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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent tutorial, covering the most important techniques.
Review: If you go through this book completely, you will have a thorough understanding of the various modeling techniques used in MAX. There are some rough spots, for example, in chapter 5 on page 217, it does not tell you that you must attach the newly formed line to the rest of the cage. I found myself having to supplement this book with others, but that's been true throughout my education. On page 213 it refers to a "Relax" rollout. Substitute "Surface Properties". Also, I found no clue as to how to create the tail fin of the whale. I wound up using my own method, which came out with similar, but not the same results. It does not discuss "Compound Shapes." This is one of the most important concepts, when using booleans on 2D splines. But, most books, including the 3DS manuals, do not cover this subject very well. I found a good explanation of splines in "3ds MAX 4 Fundamentals" by Ted Boardman. After having completed 90% of this book, I would say it is a "MUST HAVE". Try to find camera mapping in other books. It's hard to find. If you want to learn MAXScript, this book has the most thorough coverage I have found yet. Most other books, including the official manuals barely scratch the surface.
3DS MAX is a vast program, so if you are new to MAX, don't expect to learn it overnight, even if you are experienced with 3D Studio DOS. I have found that my background in Object Oriented programming to be helpful. In fact, I have found that 3DS MAX was helpful in understanding Object Oriented programming!
Rating: 
Summary: Works for me (in a weird way)
Review: Some background: I have some experiences with 3d programs like Form Z and I've been using that program for 2 years. I decided to try out max because well someone gave me the program. I have no clue on how to work this program butI was amazed by how fast the darn thing renders when my friend showed it to me. So I brought this book so I could learn more.
This book is... well confusing, sorry to say it skips steps and it is poorly writen. What I thought was great about this is that it forces me to do the excerises by myself which took a long time but I did learn the key concepts. This book finally makes sense when I actually went over the excerises again. This book could be a potenially good book of reference.
Rating: 
Summary: Mistakes Mistakes and More Mistakes.
Review: That's what this book should be called.
Trust me , you don't wanna own this book, you'll just be
wasting your money.
I'm well beyond disappointed w/ this book.
But hey, what do you expect when you're writing a book
about a version of software that you're obviously not even
using. How else could I be getting errors about obsolete files?
If the files that come w/ the book are obsolete, then the software that made them was an earlier version of max.
Thus the reason for the mistakes, max 4 is slightly different.
What do all these mistakes mean to the person trying to learn
max 4 ? It means you'll be misguided most of the time and you'll
end up pulling out all your hair.
I highly recommend not even going near this book! You'll only
be sorry , like I am. I should've bought the max bible.
Shame on me. :(
Rating:
Summary: Best 3ds Max book BY FAR for the intermediate user
Review: To put it mildly, 3ds Max is a daunting program to learn. Those looking for the ideal introduction to REALLY using the program - understanding its logical workings and wide range of capabilities - need look no further than this marvelous book. While it's suitable for beginners, it is especially superb for those with at least a passing familiarity with 3D modeling and complex software design (the authors, to their credit, are very clear about this). That the authors devote their first chapters to reviewing concepts and context (areas utterly lacking in slapdash software guides written on a "Topic X for Dummies" level) speaks volumes about their philosophy for the book: that you will learn not only how to use 3ds Max, but to 'understand' it, to get inside it. That some might find the book anything but exceptionally well-written is a mystery, and suggests they've never encountered literature outside the driest of engineering texts. In fact, it's rare to find ANY technical material as thoughtfully laid-out and beautifully phrased as this. The book is sensibly divided into 14 chapters covering everything one might want to know about the program's capabilities, and an additional 6 on scripting, a nice bonus. Although it might seem frivolous to comment on it, the Index is the most comprehensive you'll encounter, making locating just about anything in the main body of the book a snap. Also rare is the inclusion, in a book ostensibly covering so vast a terrain as this, of detailed treatment of a number of advanced, specialized topics, like character animation and post-production. These are presented in enough detail that the reader can use them right out of the box, and can 'learn how to learn' more on his or her own. In short, this is indispensable.
Rating:
Summary: Challenging for Beginners, but Great Overall
Review: Unlike a lot of people using MAX, I was close to a beginner, and was trying to learn it along with a graduate course in animation and design. A friend recommended this book to me, after I had trouble with another...book which was our course text. I can't say whether "Mastering 3ds max 4" is the best MAX book on the market, but it's light years ahead of what our instructor chose. If you were to open the book, you might get the impression -- the wrong impression -- that it was 'dumbed down', because there are so many illustrations. In fact, I almost didn't buy it for that reason. Only later it hit me that this is a book *about* graphics, so of course it would be graphical, and not like some book teaching you about, say, databases. Once I got used to the way the material was presented, I found the book really easy to follow, and was able to create real animations, from scratch, on my own. I think almost anyone can learn to do it from this book, if they stick with it. The writing is (for a book like this) almost entirely free of jargon and always clear, even if sometimes, due to my lack of experience, I had to go over things a few times to get the knack of them. I can't say whether this would be the optimal guide for a professional animator, but it seems ideal for people with a good general background in using graphics software, and for 'advanced beginners' like me (and a bunch of other people in the class who borrowed it from me... and didn't want to give it back).
Rating:
Summary: Challenging for Beginners, but Great Overall
Review: Unlike a lot of people using MAX, I was close to a beginner, and was trying to learn it along with a graduate course in animation and design. A friend recommended this book to me, after I had trouble with another...book which was our course text. I can't say whether "Mastering 3ds max 4" is the best MAX book on the market, but it's light years ahead of what our instructor chose. If you were to open the book, you might get the impression -- the wrong impression -- that it was 'dumbed down', because there are so many illustrations. In fact, I almost didn't buy it for that reason. Only later it hit me that this is a book *about* graphics, so of course it would be graphical, and not like some book teaching you about, say, databases. Once I got used to the way the material was presented, I found the book really easy to follow, and was able to create real animations, from scratch, on my own. I think almost anyone can learn to do it from this book, if they stick with it. The writing is (for a book like this) almost entirely free of jargon and always clear, even if sometimes, due to my lack of experience, I had to go over things a few times to get the knack of them. I can't say whether this would be the optimal guide for a professional animator, but it seems ideal for people with a good general background in using graphics software, and for 'advanced beginners' like me (and a bunch of other people in the class who borrowed it from me... and didn't want to give it back).
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