Customer Reviews

Modeling a Character in 3DS Max

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I purchased this book after skimming it over in a local store. I wish I had taken a closer look at it. I just came off a 2 week break from work and school. During my break I decided to work on a new model and following along with Mr. Steed's book. This turned out to be frustration hell. The methods in his book are fine if you are into wasting alot of time. Boolean and splines to make a simple character like the one in his book actually doubles your work. You wind up wasting more time cleaning up the errors from following his tutorial. Why he didn't demonstrate the way MOST people in the industry model, which is box modeling, is beyond me. He basicly tries to reinvent the wheel. I found much better tutorials for FREE on the web. Save yourself from learning bad modeling techniques. I happen to also know that Paul Steed DOES NOT model the way presented in the book. This should raise a red flag or two.

If you're new to character modelling and have an entry-level grasp of the 3D Studio Max interface this book was designed for you, without a doubt. If you're more advanced you will very likely get a lot out of it as well, as it's a medley of different techniques and riddled with very helpful hints, but really this book is tailor-made for the novice.

Paul has made a point of screen-dumping every step, every dialogue, and making explicit the reasoning behind what he teaches. This makes for a detailed and clear step-by-step map of the process and methods he uses to create his characters.

I should add that Studio users may have some difficulty and would be well-advised to familiarise themselves with the Max interface before tackling this one, but unless you know every possible route to character creation it's probably worth the effort.

A nice touch is the sprinkling of anecdotal gems thrown in. Steed has had a very public career as a character modeller/animator, and there are a few excellent star-studded stories in the mix as well as the actual education.

If you want something that you can sit in your lap and work through you want this book. I recommend this book unreservedly to anyone interested in pursuing this branch of digital art. The design chapter of the book alone is invaluable to you, let alone the technical side, and Paul is amply qualified to hold forth on the subject matter.

I'm sorry but this book is written with 3ds max 3 in mind (editable mesh). If you want to model a character today I cannot insist more not to buy this book. I strongly suggest investing your hard-earned dollars on 3ds max 6 animation by barret fox because his way to model a character is much better and in a ~350pages book he even show how to create a scenario, how to rig + animate your characters and the after-production retouches with combustion 3. sorry for my english!

I purchased this book a couple of months ago. Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed with Steed's approach. I found his methods of modeling to be cumbersome to say the least. It seems as if the book has not been updated since the first edition to reflect the many changes now available in 3ds Max 6 or 7 (I don't mention 8 because the book was written BEFORE 8).

When I initially dived into the modeling portion I thought everything was fine. Then -- and this is why I rated it so low -- Steed begins to divide/turn edges in Part II / Chapter 4 / Step 5, which is titled "Step 5: Add Vertices by Dividing Edges." I suppose this would not have been so bad if Steed had thought to include COLOR screen shots on the books CD-ROM, but since he neglected to do so it becomes frustrating -- to say the least -- to use Steed's method of refining one's mesh.

Considering the fact that the CD-ROM is a whopping 19.5MB, it would have been prudent to include full color reference images. Let me give you some specifics on why I found this book such a bitter waste of TIME and MONEY:

* Firstly, let me tell you friends -- it is most frustrating to try to refine one's mesh based on the author's direction when one can hardly see the edges/vertices that are being discussed.

* Secondly, there are easier methods to refine a mesh than dividing or turning edges if you have 3ds 5 AT LEAST!

* Thirdly, Steed falls flat on his face when explaining the reason for turning edges and which SPECIFIC edges to turn. Suffice it to say, grayscale pictures in a book DO NOT work!

* Fourthly, if one cannot get the edge dividing/turning method down, then you'll get stuck because the rest of the modeling tutorials are so heavily based on this method. The only reason I was able to finish the model is because of my familiarity with 3ds Max, Lightwave, and on a more limited basis, Maya.

* Fifthly, and lastly (I hope), when one is able to look at tutorials for Lightwave or Maya, as I have done, and model more quickly and effectively in 3ds Max than Steed's method, then the book leaves quite a lot to be desired...

I think that's all I will say for now, but let me warn you all -- there are far, far better tutorials available online for free. Don't waste your money on this book unless you plan on using it as fuel for a fire.

This is a great book from Quake 3 legend Paul Steed and its incredibly detailed with sujects that range from pencil designs to skinning plus many other helpful tips and tricks along the way. Unfortunatelly the book fell short in the illustration department and its kind of hard editing every vertex, line, face and edge on a 1500+- polygon model with confusing black and white pictures. Atleast for me, a beguinner that doesnt understand edges very well. All in all this is a very complete guide from beguinning to end but unless you have nerves of steel or completely understand how to handle edges without relying too much on the illustrations i wouldnt reccomend it for everyone.

I want to tell people who want to buy this book to go ahead and do it! I am making a 3D shooter with some friends and I want to learn how to model in 3DS MAX 4. Well, when I got the package i opened it and started to read. The book inspired me and in the beggining Paul is telling you ways of inproving your method of drawing and gives you ideas of how things work. On your way through the book, Paul gives you very helpful tips on using certain tools. I can't stress enough how good this book is for new users, the tutorial is very, very, very step by step. Paul guides you through every single move throughout the book.

Some people have reviewed this book as a bad book to by. They have said that this is not the true way of modelling characters. Well in this book Paul does a good job,it is a great starting point, and then you can move onto whatever technique you want. You learn how to use the tools and many different ways of going about making a character in 3DS MAX 3 and 4.

I hope this review has inspired you into buying this book.

If you do buy it and are glad that you bought, I'm glad and i hope that you creat many creative creatures and characters!

Finally, a book on character modeling that I can respect and aspire to learn from. Mr. Steed's knowledge of anatomy, his facility with the program and his artistic talent have come together to produce a book that is a pleasure to read with or without a computer. He has clarified so many questions through the copious use of illustrations concerning low poly as well as high poly character modeling that I have had the past years, that I have been able to use some of these principles in non-character modeling. A must have for any serious 3D animator. Anxiously looking forward to his next book.

I'm an independent video game developer, and this book was my bible for character modeling for several years.

At the same time, I can confidently say that some of my good techniques and MOST of my bad habits came from this book.

Some of the techniques he teaches in this book are very good (like the cylinder technique for designing legs, and the spline cage trick for the torso), however beginning modelers need to be aware of certain pitfalls:

1. Paul's divide and turn edges techniques can get you into TONS of trouble if you don't understand how to model with quads and create a good "flow" of polys within your mesh. Paul understands this but he doesn't teach it and the book led me to develop some horrible habits that it's taken me a while to correct. There's another book on Poly-Modeling with 3ds Max that I bought recently that really helps teach Poly modeling using better techniques that are more suited to both low and high poly models . It's called Poly-Modeling with 3ds Max: Thinking Outside of the Box and it teaches what Paul could have taught here.... many ways to build clean meshes that work.

2. His head modeling method with the geosphere is probably one of the most difficult ways to model a head. This is subjective, but more solid poly modeling techniques , I've found, or even more traditional box modeling techniques seem to produce cleaner methods than the geoshpere approach. It's good for blocking out the mass of the head, but carving the details out of a geosphere while maintaining good form can be tricky.

3. Paul got me hooked on Edit Mesh, which is fine, but Edit Poly is really the best way to go in Max in terms of modeling tools, and I think most experienced modelers on here would agree with that.

4. The appraoches in this book are old. Much of what Paul is doing here was based on a time when the poly count of characters had to be much lower , and when Edit Mesh was the dominant modeler's tool in Max, so the book is somewhat dated. I'm totally for low poly methods; I think high polygon wasteful modeling is a sin. BUT low poly should not be done at the expense of making a clean mesh with nice edge flows. Again, Paul manages to make clean meshes but he doesn't teach YOU what the rules are to building a clean mesh. If you buy this book, also buy any other book that teaches clean poly modeling techniques to round out your approach and perspective.

So, with all of that, 3 stars. Don't let this be the only modeling book you get. You may develop bad habits that will take some effort to "un-learn".

I got this book 2 years ago when it was hyped as being top notch for learning 3D modeling. On the postive side it is easy to understand and gives you a good idea of the entire process of making a character rather than just jumping around and trying to explain a hundred different unrelated things like other 3D modeling books. The bad part is that the modeling technics are a bit dated and backwards. A person who posted a previous review mentioned that he uses wierd modeling techniques like booleans and splines instead of regular box modeling, and that is the truth. He also wastes A LOT of time turning edges. If you model in quads (4 sided polys) to begin with, and then teselate (triangulate) then its all done for you automatically. And as mentioned previously not much time was spent on the concepts of uv unwrapping and creating the image map.

"Modeling a Character in 3DS Max" by Paul Steed is by far the best book I've ever read on low poly modeling. I recommend this book to any newbie to low poly modeling. It is easy to follow and Paul Steed explores just about every way to model from using primitives, to using the booleen operation effectively. Go ahead and give it a try!