Customer Reviews

LightWave Power Guide: The Definitive Guide to LightWave's Hidden Power, with CD-ROM (Inside)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Dan Ablan's LightWave Power Guide was the first guide to the software powerhouse Lightwave 3D that I have purchased. The book was intended for version 5.0 of the software, thus it is a little outdated for those who are looking for a book that covers the latest version, 6.0. However, what the book covers applies to even the latest versions of Lightwave.

While the cover looks neat and the book is accompanied by a CD-ROM (filled with tutorial examples, some basic textures, plug-in trials, and example avi movies), the book really did somewhat disappoint me - in that it led me to believe that it was intended for both beginners and professionals. I found that this book did not help me to advance my skill very much, but rather was a well-written overview of the basic features (and some not-so-basic) of Lightwave 3D.

I would only recommend this book for beginners - especially those who have had no previous experience with any other 3D animation software. For them, this book will be a valuable resource; for me, it just takes up space on the shelf.

When I entered LW3d for the first time I realised that I was going to need some serious help with understanding this rather complex animationsystem. And this book certainly does the job. Ablan takes you through every dialogbox and describes every single function in a easy way. He'll teach you everything between basic Metanurbing to morphing facial expressions and matte compositing. this book gives you the basic knowledge needed to produce high-end animations. Giving this book some time and practise, you will really learn how to master the Power of LightWave.

I bought this book after reading the 5 star reviews, and have to admit to being dissappointed with it. Most of the tutorials are for absolute beginners, and the one tutorial I was interested in, the tornado animation, is very badly presented. If you follow this tutorial by the book, you will end up in a mess, which is because the author neglects to mention certain things like 'position your goal null below the last bone', otherwise leaving it where the author leaves it will distort your tornado out of all recognition. There are spelling mistakes at the crucial surface info like 'smoothing on, amount=0.0?? The picture quality in the book is very poor, especially if you want to compare your work with a tutorial. Captions under the pictures saying things like 'the object with the correct polygons selected' are just plain grey all over. I felt I'd wasted my money with this book.

I've looked around for a while to find a good LightWave book because I knew very little about the program when I received it. When I read this book I was shocked. I loved it from cover to cover and have got though it several times. It is good for both beginners and advanced users.

THIS BOOK IS FOR 5.0 AND NOT 5.5, I was disappointed. if you still use 5.0 it's OK, very basic. It's perfect for the user who is just starting out or, "lost the user manual"

I feel this book is worth its weight in gold. The lessons are easy to understand and tutorials are easy to follow. The results are identical to the tutorials. I found the book a great source for explaining terms and key shorts. This book is a must have for lightwave beginners. This book was recomended to me by an instructor in my Virtual Reality course. It was every bit as good as he said it was

There is a great temptation when writing books about programs as complex as Lightwave to go overboard, explain every minescule in tedious depth, or, even worse, breeze over topics with a God like authority. This book is neither. It is a book that you can read to your kids as a bedtime story, flowing cleanly from one topic to the next and covering ground through the use of worked examples. Even the numeric values are tabulated to show exactly what your should be doing! The book lies clearly in three sections, one as an overview of Lightwave, outlining what each menu does, how to use it etc. The second, and the largest, slowly builds up your Layout and Modeller skills through the use of many 'real life' example. Nothing to my mind is missed and the use of these is highly recommended. How to go about setting up your own 'Render Business' is covered in the third section and this is invaluable in my opinion, dealing with deadlines, pro/fun and all the other lovely things that need to be considered. In my opinion, this book covers a wide spectrum users of Lightwave. There are those, (like I used to be!) who had just started 'messing about'. They have the package, have and idea, and know how to operate a Windows environment. However, now as a 'competant Slave To The 'Wave', I am still working through the examples, and still using it continually as reference. There is still a lot in there left to learn, in particular the 'gee-whiz!' examples at the end! If you want a 'this is how to do kewl stuff' book, that will grow with you and won't treat you like a complete nonce, add this to your basket!

This is old, but I enjoyed it back then. Dan is a great teacher and author. Check out new titles from him.

It was the first book I bought from the Lightwave book series, the book from wich I learned about the complicated LW package. It tells you everything you want to know about Modeler and Layout, Plug-ins, how to use them and - very important - from where to get those plugins. Thanks Dan! I really learned to "walk" for the second time!

Could not recommend this book to anybody.

Being experienced 3d animator and using Softimage and 3Dmax for many years, was able to use this book with the big DIFFICULTIES! A lot of useless information for the book which claims it would introduce you into the new software....what for I need to know the Authors' ideas about "how to write bills to the clients"?...I would prefer to have more info about the Modeler...

For my opinion, there is luck of logic in the structure - both of the book and the CD.

NOT WORTH its money :-(