Rating: 
Summary: Classic Lightwave text
Review: After the recent lauch of LW 7 I was so pleased to already find the cornerstone of Lightwave books updated. What can I say, Dan Ablan has done it again!The best word that describes this tome is "comprehensive!" Of all the computer books I have, this one is by far the fattest. It features everything you need: Detailed reference material and tutorials to make it all come together. I don't know if I can recommend it fully to complete beginners in 3D AND Lightwave, but if you have just a tad of experience in either, this is your manual to learn this awesome and powerful animation package. From my point of view it is all you need.
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Summary: Don't be confused about continuity! This is a great book!!
Review: This book is not to be read cover-to-cover like a novel, it's an incredible resource to be used by anyone (novice to professional) who's using Lightwave and wants to learn more. This book won't tell you how to be an artist, it'll tell you how to use this particular tool. "Inside Lightwave 7" is divided into 5 parts. Part I introduces the reader to Lightwave as a whole, giving a broad picture of the entire package. Part II covers lighting, modeling (architectural tutorial by Digital Domain's Randy Sharp, organic tutorial by Axis Animation's Stu Aitken), and a little bit of character setup. Part III covers animation (including more setup, Skelegons, Endomorphs, vmaps, FK, IK, and nonlinear animation), expressions (by Foundation Imaging's Jarrod Davis), and a "broadcast-style" chapter. Part IV covers Lightwave's compositing, rendering, particles and fur, and Motion Designer (a soft-body dynamics engine). Part V is an appendix, a pretty comprehensive plugin list, a list of reference materials, and a list of what's on the included CD. I'd recommend this book to anybody. If you're just starting out and want to learn what some of the pros do or you're already a pro and want a look at some of the new techniques, this book's for you.
Rating:
Summary: INLW7, An Invaluable Resource.
Review: Inside Lightwave 7 sets the new standard for learning the latest version of Lightwave 3D. I own all of Dan's prior books on Lightwave, and this is by far his best. Dan covers it all, from the basics of modeling, texturing, scene creation, lighting, and rendering to advanced character setups and non-linear animation with the new Motion Mixer plugin. I was most impressed by the way Dan dealt with understanding LW's expressions. There's a full Chapter on just the practical applications for expressions and an entire Chapter on animating with expressions. A wealth of information, 1200 pages worth, and a fantastic bargain at any price. This is the book to own on Lightwave 7.
Rating:
Summary: This is IT!
Review: If you only buy one Lightwave 7 book, this is the one to buy. It actually outweighs the reference guide Newtek includes with Lightwave. The tutorials are very complete, although somewhat lengthy. I have had a few problems with a couple of the tutorials in that it seemed like a couple of steps were missing, but the techniques and tips this book offers are priceless. The chapter on Organic modeling is awesome, it walks you through the creation of a human head in extreme detail. This single chapter is worth the price of the book. The chapters on particle F/X could be a bit longer. This book will teach you how to create a great patch of grass with sasquatch lite, unfortunately it comes up a little short on it's coverage of this plug-in. I would have liked to see more coverage on particles, hypervoxels, and motion designer. Overall the book is excellent, I would love to see an advanced version of this book from the same author. The writing style is easy to read and he presents a lot of information on every page. Well worth full price!
Rating:
Summary: If you use Lightwave. You NEED this book.
Review: At first I bought this book just for the organic modelling tutorial that I saw in the pages available for viewing here, (And the character animation tutorials, especially the facial anim one) but the entire book is top-notch. And when I say 'entire book'... This thing is HUGE, and it makes a very satisfying *Thump!* when put on your desk :) It's incredibly informative and useful, and you feel like you've gotten more than your money's worth. If you've ever been intimidated by the idea of modelling a human head, Stuart Aitken's organics tutorial is JUST what you need! (Helped me alot!) It's an invaluable tool and learning resource, well worth the money, must have... Why are you still reading this?? Go! Buy! :D
Rating: 
Summary: A fairly good book, but shouldn't be the only one you have
Review: While still trying to appreciate the huge task that the author undertook, I must say for those who consider buying the book to be aware that there are quite a few errors in the exercises that take some time to figure out (trial and error) for a LW newbie like me. At least I couldn't understand quite clearly how to get around LW's user interface just by following the explanations in the book. The explanations about Lighting and Rendering are good, I didn't find any satisfactory coverage regarding texturing though. The best that I could do in that regard is just following the examples without knowing the "why" and consequently I don't think I have a thorough understanding to do any original texturing. Maybe there's assumptions that the target audience already know about texturing and the author just provided additional tips. I would recommend to buy the DVD tutorial "Get Into Seven" to help you get started, some of the explanations there are much better to understand and can be combined with this book to help you learn LW. And with the basic skill from the DVD, the material in the book is making much more sense and you would even be able to spot the errors and correct them. I hope all the errors are fixed and more explanations would be included in the "Inside Lightwave 8" edition.
Rating:
Summary: Fair book, but not for the beginner
Review: I was new to Lightwave when I purchased this book. On the surface it looked like it covers a good deal of material and it does. However, I take issue with the way some of it is presented. To the beginner, it felt like, "getting a drink from a fire hose." I was looking for a few simple examples to learn the basics from and gradually work to larger tutorials. I didn't find too much of that here. The first parts of the book jumped into texturing objects, before it really explained how to make the object in the first place. (i.e. modeling) This made it difficult to build objects that you could experiment on using different textures. The modeling section jumped right into designing a large city block or an entire human head at the start. It never really demonstrated how to do "simple" objects from start to finish. The closest it came to that delt with making subsections of skyscrapers that didn't look like anything until the entire building was completed. It would have been nice to do a few simple models before trying to build complex items like a city or human head. If you worked slowly through every step of the tutorials, you will eventually learn quite a bit. Unfortunately, by that time you've spent many, many hours before you have anything to show for the effort. You don't feel like you accomplish very much in the process. You can skip sections of the tutorials, but if you do, you will miss a trick or key that may not be repeated elsewhere.
The book has a good deal of tricks and information in it, but I still had to keep jumping between it and the Newtek manual before I was able to understand some sections.
Overall, it does cover a very large amount of modeling and texturing. I like that, but I didn't like how it didn't ramp up to "large projects." Finally, I would like to have seen a little more information on actually using Lightwave to animate with. It goes into overwhelming detail on modeling and texturing, but very little on making the model actually animate.
Rating:
Summary: Best there is for Lightwave. Period
Review: I've read several books on various 3d packages. I prefer Lightwave as my tool of choice, and Dan Ablan's books are my single point for learning and reference on Lightwave. He covers all basics (which was fairly important to me) and then attacks even the advanced features. Coverage starts with learning the interfaces in Lightwave, he explained it in a way that now makes most of the interface intuitive to me. The detail he goes into in describing modeling a human head is incredible. I cannot wait for his latest Lightwave 8 edition. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: the best i've ever read
Review: i've tried a lot of software specific 3d books in the last time but dan ablan is definitly the best. easy to read and much more easier to understand. together with newteks original manual it a power combination that works perfectly. for me it's sure that i preorder the forthcoming titles from dan ablan.
Rating:
Summary: Good advanced book
Review: This book is great for everything except modelling. It explains lighting, rendering, effects and everything else excellently. But the modelling info is very badly explained indeed. Since modelling is the first thing most users want to know, this is a real handicap. If anyone says the chapter on organic modelling is worth the price alone that person must already have these skills down(and so it's not the fault of that person). In fact, the chapter on organic modelling is quite simply useless to anyone but a very advanced Lightwave user. The first chapters on modelling, which don't deal with specifically human modelling, are a nice introduction but other than that it's half as useless as the organic modelling chapter. Overall it's definitely worth buying, but because of the pitiful modelling info I deducted two stars. I'm being harsh but if you think you'll learn hardly anything about modelling from this, you couldn't be further from the truth. I really wanted to give it 4 because I hate whining, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. One of the most infuriating excuses people make to these fair complaints is "read the manual". The manual is almost useless for beginner character modellers and anyone who directs TOTALLY INNOCENT newbies to it is being very mean and unfair. I recommend you buy this book as well as other books on the subject(mostly 10x better) of modelling. Stay away from "LightWave 3D 7.0 Character Animation", there is insufficient info on the modelling aspect of human animation and the animation info is found in the next books. I would highly recommend "Digital Character Animation 2: Essential Techniques" it's invaluable for newbies(although it won't show you specific Lightwave guide, it's universal to programs). In fact I would rate it necessary for beginners. "3-D Human Modeling and Animation" is a great book which excellently explains the full process of modelling especially. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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