Rating: 
Summary: Lightwave Users Bible!
Review: When I first purchased lightwave 7 I was lost. Thanks to this book I'm now building and animating my own 3D creations. Worth every penny!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Formidible Instruction
Review: After having just a quick peruse through my new purchase ..Dan Ablan's new book 'Inside Lightwave 7' by New Riders Publishing. ..I've gotta say I'm blown out of the water..
I'm not a newcomer to Dan's books having been an avid follower of 3D software Lightwave since my
early days in television production... (and even before ...when lightwave was "preLightwave" (Videoscape))..
and also an avid reader of Dans Instructional series on Lightwave.. This book, a hefty 1160 pages, is HUGE! ..not only in physical size but also in information ...about a piece of software that has truly joined the ranks of ..'the big boys'..
Inside Lightwave 7 is the book (I should say bible) ...that covers everything that one needs to have a handle on if they are to become reasonably adept in a very powerful 3D animation and visual effects software package.. I'm of the opinion that this book should have been included with the Lightwave package as the tutorial section ..
The book covers the basics from introduction to the 2 interfaces and architecture found within Lightwave 7 (Layout and Modeler).. through to the building , surfacing , texturing , lighting and animating of the worlds that you are now able to create in Lightwave..Guest authors Jarrod Davis, Stuart Aitken, Randy Sharp, and Bob Cazzell also have included chapters in a truly indespensible reference and tutorial that every beginning 3D CG animator an professional alike should have on their workstation... ...Go out and do yourself a favor... ...An excellent book!!
Rating:
Summary: BUY IT!
Review: You WILL learn a lot from this book. I knew almost nothing about Lightwave before reading this, I had played around with it for about an hour, I have learned more from this than any other book I have ever read. It contains clear, simple text that contains complex thoughts and information. Its exercises are easy to follow, and with all that, it is very interesting to read so, although I am still reading it, I am never bored by it. If you even have the DEMO of lightwave, you should buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Choice to the distant users and studants
Review: If you realy want to learn LightWave 7 you don't need anything else. In Brazil the people only find basic curses and with this book I find just what I needed to catch all its complex concepts. Detail: I'm a beginner student and I think that the "language" of the author fits very well for any type of user. Congratulations to Dan Ablan and Amazon and thanks to make it possible.
Sorry my bad english...
Rating:
Summary: A must have!
Review: = An absolutely must have book!
Reviewer: John Koop from Tempe, AZ United States
Switching over to another software package can be hard and tedious.
Dan Ablan has made this transition for me very easy. I felt comfortable creating many object (including a female head via the tutorial) within a few weeks.
Even an alien like me (Holland) can follow it!
Rating:
Summary: An absolutely must have book!
Review: Switching over to another software package can be hard and tedious.
Dan Ablan has made this transition for me very easy. I felt comfortable creating many object (including a female head via the tutorial) within a few weeks.Even an alien like me (Holland) can follow it!
Rating:
Summary: Lightwave 7 is complete.
Review: If you are working in Lightwave on a daily bases, this is the resources for you. The book is as they say for the beginner and the expert to. The best thing is on occasion to break away from the techniques you may employ to see how others like yourselves approach common problems. All the new features in Lightwave 7 are really good but don't kid yourself you won't learn them over night. So the main reason to buy this edition is so, you have at hand a resource to accompany the main Lightwave manuals. Want to wow your friends and colleagues this is it.
I have just finished chapter 16 which takes you through Nonlinear Animation using Motion Mixer, Spreadsheet Manager and the Graph Editor. Transitions in motion are now a piece of cake. If you are a great fan of endomorphs the information here is invaluable, to you latest CG project. In short this book has and will continue to help me on a daily bases. Thanks to all the Inside Lightwave 7 team and keep up the good work.
Rating:
Summary: THE Lightwave 7 book
Review: The first thing you notice about this book is its size! Its well written 1100+ pages are packed with useful information for all Lightwave 7 users. This is the definitive Lightwave 7 book. The book has 2 main sections. The first is an overview of Lightwave 7 features and functions. It guides you through LW's interface and covers all the important tools/dialogs and editors. It is also dotted with useful tips and tricks to help improve your workflow. The second section takes a project based approach. The projects cover a wide range of areas that allow you to put most of Lightwave 7's tools into practice in realistic situations. The areas projects cover include
Lighting - general principles, environmental lighting (including radiosity)
Modelling - including an updated version of the popular head modelling tutorial in Inside Lightwave 6.
Character animation - building skeletons, facial animation using morphs or bones, IK
Expressions
Non-linear animation using Motion Mixer Particle effects (smoke, liquids) and particle driven animation (flocking bats)
Soft body dynamics with Motion Designer. Projects are also great as foundations/references for you own projects.
The appendicies are also worth a mention. As well as tables useful data for such things as refractive and reflective proprties of materials, RGB values for common (and not so common) colours, Film and video resolutions - there is a very useful reference of all the plugins that come with Lightwave 7. Every Lightwave 7 user should own a copy of this book!
Rating:
Summary: The essential 3rd-party LightWave 6.5/7.0 companion. Period.
Review: So far, I have only grappled through the first 300 pages of this 1200 page tome, but as per several of the previous 4 Ablan efforts, this is the definitive LW 3rd-party manual. If Dan didn't go out of his way not to include topics that are already well covered in the LW manuals, then this could easily have been a 2000 page LW manual encompassing most everything a mere mortal needs to know about LightWave. Of course, there are character animation experts that could go on at length about all sorts of rigging techniques and so on. So there can never really exist a be-all/end-all text on LightWave. But "Inside LightWave 7" is clearly as close as we have to such a mythical guide. This book should be shipped with every new copy of LW7. If you have LW7, get this book. Period. Grade: A+. Regards, Chrome City critic
Rating: 
Summary: Not very Mac friendly and needs more updating for 7
Review: Not a bad book just not very Mac friendly. Seems a bit slapped together from previous books. Lots of PC shortcut key strokes which don't work for Mac. It would be ok if he would at least also say where to find the action just done in the menus but instead you spend lots of time trying to find it yourself. As I understand there isn't alot different between 6 and 7 but in the book there were several instances where his exercises just didn't work in 7. Not a great beginner book but if you have a PC and have used lightwave 6 I'd say get it. Reading the forums might have saved me $... Oh well, live and learn ... ok maybe "learn" is too strong of a word regarding this book.
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