Rating: 
Summary: Now this is how a LightWave book should be written!!!!
Review: I have the other LW books, and they're "OK" - but they really don't cover much LightWave 7. What they do cover is basic. Enter Dan Ablan's fantastic "Inside LightWave 7" book. I was shocked when the UPS man brought the box - the book is huge! I don't know how I'll get through all of the info Dan's packed into it. This book is well written, clear, and insightful. I've found info on just about anything I can think of. I'm learning lightwave and earning money thanks to this book. All I can say is buy it - it's the best investment you can make these days.
Rating:
Summary: Dan does it again.
Review: Once again Dan does an excellent job of packing all the info he can into ONE volume. Instead of filling it with volumes of unimportant stuff and spanning three books, he take you through the motions from beginning to end with a quick and easy to follow style. Everything Dan has put into this book can help beginners or show professionals new ways to approach the same old problems. This is a MUST HAVE. Stop reading and buy it now.
Rating: 
Summary: Definetly not for the beginner
Review: I purchased this book in the hopes that I'd be able to learn LightWave 7. Sadly this book is definetly not for beginners. Early on I realized something was wrong when the book jumped straight into the Suface Editor. The chapters on modeling could hardly be described as tutorials. One modeling chapter dove straight into modeling a large skyscraper without teaching you many of the fundamentals of modeling. I felt like I was following a cook book. Step after step of 'type the following into the numeric window, check this option, uncheck that option.'. This is not how you learn. I had no understanding of why I was using the specified values and most of the time the author didn't go into any detail regarding it. The chapter on modeling a human face was both exciting and a let down. Hours upon hours of work and I still felt like the fundamentals escaped me, yet I had a decent looking model.
I went out and brought Inside Lightwave 8 soon after. I have to say, it is many many times better. It's written by the same author, but the pacing and examples are greatly improved. Even not having LightWave 8, I learned more in chapter 1-3 of that book then I did reading Inside Lightwave 7. Unfortunetly, for those without Lightwave 8, that book has limited usefulness.
I would not recommend this book to a beginner or newbie looking to learn Lightwave 7 from scratch.
Rating:
Summary: A fairly good book, but shouldn't be the only one you have
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: This is the book that was missing from the LightWave box! If you're looking for in-depth coverage on several aspects of Lightwave, this is an excellent choice. The chapter on modeling a head is almost worth the price of the book. Dan Ablan walks through several projects step-by-step and shows us a lot of tips and tricks along the way. This certainly doesn't replace the LightWave book, but it's the perfect next step for a beginning/intermediate LightWave user.
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