Description:
Computer graphics have evolved far beyond the chrome sphere hovering above the checkered plane. Digital Botany and Creepy Insects explores techniques for creating detailed and photorealistic plants, trees, and insects. Author Bill Fleming has compiled a series of excellent tutorials, culled from the online magazine mastering3dgraphics.com, into a useful book. Fleming divides the book into two parts, the first dealing with photorealistic techniques for plants and foliage (the pine tree is excellent), and the second discussing techniques for several kinds of insects, including two beetles and a spiky caterpillar. Because each chapter is in a tutorial format, the book cannot avoid getting software-specific. However, each chapter illustrates techniques that could probably be adapted to almost any 3-D application, and in fact most of the major 3-D apps are covered (Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Strata Studio Pro, etc.). The only drawback of the book is the way the CD-ROM was authored. Even though it contains additional tutorials in HTML format, it doesn't preserve the folder hierarchy when read on a Macintosh. This breaks all the links when you try to look at the files in a Web browser on the Mac. It works fine on a Windows-based PC. Nothing states, "The future is now" quite like the very publication of this book. Computer graphics of this nature, once created only on very expensive, proprietary workstations among a handful of major studios, is now being done using off-the-shelf hardware and software. It's a pleasure to have this first-rate instruction to accompany the technology. --Mike Caputo
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