Rating: 
Summary: Must have!
Review: "Lightwave3D 7.0 Character Animation" is a must-have for anyone trying to learn how to rig and animate in Lightwave3D. Timothy Albee takes all the mystery out of how to properly set up a character, including tips on modeling for rigging, weight maps, skelegons, bones and IK. It also shows you methods to circumvent Lightwave's quirky process of rigging to ensure the most stable rigs possible: the kind that animators like to use. On top of that, a good portion of the book is dedicated to animation techniques, including some great chapters on posing and conveying weight through your animations. And, the CD has a lot of useful content, including all the necessary supporting files to get you rigging or animating right away.One thing that could make this book even better is a complete demonstration of weight maps on a character. However, that could take an entire book on its own, and there is sufficient information to teach you the method. In any case, the info in this book saved me hours of guesswork...I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: LightWave 3D 7.0 by Timothy Albee
Review: An excellent resource book for any beginning or experienced animator. Timothy Albee makes the difficult possible for even the novice animator. Thanks for writing such a wonderful book to help me with LightWave.
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough detail coverage for animation
Review: Animation is not just about moving the character, but adjusting his or her emotions. While I find the book useful, it lacks the full description of walking you through to do a full character animation (including voice, movements, using the cycler, expressions. It should explain how to measure the walk or run sequences, timelines, non-linear animations.
Rating:
Summary: Not enough detail coverage for animation
Review: Animation is not just about moving the character, but adjusting his or her emotions. While I find the book useful, it lacks the full description of walking you through to do a full character animation (including voice, movements, using the cycler, expressions. It should explain how to measure the walk or run sequences, timelines, non-linear animations.
Rating:
Summary: Takes the mystery out of bones
Review: I had Lightwave for about two years, and found if you put the time into it, you get the rewards. However, no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get skelagons/bones to work properly. Luckily I found this book. It took me thru the whole boning process from modler to layout to bone conversion to proper rotation and more. Amazing enough, the book knows were I had problems in the past and tells you how to correct it! In the past, other books went straight to the next step.
In short, I suppose if you're already an animator, this book may not be telling you nothing new. But if you know your way around Lightwave but never got into bones/charater animation, I highly recomend this book. It's well worth it!
Rating:
Summary: One reviewer missed the boat!
Review: In response to the anonymous reviewer with the title "Not For Animators" dated Sept 13 2002 - It's painfully obvious that this reviewer did not read the book thoroughly. He asked if he was "missing something" well he/she missed the entire boat. Chapter 3 does start of with "You've got your character all ready to go ..." But the reviewer unjustly took this sentence out of context. The paragraph finishes with " ...Before you can animate him, you've got to set him up. And before you can set him up, you've got to prep him for the setup, and that means planning." Ch. 3 is about pre-bending the limbs of the character to help the IK. It is not about suddenly jumping into animating your completed character that the non-reviewer would lead you to believe. Chapters 3 through 9 go into extensive details about the mechanics of setting up characters in Lightwave 7.x. The first 9 chapters are: Ch. 1 About this Book Ch. 2 Inverse Kinematics: It's Strengths and Weaknesses 2.1 IK
2.2 IK's Strengths
2.3 IK's Weaknesses Lightwave-Specific
2.4 IK Setup Basics
2.5 IK Rules Ch. 3 Prepping Your Character for Setup 3.1 Where is He Going to Bend?
3.2 Pre-bending to Help IK Ch. 4 Boning Your Character 4.1 Adding Bones to Your Character
4.2 Spinal Controls
4.3 Hand Controls
4.4 Foot Controls
4.5 Fingers
4.6 IK System Skelegons Ch. 5 Converting, Organizing, and Aligning (Bones) 5.1 Converting Skelegons to Bones
5.2 Organizing the Schematic into Something Helpful
5.3 Aligning the Spine, Pelvis, and Feet
5.4 Bone Hierarchy
5.5 Recording Pivot Rotations
5.6 Recording Bone Rest Information Ch. 6 Putting IK to Work 6.1 Terminating IK Chains
6.2 Creating Goal Objects
6.3 Activating IK
6.4 Activating Individual Controllers
6.5 Deactivating Individual Manual Controls Ch. 7 Point Weighting 7.1 Point Weighting Basics
7.2 Beginning the Point Weighting Process
7.3 Swapping Models and Testing Weight Mappings
7.4 The Use Weight Map Only Option
7.5 Finding Stray Points
7.6 Straightening the Feet for Animation
7.7 Putting Him Through the Motions
7.8 Tidying Up Ch. 8 Using the Controls 8.1 The Model Itself
8.2 Root
8.3 Pelvis
8.4 Spinal Bones
8.5 Head
8.6 Hand Translation Controls
8.7 Hand Rotation Controls
8.8 Shoulder Controls
8.9 Elbow Controls
8.10 Foot Controls
8.11 Toe Controls
8.12 Knee Controls
8.13 The Fingers and Thumb
8.14 Notes on Modifying the Setup The remaining 10 chapters, except ch. 15, deal with the generic techniques and theory of animation that can be obtained in any non-3d animation book. Ch. 15 briefly goes over the mechanics of digitigrade (quadrupeds,etc...) characters. As a solo free-lance medical illustrator/animator of 10 years, it's very difficult to come across such useful information without taking classes or working in a large studio with other creative types. I have every imaginable training video/dvd/CD, and book written about Lightwave (by Dan Ablan, Dave Jerrard, Doug Kelly, Patrik Beck, Ken Brilliant, Bill Fleming, Desktop Images, Class on Demand, etc...) So far, I have not found any other source that comes close to what Timothy Albee has written for the Lighwave community. Kudos!
Rating:
Summary: I recommend this book!
Review: Instead of trying to write a book covering every possible feature in Lightwave 7, Timothy Albee focuses on setting up a character rig and animating it. He covers setting up your skeleton, point weighting, and how to pose your character for animation. I have found that there is not enough documentation provided by Newtek or it's Lightwave user base on some of the things that Timothy Albee teaches in this book. I found it incredibly helpful and within a few days I was able to get my characters to do things I hadn't been able to figure out in the year I've owned Lightwave. While this book doesn't cover the range of topics that you'll find in Dan Ablan's Inside Lightwave series, it is incredibly helpful if you want to do character animation. Thanks Timothy!
Rating:
Summary: Parts are good but not descriptive enough.
Review: Intresting but not mind-boggling.
Rating:
Summary: Finally the Real Deal for Lightwave
Review: This book fills a big hole in the available Animator's Reference Library in that it breaks down more Advanced Character Rigging
into digestable chunks. Beyond that the Author delves into developing creative "Acting/Directing" practice strategies for the artist, as apposed to cramming additional technical topics. BR>Useful, and Understandable. Can't wait for the sequel
Rating:
Summary: Cool!
Review: This book is great. Lots of good information, and a cool character to boot. My only complaint is that I wish there was a little more step by step to actually posing and animating the character between setups. Other than that - add it to my library! This, along with Dan Ablan's titles round out my LightWave learning.
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