Rating: 
Summary: LW 8 Killer Tips - A Must for Lightwave Users
Review: Dan and Randy have just hit a home run with this book. It's jammed packed with helpful hints which save time. The faster ray trace tip is worth the price alone. A book with this much info for under $30.00 is a no brainer. Buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Falls Flatter than a 2D Object
Review: I am a big fan of Dan Ablan's previous Lightwave books. He is a great instructor and very talented 3D professional. So I purchased "Lightwave 8 Killer Tips" hoping to learn new things specific to version 8...Disappointingly, this book falls flatter than a 2D object. Nearly all of the tips mentioned are "old news" to anyone with a basic understanding of older versions of Lightwave. Only about five percent of the material in this book has anything to do with features specific to version 8. I wouldn't be as upset if the book were titled "Lightwave Killer Tips, Including A Handful For Version 8". That's because I wouldn't have bought it. I can only recommend this book to rank beginners who don't know many Lightwave operational tips in general. So the book is not a complete stinker. But it's not worth $39 either.
Rating:
Summary: Falls Flatter than a 2D Object
Review: I am a big fan of Dan Ablan's previous Lightwave books. He is a great instructor and very talented 3D professional. So I purchased "Lightwave 8 Killer Tips" hoping to learn new things specific to version 8... Disappointingly, this book falls flatter than a 2D object. Nearly all of the tips mentioned are "old news" to anyone with a basic understanding of older versions of Lightwave. Only about five percent of the material in this book has anything to do with features specific to version 8. I wouldn't be as upset if the book were titled "Lightwave Killer Tips, Including A Handful For Version 8". That's because I wouldn't have bought it. I can only recommend this book to rank beginners who don't know many Lightwave operational tips in general. So the book is not a complete stinker. But it's not worth $39 either.
Rating:
Summary: On second thought.
Review: I may have been a little too harsh on my review of Dan and Randy's book. I guess I was expecting a replacement for a manual instead of the insight that was actually in the book. I'm sorry Dan and Randy.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I've got "Inside LightWave [8]" which is really 'the' book to get for tutorials and learning. Killer Tips though is a favorite of mine because it's an excellent desk reference. I have WindowsXP Killer Tips and it's always being referred to for a handy tip or "ah-ha" - well - LightWave Killer Tips is the same. It's full color and worth every penny. Lots of great tips!
Rating: 
Summary: A fun, handy and inspirational book
Review: LightWave 8 Killer Tips is a fun, handy and inspirational tool for Lightwave enthusiasts. It's filled with quality information presented in a "magazine side bar" style. Read it cover-to-cover for a tour-de-force of LightWave learning, or grab it when you have 5-minutes to spare and flip to any page for a quick information blast. This is a perfect book to pick up while you while waiting for renders.
The areas covered range from common controls to esoteric minutiae. Sure you will run across some info you already know. That's true with any book of this type. But I often find that perusing this type of material reminds me of commands or techniques I had forgotten, and helps inspire new approaches to current projects.
The book itself is beautifully printed on sturdy stock. Every page is illustrated with vivid screen shots and program windows, subtly shadowed to pop off the page. The entire book is a full color work of minimalist design.
The "sidebar" approach to instructional material is always fun, and this gives the Killer Tips series it's unique flavor. Dan Ablan and Randy Sharp have collected a smorgasbord of LightWave informational McNuggets that is sure to please your 3D pallet.
Rating:
Summary: Kind of useful
Review: LW 8 Killer tips it's a beginner guide to some things that are already explained in the manuals. It's a fun to read, and has lot of illustrations. Don't expect too much knowledge in this book, just, like the name implies.... tips.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Most of the Tips in this book are old news ; they are in fact plain features of the interface but are easily forgotten if you don't use them on a daily basis. So I found it somehow interesting as a reminder but too luxurious and therefore too expensive for this use.
There is one thing I didn't like at all : the poor humour that opens almost every paragraph. The book would be better with more tips and less puns.
I have one "tip" for this book : to find the tips relevant to a specific task, use the index, which is exhaustive and detailed, rather than the table of contents where only the "funny" and uninformative titles are listed.
Rating:
Summary: Just what we need
Review: The title says it all, "Killer Tips". It's a quick and easy way to bring you up to speed on a range of key features that can seriously make a difference to your workflow. It's not meant to be a replacement for the manual, but more in the spirit of Photoshop Killer Tips. Easily digestable, full colour goodness, highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile but not earth-shatteringly great.
Review: This book has a lot of tips, but some of them are really pretty basic and you wonder who wouldn't already know about them. Then again, that's kind of the point of the book: here are a whole bunch of things that everyone should know about lightwave, many of which are not obvious from the manual. With systems as complex as modern 3D applications are, it's no longer just enough to sit down and read therough the reference manual to learn all the things you can do and then go do them. The problem is that all the different featrues and capabilities both interact and have an almost infinite range of parameters, and the range of parameters that will do something useful is often a very small part of that range. So books that actually tell you how to do things and give examples (tips, tutorials, or whatever) become much more valuable relative to the official reference material than is the case with something like a programming language. While I suspect everyone will find useful information in this book that they don't already know, I would especially recommend this book to the beginner, as it provides an interesting alternative arrangement of basic and intermediate Lightwave knowlege. It would be a good second book to pick up after one of the introductory titles that are available. The book has a very good index, which is important if you remember reading something and have to figure out which tip it was in. G.
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