Customer Reviews

3D Studio MAX 3(r) Fundamentals

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

 

 

After reading 5 chapters(if you make it that far) this book will teach you very little about 3D Studio Max. Few pictures and hands on explination, too many filler words(this book could've been written in under 60 pages). This book insults even the most novice of computer users. Not to mention, it talks about opinions as facts. It made me so ANGRY, I hope amazon will give me my money back. This is one of the reasons I sometimes hate buying on-line. If I had seen the book first at a store, I would have never ever bought it!

TRUST ME... if this is your first time using MAX you will learn more by just playing with the program for a few minutes.

From 1-10 I would give it a minus 4 for the frustration... SAMS Teach yourself books should do a version... cause most multimedia professionals only have time for the answers.

RSC Merrill Lynch - Web Designer

I thought this was an excellent, well-written book and perfect for someone new to this program. I am fairly new to 3D Studio MAX but I understand the depth of the program and how difficult it must be to write a book covering just the fundamentals. Some of the tutorials were a little difficult to follow (due to the subject matter primarily) but with a little patience I was able to complete all of them successfully. If you take your time and don't rush through them you won't have a problem. If you're new to 3D Studio MAX I highly recommend this book.

I did enjoy this book. As abeginning programmer and graphis artist I feel that I need the best I can get. So, I bought 3d Stuido Max 3. I started it up, and Uh Oh...

I was completely lost. But, with this book I can now perform many simple functions, as well as a few advanced ones. In my opinion this is a great book for the beginning person.

This book is an excellent resource for simple affective and time-saving tips. It goes in depth far enough to give you a basic understanding of Max and 3D in general. However, if you are looking for in depth modelling or incredibly detailed character animation tutorials, this is not the book to buy. This book does not go in deep enough to consider yourself professional in really any areas after reading soley this book. If you are a beginner though, this book will tell you all you need to know to get started. It is composed of 18 chapters dealing with materials, lighting, special effects, etc. Within each chapter you will learn new and useful techniques for editing mostly. As for modelling your own complex 3D models, you are basically on your own. Modelling is, however, one of the more advanced areas of Max and so you should not expect to find too much of it in a book sub-titled "Fundamentals". Overall, I give this book 4 stars (out of 5)because it does VERY well at teaching you the techniques that it presents, but it doesn't present enough challenging and impressive techniques to take your work to a commercial level.

Well, if you are dealing with 3D Studio for a month already or have read another book on the theme this book would not suffice your expectations. What if you have not read a previous book or have not been working with 3D studio? The answer is the same no. Have in mind 3D Studio has an interface divided into 3 singular menus/tabs not including the menu Bar, if you can not go through one to another you will be lost and won't be able to accomplish any project and that is the main problem with Toddy's book, there are no pictures! He presents the tabs in the first chapter and that means that you will have to memorize all the buttons and where they are because he won't show a single picture of a button after that chapter. The book misses essential examples and places other that are completely irrelevant. The first project you will be challenged to do is to create your first animation. As I could not accomplish it after 3 hard working and dedicated nights, I decided to share the problem with other students of 3D animation here in Barcelona. They could not accomplish it either but took the book to an animation professor who rewrote the steps and added the missing writen information (the author forgot to assert points that were essential) besides drawing all the buttons that should be shown in the book. Kind of stupid to have it done in 2 hours after this editing. Of course, you can learn something with this book but it will take you a lot of time to accomplish simple things due to lack of graphical help (Steve Burke was suppposed to do it but he spent more time doing the nomad with plastic-like breast and rubber-like pants that appears in the cover) and examples and a considerable amount of technical errors. Concerning the CD-ROM it is good but the whole set (book and cd) is not worth your time and money, buy '3D Studio Max R3 in Depth' by Rob Palevoi instead, you won't regret.

While this book did cover 3D studio Max's Fundamentals, like the title says. It was unfortunately a pretty dry read. There were too many boring pages between actual tutorials, which were pretty good when they finally came along. They were, however, not explained very well in the book. The Lotus ScreenCams that came on the CD showing exactly how the author did something is the only thing that kept me from tossing this book in the trash during a frustrating tutorial.

The biggest problem I had with this book is that too much of it read like a help file. The author walked through too many of the menu's and toolbars explaining what their function was. The help files will tell you the same thing.

More tutorials "showing me how these menu's and toolbars are actually used in a 3DS project" would have made this a winner. Oh well. Maybe next edition.

In a nutshell, this book misses ilustrations, no pictures of buttons after the presentation of them in chapter One. The author takes for granted lots of things in his step by step tutorials. I have also had problems following instructions in the first animation exercise. Steve Burke did a great job in the cover but not in the book itself. LOOK, what a beginner expects in a book that says FUNDAMENTALS is visual help, when I decided to buy this book I came to this same page and did not consider what the other people wrote about how terribly writen and designed this book was, I thought the others who gave 5 stars were the ones I should listen to and here I am completly disappointed. I have read and practiced the book cover-to-cover and it is incredible how dissociate topics are, how irrelevant examples are and how graphically poor this book is. This book is an act of irreponsability towards beginners a waste of money if compared to the visual quickstart guide and other books that were written instead of dictated to a secretary and better illustrated in the inside than in the outside.

Well this book just kept me solving riddles. But it took me unnecessarily long to solve them because of editing mistakes. (I found about 15 by now and I am at page 193).

It would also be helpful if they would use pictures of the buttons they describe. And the exercises led to different (still nice and effective) results because of vague descriptions. A rather discouraging experience.

If your are a visual type by learning THIS is NOT the book for you. All the commands are written out and not shown by symbol-this kept me searching where I should click next. I struggle on BUT... it could be sooo much easier.

Coming from much more higher end and expensive packages, I still recommend this book to beginners.

OF course this book covers just the Fundamentals people. If you dont know ANYTHING about 3D Studio MAX, this book is a great reference. If you dont know ANYTHING about 3D Studio MAX or ANY 3D Software, this is the book to get. If you people want to know how to make stuff right off the bat, get "Inside 3D Studio MAX 3". Fundamentals is the book to show what all the buttons do and to navigate you around how the interface works. I would give this 5 stars. But as you can see, people are getting confused by the title and their expectations.

This book spends entirely too much time explaining the "fundamentals". That's okay if that's all you're interested in learning. Almost each tutorial requires that you load an almost complete project from the included CD. I wanted to learn how to create even basic objects using this program, not have someone show me how to finish theirs! HINT: Buy the book and read a little for yourself, BUT do not remove the CD. If you do most bookstores will not let you return it. I wish I knew this book was not going to help me before I dove into the CD. Good luck elsewhere.