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Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic, a MUST have book
Review: I have been an animator for many years and now an instructor teaching 3DS Max.
For many years the art (no pun) of animation and especially character modeling and rigging has been kept to the film and video professionals. Finding information was difficult at best. And what little information there was, was difficult to work with. When Michele Bousquet wrote her book "Model,Rig, Animate with 3ds max6" the world of character modeling suddenly opened up to me. It is such a revelation, that I immediately started using it in class and have recommended this book to all my students.
Her expertise in making a complicated subject easy to learn has made it a joy to work with this book. Michele is the co-author of "Harnessing 3ds max 5". This too, is a must have book. The tutorials alone are worth their weight in gold.
My only problem, with this review, is that there aren't enough stars to rate these books. 5 stars are not enough. I have purchased hunderds of dollars worth of books, and Michele's books are the ones that really shine.
Rating: 
Summary: A solid book, but shouldn't be read by itself
Review: I used this book as one of two textbooks for an undergraduate "Intro to Character Animation with 3ds max" course I taught in spring 2004. Both I and my students generally found it to be a good resource in the classroom. The book's step-by-step walkthrough of the complete setup of a character is quite thorough, and covers a lot of ground. As with any book that takes a step-by-step, button-by-button approach, it was sometimes difficult for my students to grasp the long view of _why_ the reader is doing what they are told to do, and to get back on track with the tutorials when they miss a step. For this reason, I used George Maestri's _Digital Character Animation 2, Volume 1_ as the other text for the class, a book with exactly the opposite problem (it avoids any software-specific references entirely). The modeling chapter guides the reader through an effective general technique for creating a character through subdivision modeling from a reference drawing, although I feel the approach fails to leverage the best features of Max's Editable Poly object, guiding the reader in places (like creating edges for the character's collar) through elaborate triangle-centric workarounds that are easily bypassed in a couple of clicks with a newer tool. This is the exception rather than the rule, however, and it is telling that all my students personalized their "skater" character extensively without being asked to - they felt they had enough control of the process by the end of chapter 1 to use 3D as a creative tool. The character, especially in the facial modelling, could also stand to end up with cleaner topology at the end of the tutorial - Bousquet is not an adherent of the "edge loop" modeling philosophy. The middle of the book, the rigging and skinning chapters, are definitely the strongest. Bousquet guides the reader through creating a fairly advanced rig, with side examples to demonstrate principles of complex concepts (wiring custom attributes, e.g.) before implementing them in the rig itself. The book's rigging chapter alone is worth the price of admission, if that's what you're looking to learn. The book's real weakness, if it has one, is the very brief section on actually animating the character. After 178 pages of modeling, rigging, and skinning, character animation, including walk cycles, facial animation, and some fancy labor-saving tricks, is covered in a mere 47 pages. Again, Maestri's book, which is almost entirely about principles and not technology, was a great complement in this regard, providing lots of exercises missing from this book, but useable with this book's rig. Overall, I would recommend this book, and will use it again in class, but it needs to be read in context in order for its best points to really shine.
Rating:
Summary: A solid book, but shouldn't be read by itself
Review: I used this book as one of two textbooks for an undergraduate "Intro to Character Animation with 3ds max" course I taught in spring 2004. Both I and my students generally found it to be a good resource in the classroom. The book's step-by-step walkthrough of the complete setup of a character is quite thorough, and covers a lot of ground. As with any book that takes a step-by-step, button-by-button approach, it was sometimes difficult for my students to grasp the long view of _why_ the reader is doing what they are told to do, and to get back on track with the tutorials when they miss a step. For this reason, I used George Maestri's _Digital Character Animation 2, Volume 1_ as the other text for the class, a book with exactly the opposite problem (it avoids any software-specific references entirely). The modeling chapter guides the reader through an effective general technique for creating a character through subdivision modeling from a reference drawing, although I feel the approach fails to leverage the best features of Max's Editable Poly object, guiding the reader in places (like creating edges for the character's collar) through elaborate triangle-centric workarounds that are easily bypassed in a couple of clicks with a newer tool. This is the exception rather than the rule, however, and it is telling that all my students personalized their "skater" character extensively without being asked to - they felt they had enough control of the process by the end of chapter 1 to use 3D as a creative tool. The character, especially in the facial modelling, could also stand to end up with cleaner topology at the end of the tutorial - Bousquet is not an adherent of the "edge loop" modeling philosophy. The middle of the book, the rigging and skinning chapters, are definitely the strongest. Bousquet guides the reader through creating a fairly advanced rig, with side examples to demonstrate principles of complex concepts (wiring custom attributes, e.g.) before implementing them in the rig itself. The book's rigging chapter alone is worth the price of admission, if that's what you're looking to learn. The book's real weakness, if it has one, is the very brief section on actually animating the character. After 178 pages of modeling, rigging, and skinning, character animation, including walk cycles, facial animation, and some fancy labor-saving tricks, is covered in a mere 47 pages. Again, Maestri's book, which is almost entirely about principles and not technology, was a great complement in this regard, providing lots of exercises missing from this book, but useable with this book's rig. Overall, I would recommend this book, and will use it again in class, but it needs to be read in context in order for its best points to really shine.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent layout, abundant illustrations
Review: It's very well laid-out graphically, which makes it easy to pick up and find appropriate content. Good use of white space makes it approachable. There are well-done illustrations on almost every single page, which shows the huge amount of work that's gone into this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent layout, abundant illustrations
Review: It's very well laid-out graphically, which makes it easy to pick up and find appropriate content. Good use of white space makes it approachable. There are well-done illustrations on almost every single page, which shows the huge amount of work that's gone into this book.
Rating:
Summary: Model,Rig and Animate
Review: This book is fast. No fluff, just get results and that in the straight path from A to B. Bousquet chooses to focus on modelling, rigging and animating. In fact the book is just one long tutorial, where you start by building the character on the cover, then progress to rigging and skinning it and finally animating it. Whereas there is A LOT MORE to 3ds Max than that, such as rendering, lighting and texturing, this is a very solid approach for the beginner, who wants to quickly get to that "Wow! I made that?!" stage. Also a word of caution, this book will not teach you many different approaches to modelling or animating per se, just one. But I have to say, that what it focuses on, it does very well. Clear and straight forward explanations, that get you from A to B very quickly. As a tad more experienced user, than the book's target group there wasn't too many new things for me, but I particularly enjoyed/benefitted from the chapters on rigging and skinning. Do anybody enjoy doing that? That is beyond me. The book is mostly in colours, which really should be the norm with such a visually oriented topic as 3D animation. I would say that this book is very well aimed at the beginner, who has never spent any serious time with a 3D application or with Max specifically. Once done with the book-long tutorial, you will have learnt a lot, and hopefully have the appetite to learn more on your own or through other materials/books. Like I said, if you are a beginner, and you are impatient, and want to see things moving on your screen fast, this book will take you there. Fast!
Rating:
Summary: great start for character animators
Review: this is a great resource for max users of all levels. this goes into all the primary toolsets and features to animate characters of all kinds. this is not a book on Character Studio but, instead, a more broad approach to using and creating character models, bones rigs, IK systems and skin envelopes. this is not a basic, "first look" at 3ds max, but is a great first resource for people lookign to expand their max skills to including custom created character rigs in 3ds max.
Rating:
Summary: great start for character animators
Review: this is a great resource for max users of all levels. this goes into all the primary toolsets and features to animate characters of all kinds. this is not a book on Character Studio but, instead, a more broad approach to using and creating character models, bones rigs, IK systems and skin envelopes. this is not a basic, "first look" at 3ds max, but is a great first resource for people lookign to expand their max skills to including custom created character rigs in 3ds max.
Rating:
Summary: fairly - easy to follow
Review: Unlike some tutorials that just tell you what to do, she explains what you are doing and why you are. The book is logical and simple to follow. I have worked with other 3D software, but I needed a quick start in Max animation, so this book was basic enough. So I was able to jump into this project without much trouble
I came back and dropped my rating to 4 stars, because I did find a couple of small mistakes in the book.
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