3D Studio MAX 3 Magic (Magic (New Riders)) (Paperback)

by Dale Holmes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The 3D Studio Max application is big and has great depth, but most of the available books that cover it are either of the all-encompassing "bible" type--which are great reference books, but often lack in-depth tutorials--or the getting-started type--which are designed to orient the new user without inducing a bad case of "featuritis overwhelmus."

3D Studio Max 3 Magic nicely fills the need of the intermediate or advanced user. It assumes the reader is already familiar with Max, has been working with it for some time, and is ready to move on to the next level.

Featuring 20 chapters written by nine top 3D Studio Max artists, 3D Studio Max 3 Magic is designed to be read, used, and worked through, but not necessarily in sequence. Each chapter is an independent tutorial, demonstrating a specific technique, and each is well written and lavishly illustrated. Every page is in color, helping to make the book a pleasure to flip through and each chapter easy to work through.

A good case in point is chapter 6, "Lighting Effects: Rim Lighting and Diffuse Glow." The goal of this chapter is to simulate the lighting that falls on a fetus in a womb (or at least what we expect it to look like). An image of the final render is at the head of the chapter, and the translucency and highlights of the fetus are worthy of study. The text and pictures that follow describe not only the modeling of the baby, but also the process of achieving the desired look through lighting, materials, or both.

Some of the examples seem a little simplistic, but they demonstrate complex techniques. Chapter 8, for example, creates automated dust trails by using a particle system and expressions. The example is of a tank traveling through the desert, but the tank is simply a few polygons without textures and the desert barely looks like sand. However, the goal of the chapter is to teach the use of particles and expressions for automating the animation of the dust cloud that follows the tank, not to teach how to model and texture a realistic military vehicle.

The accompanying CD-ROM includes all the project and source files for each chapter; many of these files contain rendered movies for viewing the animation. In addition, four bonus chapters on the CD-ROM cover topics like creating a tidal wave and growing a block of ice around an object.

3D Studio Max 3 Magic is a quality workbook for an intermediate or advanced user. The layout is clean, the illustrations are plentiful, and the art direction of the book on the whole is a pleasure to look at and use. This book is a nice addition to any Max user's shelf. --Mike Caputo

Review
"The writers [of this book] are the Penn & Teller of special effects--they give all the pro secrets away." -- David Duberman, Editor, Spectrum: Interactive Media & Online Developer News

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press (May 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735708673
• ISBN-13: 978-0735708679
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,251,218 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very useful book for advanced users to learn more, August 2, 2000

By	Eðvald Ingi Gíslason (Iceland) - See all my reviews

This books is based on tutorials, so it's easy to read and understand. In the end of each chapter there is a "variation" and "plugins" section which help you in using techniques featured in the chapter in other situations and ways and help you selecting plugins to use to make it even more realistic!(giving you a very detailed plugins list). Most of the tutorials are very useful both for advanced and basic users, but some tutorials look very unrealistic where the head title is "How to create a REALISTIC....". I've been using 3d studio and MAX for 7 years now, spending most of my freetime in MAX and still i found this book very useful and I would recommend it for all users except the very basic users. BUY IT

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AN EXCELLENT BOOK, June 8, 2000

By	Angelo (Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela) - See all my reviews

This book is excellent if you have some experience with max, and if you want to learn some tricks, the book show you how to make 20 effects, for example how to make a NOVA explosion, how to make realistic water, if you have a lot experience with max, maybe you will know all the trick show here, but always you can find a surprise. I have more of 2 year experience with Max, and I have to admit, that this book, show me a lot of tricks, that made my presentation more espectacular I reccomend this book.

but remember this is not a tutorial about max, this is a tutorial to how made some scene, then you need experience in max, at least the basics knowledgment.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great effects, August 4, 2000

By	Martin Caldwell - See all my reviews

This is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to enhance their abilities with 3D Studio MAX 3. It goes beyond the MAX tutorials to show you how to create effects that obviously took some of these professionals a long time to perfect. The car paint material chapter alone is worth the price of the book. My only complaint is that it's too short.