Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Book! Excellent Information! Buy this One!
Review: A friend of mine bought this book and suggested that I read it if I wanted to learn more about 3ds max 4. When I first saw it, I said "oh my God, this is going to be a tedious book. Not so with Mastering 3ds Max 4. I simply love the way the authors gave detailed instructions on the various projects, The information was clear and concise. This book is very easy to follow and it takes no time to read 20 pages at a time. So far, I haven't tried the files yet, I'm waitng for my 3ds max 4 to arrive. This book is so well written it gives the max student and professional alike the confidence to tackle any max 4 project. Again, kudos to the authors and this book is worth every penny spent.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book! Excellent Information! Buy this One!
Review: A friend of mine bought this book and suggested that I read it if I wanted to learn more about 3ds max 4. When I first saw it, I said "oh my God, this is going to be a tedious book. Not so with Mastering 3ds Max 4. I simply love the way the authors gave detailed instructions on the various projects, The information was clear and concise. This book is very easy to follow and it takes no time to read 20 pages at a time. So far, I haven't tried the files yet, I'm waitng for my 3ds max 4 to arrive. This book is so well written it gives the max student and professional alike the confidence to tackle any max 4 project. Again, kudos to the authors and this book is worth every penny spent.
Rating:
Summary: Teacher's Highest Recommendation
Review: As a college instructor of MAX modeling, texturing, and animation, I both recommend this book to my students and use it myself as a resource. I had the pleasure of contributing to this work in a few sections, and so had the opportunity to examine this work closely as it was written. In addition to providing comprehensive instruction on all areas of MAX, Cat Woods discusses the principles of 3D space and the creation of 3D art with greater elegance and clarity than any book I have encountered on the subject. Those struggling with the tools will find help here. A must-have for beginners, and a strong resource for experienced users.
Rating: 
Summary: Dont buy this.
Review: Author Cat Woods is verbally constipated and goes on for endless pages without ever coming to a point. She's long winded and excessive in words and I would just as soon use this book as a door prop than anything else. I would suggest choosing another book by a different author and never buying anything she writes.
Rating:
Summary: As close to perfect as a 3dsMax book is likely to get
Review: Because I needed to learn the program thoroughly for my dissertation work, this is the fifth 3dsMax book I've bought, and it's the first that's not been overtly disappointing. If someone wants to have every little feature laid out in boring detail, there are the official materials and release notes for that. This book is the literal opposite (others suggesting otherwise have clearly not read the book in much detail).What is most impressive here is that the book is NOT a systematic, unstructured tour of the program, dutifully covering each minor feature. Rather, it is results-oriented: if you want to accomplish X, here is how you go about it. Although it is graphically-rich and amazingly clear, it is most certainly not a comic book version of a Max book, and is clearly targeted to the sophisticated user. Even though a beginner would find the book quite useful, it should probably be bought in conjunction with a primer or a book "introducing" 3dsMax. The writing is sprightly and, although there are spots where the editing might have been tightened, it is well above average even in that regard. In fact, if anything, the book has a crisp literary feel to it that will appeal to most readers, but may not be the style of choice for really hard-core users. Still, this is preferable to the studied dessication of nearly all the other books I've seen on the topic. Finally, the graphical illustrations are uniformly excellent, leaving little to the imagination. I'm hoping that this team sees fit to write such a guide for the next, inevitable incarnation of the program. I for one will be advance ordering it.
Rating:
Summary: As close to perfect as a 3dsMax book is likely to get
Review: Because I needed to learn the program thoroughly for my dissertation work, this is the fifth 3dsMax book I've bought, and it's the first that's not been overtly disappointing. If someone wants to have every little feature laid out in boring detail, there are the official materials and release notes for that. This book is the literal opposite (others suggesting otherwise have clearly not read the book in much detail). What is most impressive here is that the book is NOT a systematic, unstructured tour of the program, dutifully covering each minor feature. Rather, it is results-oriented: if you want to accomplish X, here is how you go about it. Although it is graphically-rich and amazingly clear, it is most certainly not a comic book version of a Max book, and is clearly targeted to the sophisticated user. Even though a beginner would find the book quite useful, it should probably be bought in conjunction with a primer or a book "introducing" 3dsMax. The writing is sprightly and, although there are spots where the editing might have been tightened, it is well above average even in that regard. In fact, if anything, the book has a crisp literary feel to it that will appeal to most readers, but may not be the style of choice for really hard-core users. Still, this is preferable to the studied dessication of nearly all the other books I've seen on the topic. Finally, the graphical illustrations are uniformly excellent, leaving little to the imagination. I'm hoping that this team sees fit to write such a guide for the next, inevitable incarnation of the program. I for one will be advance ordering it.
Rating:
Summary: Just use the 3ds User Reference
Review: I got this book thinking that I would learn alot more about max r4. Yes I did get a few tips and tricks but nothing big. This book goes on and on with pages full of nothing that isn't in the 3ds User Reference or Tutorials. There isn't much Hand-On training which is a must for everyone if you are looking to work with Max I mean really isn't that what the books are for. You get a little hands on but nothing big or anything. This book should be renamed 3ds max r4 Reference Guide. Needs alot more Hands on Tutorial and Less reviewing of things that are already in the Max Help files. Don't waste your money on this book get another book that has more hands on training and less review of the max help guides. If this is the cast I might as well write a book and just copy everything from the max help files and publish it, because it seems that is basiclly what happened here.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Exceptional! The only book which makes it, well, easy
Review: I thought I'd never learn to use this program. It's HARD. Not impossible... but not easy, either. I'd almost given up when a friend told me he'd found this one book which made Max4 seem pretty tame; I was, frankly, skeptical. But, I've gone through the *entire* book (with the exception of small parts of the final chapters), and feel I have the measure of the program. It seems that some others who've used the book claim to have had certain problems with it. All I can say is that this is the clearest documentation I've seen and, as for problems: zero. Although no MAX book is going to make the program trivial, this comes as close as possible, with no stumbling blocks.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Exceptional! The only book which makes it, well, easy
Review: I thought I'd never learn to use this program. It's HARD. Not impossible... but not easy, either. I'd almost given up when a friend told me he'd found this one book which made Max4 seem pretty tame; I was, frankly, skeptical. But, I've gone through the *entire* book (with the exception of small parts of the final chapters), and feel I have the measure of the program. It seems that some others who've used the book claim to have had certain problems with it. All I can say is that this is the clearest documentation I've seen and, as for problems: zero. Although no MAX book is going to make the program trivial, this comes as close as possible, with no stumbling blocks.
Rating:
Summary: The One Max Book to Own
Review: I'm only an intermediate user of 3ds Max, but I found this book to be EXACTLY what I was looking for. Even though it might be a bit much for someone using the program for the first time, so long as you have a good background, this book makes it amazingly simple to do some pretty complex things. The writing and illustrations are EXCELLENT, and some of the explanations are the clearest I've seen in any software manual. Although there were some problems with the CD in the earlier version (v3) of the book, those have been cleared up, and all patches are downloadable in any case. The book is also really nicely laid out, and you can hop around from chapter to chapter and focus on just what you're looking for. The first part of the book, maybe 2/3 of it, teaches you all the 'basics' (many of which aren't basic at all!) of the program -- the interface, meshes, patches, nurbs, mapping, through to animation -- and the last part goes surprisingly deeply into scripting. I didn't get too far into scripting, as I didn't need to learn that, but the first part of the book taught me enough to really use the program. If you're looking for something which goes WAY beyond the cryptic materials which accompany the program, this book is about as good as you'll come across.
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