Customer Reviews

Learning Autodesk 3ds Max 2008 Foundation

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Sometimes a bit challenging to follow, but that is the fun of learning! When you finally work through it...it is great fun. The process is really good in how it slowly begins to take you through the processes of learning the ins and outs. It can be a bit frustrating in that you don't want to mess up a project step...because each tutorial leads into the next...but if it gets too bad...the accompanying DVD allows you to get back on track.

I've been teaching 3DS Max since version 7 and this book is the only 3DS Max book I have come across that actually does a good job showing the entire process of modeling, texturing, rigging, skinning, and animating a game character in Max. The last book to provide this level of detail was Professional Short Films with Autodesk 3ds Max (Graphics Series)which was published in 2006 and does an excellent job going over all the details of setting up and animating a rig by hand - it doesn't mention Biped, Motion Mixer, and Motion Capture.

So if you are looking for a book that actually gives you all the step to creating a simple character and animating it in Max, this book is for you. There are a lot of books at there that do a good job showing how to model a character such as 3ds Max Modeling for Games: Insider's Guide to Game Character, Vehicle, and Environment Modeling, but that is where almost all of them stop. For character rigging and animation, you are lucky to find a superficial tutorial about character animation crammed into a chapter of a general intro to 3DS Book or you have to suffer through one of the cryptic Autodesk Help files or tutorials.

There are some really good game character books out there, but all of them seems to be for Maya. There is definately a need for someone to write a book that addresses this process and makes it the focus of the text. The latest Learning Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 Foundation for Games just released by Autodesk stops with Modeling, so don't think that you are going to find this info there. One of my favorite books on Character Modeling and animation is still the now slightly dated Discover the Game with Alias: An In-Depth Look at Game Art Creation in Maya and Alias MotionBuilder book. It does a great job pretty much covering all the issues that a game artist would face when making a game level.

I picked this book up hoping to begin learning 3DS Max 2008. What I got was a book filled with errors that is mostly written in a "paint by numbers" style. In the first project alone, it is very easy to keep messing up, or missing steps, because the book had incorrect words, or was unclear at steps, or was just plain missing instructions. Adding to that frustration, was that the first project did not explain to you why you were doing so many of the steps "Change this to 0.5, then check this box", etc. Great, but why am I doing that?! I would instead recommend "Mastering AutoDesk Viz 2008" by Jon McFarland. It is a way better book.