Customer Reviews

LightWave 3D 8 Revealed

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

 

 

I teach a college class in LightWave, and after skimming LightWave 3D 8 Revealed, immediately ordered it for the course. True, there are no in-depth tutorials or color pictures, but I've found that beginning students need more basic exercises. You can't build elaborate models if you can't even select points, and you can't animate if you don't know how to insert keyframes. Just as one has to practice finger excercises on the piano before playing Mozart, one has to learn polygons and layers before creating masterpieces.

LightWave Revealed is crammed with simple excercises demostrating virtually every feature in LightWave, both Modeler and Layout. Accompaning each excercise is a concise explanation of what the tool does. Yet the book is only slightly over 400 pages. How can one cover all the multitude of tools in so little space? The answer is that this book is all meat. There's no pointless fluff. It packs lots of information in the pages, yet there's no sense of cramming. The pacing is easy.

Also, the pictures are some of the best I've ever seen in any graphics manual. Where some books print images that seem blotched, these are crisp and clear. They're actually slightly clearer than the images in the reference manual.

The book is divided into 13 chapters, which breaks down very neatly for a one semester course. There's no CD with sample files - you have to download those from a web site. Still, that keeps the book's price to a very reasonable level.

For some reason, though, books on 3D animation always tend to leave out something. In this case, Inverse Kinematics gets shut out. Still, the book covers so many topics that I even learned something about tools which I rarely use.

If you want descriptions of complete projects in LightWave, you'll have to look elsewhere. But for the beginning student, I haven't found a better introduction.

Nothing goes in-depth at all. I know it is intended for beginners but it's still pretty weak in my opinion. I understand the intention is to show you the path and leave the rest to you, but it barely even lets you know there is a path.

I would personally recommend one of Timothy Albee's books for learning lightwave tools from the beginning, as I have read his books as well. As a complete reference as well as slightly more in-depth training, go with Dan Ablan's Inside Lightwave series books.

I honestly feel I have wasted my money in buying this book.

I had no idea this book was really intended for Beginners to Lightwave - and I mean Absolute Beginners. The writer even admits that they have only been using Lightwave for a few months before writing this book, so anything more advanced than telling you what some of the buttons and options available refer to is beyond the scope of the book.

And it's quite misleading - for example, the amazing image of the building that is throughout the book on each chapter heading page would be impossible to create using the information this book provides - you'd need several years more experience and learning before getting to be good enough for that.

A disappointing purchase.

If you need a good tutorial on Lightwave 8, this is a good starter book. Suitable for introductory information on the capabilities of LW8.

The book is probably good for someone, who wish to do very simple things with Lightwave. I don't think this book is a good for people who are serious about 3D. Going through all the menus may be good, but it is not necessary in 3D. The book explained all menu items but failed to focus on the principles of Modelling techniques. Little was also mentioned about Animation. It is simply written, but did not help me much. Lightwave online tutorials are actually alot more helpful.

If your interested in 3D Animation for Games or Movies this series of books from Thompson Learning is the way to go. Obviously Newtek will be releasing Lightwave v. 9 soon and I'm sure Amazon will be able to provide the copy of that book also. These books are perfect for the beginning 3D artist because they explain and visualize what you need to do in all of the tutorials, as opposed to books written for veterans which assume the reader knows where everything is located.