Great book, but not perfect.
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This book goes far beyond the scope of "awesome". The examples and tutorials in this book are amazing to say the least. I am a 3D Studio MAX user and fairly beginner as well. After reading the book several times through, I set out to try the tutorials. The first 3DSMAX tutorial was boggling to me, if you are not familiar with b-splines and patches, consider working with them before you get this book. After about 3 hours, I was handling patches quite well. I had learned to make a virtual studio, lay out patches, and form them to match my outline. The book shows you how to do the work, and the rest is just experimentation. After using the 3DSMAX tutorials, I went on and tried the A:M and LW tutorials. I'm happy to say that with a few extra plugins, easily found on the 'net, one can easily do in MAX what others can do in the other tutorials. How exciting. Still, the book has some of it's own faults, and can be confusing at times, if you are a true beginner.
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Waste of $$$$
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I'm new to 3D, and really wanted to get into 3D character modeling. So I went down to my local bookstore, browsed around , till my eyes landed on "3D Creature Workshop" I was hypnotized! The cover looked cool, the book was huge, and best of all it had "Best Seller of 1998" sticker on it. So I coughed up the $75(Canadian) and started examining, and that's when I realized I bought the worst book possible The book starts out very well, no two ways about it, I was really impressed by Bill Fleming's ideas. The first tutorial wasn't that bad at all, and I managed to by pass it. Though once I got to the second tutorial, I was confused. Bill kept on skipping so many parts; with no help what so ever in the important parts. After weeks of trying the damn tutorial I gave it to my friend, and he too was unsuccessful. I was so disappointed by the Light-Wave tutorials, that I didn't bother trying the other ones, till this day I haven't finished the book. Now I read some of the other reviews about the book, and the book seems to get a high rating, which is a shock to me. Maybe that's because it's designed for more intermediate students (even though the book tries to cover that little fact up). However for me it was a waste of time and money. I only hope that my review can save people some time and money.
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Not for Max Users -- Requires $85 Plug-in to Do Excercise
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Out of 9 chapters, only Chapters 5 & 6 deal specifically with 3D Studio Max. Ch. 5 requires a plug-in and various maps to finish the model. They're sadly missing from the Companion CD. Worse still, Ch. 6 requires a plug-in that costs $85 or else you cannot do the exercise at all! You only find that out on page 164! I hold the publisher and author responsible for such blatant omissions from the book. They have the repsonsibility to tell people that unless you have this $85 plug-in, various exercises will not work. The buyer can then make an informed decision on whether they want to buy the book or not. This book is a major letdown, I honestly cannot recommend it!
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Some of the best content I have ever found
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I have found this book by Bill fleming to contain the most detailed content that I can find on this subject anywhere. I have been teaching myself for over a year now and bill's knowledge on the subject is astounding, he is clear and consise and teaches alot more than just how to physically model 3D creatures, I found the bibliography sections the most interesting, as bill says you have to live the life of the creature you are modelling before you can achieve great results...
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This is great book for animator who want great work.
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I 'm very love this book except it don't clear in some paragraphs when you followed tutorials and this book don't cover in animation (all of it about to build great charactor models). CD that came with book contained very..very...very less data.
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