Customer Reviews

Lightwave 3d Applied: Version 5.6

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an excellent book for any lightwave animator or even beginners. I concider it one of the best on the subject. Why? Because it gives all the steps you need to complete the tutorials, which are very detailed. It is one of the few books of it's kind without multiple errors that cause you to have to back-up and redo work, thereby losing valuable time. The tutorial on ocean surfacing alone makes the book well worth having! I like Dave and the other authors easy flowing writing style. I recommend it without reserve!

Peter Davis Multimedia Instuctor

My LightWave 3D instructor uses LightWave Applied as his official textbook and I can see why. Having looked at all the LightWave books and magazines, I have found LightWave Applied to be the best. I say this because the step by step instructions not only helped me (and our instructor) to accomplish projects without problems, but the authors also went into some of the reasoning for the steps which gave me better insight into what I was doing. Almost as impressive as the book is the CD-ROM. I couldn't believe that most of Dave Jerrard's past Newtekniques tutorials were included on the CD-ROM along with large versions of all the figures that appeared in his columns. It was also a surprise to see some other new tutorials on the CD-ROM (plus objects!). I'm very impressed with this book, CD-ROM, and its strong learning curve that is easy to follow and understand. If I could give it more than five stars I would. Much more. Like my LightWave instructor, I would highly recommend this book. Thank you Dave, Scott, and Joe. Please write more!

Between so few online tutorials and books that were poorly edited I had lost hope. Spectacular results are obtained by those with only a minimum of experience on the software. The castle, while work intensive is spectacular and highly tweakable to your own likes and the capsule landing covers advanced topics with an ease I haven not yet found. Some errors are easily caught if you have been paying attention throughout the book. Highly recommended and enthusiastically awaiting another with more advanced tutorials. Excellant work.

There ain`t really much to say about this book than that it is very helful and you lern difficult tecniques by going throught cool tutorials. Fun and great book. If you have Lightwave and cant understand it, then dont resell it or let it lay around and use space but buy this book! Lightwave was not cool for me before I got this book.

I had no problems going through any of the tutorials using Lightwave 5.6. I agree with the majority here, it is a great book worth every penny. Five stars all the way!!!

This is one of the best set of tutorials you can find. This book is geared to Lightwave 5.6 but is very useful if you use Inspire or LW 6.5. This book contains a tutorial on building a castle that would be a book unto itself! Be forwarned that if you are using Inspire you may have to improvise with some of the tutorials, as they call for numeric functions or plug-ins that are not present in Inspire. FYI, after seeing the missing functionality of Inspire, I forked over the cash for LW 6.5 and haven't regretted it!

I own quite a library of graphics books and this is by far the best and most practical book ever. I don't know what the person from Georgia is refering to about needing plug-ins. All the plug-ins used in the text are included in Lightwave (5.6). Want to do photorealistic animation of ocean? It's in there. Want to do a photorealistic animation of a fountain using particle storm-lite? It's in there. Want to render various gems and metals photorealistic? Its in there! I'm developing an adventure game and this book has helped my modeling immensely.

This book is THE book to have if you are a non-professional and want to improve your skills in Lightwave. The modelling may seem simple, but it is the application over a full project that really sets this book apart. Added to that, you get an on-line forum where the authors are available for feed-back, (which they are very prompt at doing so). The cover CD which doesn't give you all the items you need to build the projects, what's that you say? - There is the point of the book, no short cuts, build, texture with supplied maps, light the scene, study sample images..LEARN!

I don't think I can ever say how much this book has helped me - buy it (even if you have to sell your granny to do so).

Inside Lightwave 3D has some of the best explained tutorials I have read. Having had frustrating experiences with more tutorials than not, I was pleased at the level of detail and general accuracy of information and details. I have withheld the 5 star rating only because I would have liked more explanation of settings (okay, I set FastFresnel to 500%, 630 nm, but what does tweaking those settings give me?) to get desired effects. In trying to apply techniques I picked up in the tutorials, I found unintended "features" in my animations from using some settings... and didn't know enough about the options for plug-ins to know best what to tweak to fix problem (e.g. brightening stars on the limb of the Earth as camera angle changes). But a fine book never the less and certainly one of the better ones available on 3-D animation and modeling.

Great book, not only for beginners, but for the experienced on too. I had some experince with other 3d packages, and this book put me right on track to work with lightwave. The tutorials are well written and the explanantion of not only the concept, but the way the authors got the concept are just perfect. I've recomended it to everyone who asked me about A good lightwave book. A must have for begginers and intermediates alike.