Rating: 
Summary: At last, a book devoted to Director 3D
Review: It's very exciting that Director now does realtime 3D. Since the product is relatively new, there has been a lack of clear documentation available for the 3D aspect. I've been waiting for months for a book to be released to help with developing in Director 3D. I recently started reading this book and I thought i'd give a quick reaction to it, so others might accelerate their Dir. 3D learning curves. (I'll post another review after i've dug deeper.)
I'm more artist than programmer, with pretty basic Lingo skills. I've already quickly solved 2 problems that i was stuck on by skimming thru a few pages in this book. What a relief that is! I've also enjoyed skimming thru the movie examples on the CD and looking under the hood at functioning code. (Cut and paste is fun.) I find Paul Catanese's writing to be flowing and precise. I've only got one book within hand's reach of my work area. This one. Swerve *(If you are new to director, i'd strongly recommend buying an additional 3rd party book devoted to the non-3D aspects of director.)
Rating: 
Summary: This is THE book for 3D in Director MX
Review: Other reviews have captured the gist of this wonderful, accessible, and thorough treatment of Director's 3D functionality. What I would like to add is that Catanese's book is just as current with Director MX as it is with Director 8.5. If you plan to do 3D in Director MX, either games or presentations, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: This is THE book for 3D in Director MX
Review: Other reviews have captured the gist of this wonderful, accessible, and thorough treatment of Director's 3D functionality. What I would like to add is that Catanese's book is just as current with Director MX as it is with Director 8.5. If you plan to do 3D in Director MX, either games or presentations, you owe it to yourself to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on Director 3D and 3D in general
Review: The book is an excellent introduction to using Director 3D and provides wonderfully diverse examples. I found it easy to read and the examples are clean and fun to study and experiment with. There are issues covered in this book such as camera control along the contour of a mesh that simply is not covered in any other book and even very few C/C++ 3D books. The book has a good progression from chapter to chapter and topics span a wide range of topics including collision detection, dynamic mesh generation and transformation, using video for a texture, and the creating charts and pie graphs.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive guide to Shockwave 3D
Review: This book is fantastic! Flip the cover and there's a detailed chart of a 3D environment's structure in Shockwave. Extremely well organized, in depth, and easy to read, this book is really for anybody who wants to learn, teach or develop 3D with Director. Examples of code in the book, and on the CD-Rom, teach the concepts needed to develop a wide variety of applications - from 3D games to tools for business and educational content as well. Whether you are a beginner or an expert at 3D or Director or even both, I highly, highly recommend this title.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent value
Review: This book offers an excellent overview of Shockwave 3D. Director newbies might rather start with a book on the basics, but any pro coder should certainly add this to his/her arsenal. The CD is filled with strong examples, and tons of code to learn from. I can't say that this is the easiest material to understand, but this book covers 3D in a comprehensive manner. I thought maybe there could be some more info on Havok, but there is really enough to chew on before getting to that stage. I am planning on teaching 3D in the Fall in my Interactive Multimedia class, and I am going to use chapters from this book as required reading.
Rating:
Summary: AN AMAZING BOOK
Review: This is the best multimedia book I have ever read. I am a multimedia/web graphics programmer, and I have read at least 5 books on Director and a few good Flash books, but this one has taken me further than any other single book I own. You will need a good foundation in Lingo to really benefit from this book, and if you have that, this book will pay for itself several times over. Paul Catanese's style is very easy to follow, and it is peppered with a lot of other general knowledge regarding aesthetics, mathematics, and the general world of multimedia. I spent 20 hours of my vacation time reading this book last week and I feel comfortable with things in Director 3D that only a month ago seemed so far away in terms of my programming abilities. Paul's chapters on download and file optimization are excellent, and he teaches not only how to work in 3D, but how to be mindful of how well your projects will work on various client machines, which is no small issue. In fact, Paul touches on so many other relevant issues such as building custom schedulers to create timeout objects that run independent of the main time line, bones animation, advancing texturing techniques, using alpha channels to create very nice texture effects, collision detection without using Havok, and many other important topics in the context of Director 3D. Paul has also put together several "labs" on the CD to help you understand various utilities: particle systems, fog, bones animation, etc. He really sets himself apart from so many other authors (we won't mention names) who put out quick books about Director 3D to make a quick buck that really don't do justice to the subject matter. Paul takes the time to teach you Director 3d they way you would want to learn it in a college or university setting. It makes sense; according to the book, when it was published, he was teaching Digital Imaging at a University in Chicago. Get the book.
Rating:
Summary: AN AMAZING BOOK
Review: This is the best multimedia book I have ever read. I am a multimedia/web graphics programmer, and I have read at least 5 books on Director and a few good Flash books, but this one has taken me further than any other single book I own. You will need a good foundation in Lingo to really benefit from this book, and if you have that, this book will pay for itself several times over. Paul Catanese's style is very easy to follow, and it is peppered with a lot of other general knowledge regarding aesthetics, mathematics, and the general world of multimedia. I spent 20 hours of my vacation time reading this book last week and I feel comfortable with things in Director 3D that only a month ago seemed so far away in terms of my programming abilities. Paul's chapters on download and file optimization are excellent, and he teaches not only how to work in 3D, but how to be mindful of how well your projects will work on various client machines, which is no small issue. In fact, Paul touches on so many other relevant issues such as building custom schedulers to create timeout objects that run independent of the main time line, bones animation, advancing texturing techniques, using alpha channels to create very nice texture effects, collision detection without using Havok, and many other important topics in the context of Director 3D. Paul has also put together several "labs" on the CD to help you understand various utilities: particle systems, fog, bones animation, etc. He really sets himself apart from so many other authors (we won't mention names) who put out quick books about Director 3D to make a quick buck that really don't do justice to the subject matter. Paul takes the time to teach you Director 3d they way you would want to learn it in a college or university setting. It makes sense; according to the book, when it was published, he was teaching Digital Imaging at a University in Chicago. Get the book.
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