tables covering some suggested RGB values for lights to various physical properties as well. It really should be required reading for anyone vaguely interested in the lighting end of the 3D pipeline, and even for seasoned professionals it is great to have everything in one very well constructed, well written, and easy to navigate book.
Highly recommended.
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