Customer Reviews

Virtual Vixens: 3D Character Modeling and Scene Placement

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Actually right after buying this, I thought to myself, "why bother?" well,to my surprise, the book actually has some pretty decent insights into the creativity of different artist, and some of their processes are brought to light, it gives a basic rundown of how to map and model an image, but all in all it's not a bad read, it's well written, not swamped with technical terms, and though it's not the best of learning tools, it does inspire...
so all I can say that it's a good read, quick, inspiring, and DOES give the basic concepts of how to meet your goals, but it's up to the reader to understand his/her program of choice to apply the techniques used in the book (i.e. understanding the individual tools in different programs whether it be Blender, Maya, XSI, Cinema 4d, Zbrush, etc etc)

Arndt von Koeningsmarck together with and nine 3D artist/co-authors the create an uneven book. The book consists of short articles from the nine artists/coauthors, followed by workshops on creating virtual character. The focus is on creating attractive women characters but the steps are the same as those for men.

The book is definitely aimed at an artist making the transition to computer generated character design. Design is not approached from a standpoint of creating animations with the characters. Only the first steps of creating the still model of a 3D character is focused on.

The target reader is an experienced artist. A person with high school art training or undergraduate college art training from a few years back is probably the ideal reader for this book.

An appendix of Web links to aids the reader getting started in further tasks. The nine articles from the 3-D artists presenting their work address a wide variety of topics concerning being employed creating computer-generated characters. Their work is quite good.

The virtual character workshop, starting on page 136, proceeds in seven workshops to address topics in shaping a virtual character. Software packages are not addressed in depth.

first of all I'm going to say is that this book is for any level of knowledgeable 3d artist, but mostly for intermediate, and on. Since it requires for the person to have extent knowledge of how to use his or her program of choice such as 3ds max, Maya, poser, mud box, z brush. i would strongly recommend you use 3ds max, and zbrush. The book give the artist knowledge on how to do a model if he or she has none, or looking for an easier less complicated way. All in all this book should be a must have.

This book delivers some real basic knowledge of a solid workflow. (How to setup and use reference and how to go about modeling in general) The sad thing however is the outcome of the actual modeling workshop. It's rather cheap to mediocre.
Names like Steven Stahlberg and Liam Kemp are used to sell this book but they don't really contribute. I mean look at the models of Liam Kemp. They're pretty much the best I've seen. There's so much to learn from that guy. And what does he teach you in the book? How to create realistic eyeballs. (which at that point has already been covered in much more detail by another artist) Such a waste of raw talent and experience.

So I think this is really more for beginners, although there is some professional knowledge to be gained outside the tutorials.

Must knoe photoshop and/or Maya well to ge work done like this. It takes hours to get this kind of rendering.