First let me say that
this book is huge! At over 900 pages of
content this is practically as thick as the
LightWave manual. The DVD is also packed
with a lot of stuff, so much so in fact that it
has practically as much information as the book
does so be sure to explore the DVD. I highly
recommend that you view the images of the book
from the DVD as you read the chapters. The
images on the DVD are in colour and are much
clearer than the greyscale images in the
book. I also recommend that you read the
book with the LightWave manual next to you for
reference. Often the author moves quickly
through various aspects and you might want to
refer to the manual to get further information.
This book, despite
it's size, is just an introduction into the
various aspects of LightWave so don't expect to be
setting up huge complex scenes. At first some
of the chapters seem all too brief but here is
where the DVD comes into play. As you go
through each chapter in the book refer to the DVD
for added video tutorials which really help to
fill in some of the gaps. In fact I really
like the video tutorials, it feels like the author
is sitting right next to you explaining how to do
things. The video quality is excellent but the audio quality
can sound a little tinny at times but never seems
to distract from the videos at all.
The book does not
have many errors either. Sometimes tutorials
are not fully proofed before going to the printer
and errors in a tutorial can be very frustrating
for the reader. I found the most errors in
the watch texturing tutorial in chapter 7.
Wrong surface names are referred to in some cases
and some steps accidentally omitted that for a
beginner would leave them scratching their
heads. Luckily, the reader has an outlet to
question the steps of these tutorials by going to
the forums that Dan Ablan has setup for this sort
of thing. Unfortunately the book doesn't
make note of these forums so here is the address
in case you are interested. http://www.lwg3d.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=386
The book seems to
cover just about everything in LightWave that a
beginner should know, the language used in the
book is easy to read and the explanations are well
presented. The videos are also well
presented and fun to watch with lots of cool stuff
in them. In fact if a chapter seems to
barely cover a topic start going through the
videos and you will discover a wealth of
information. In one video the author notes
that the DVD is getting too packed with stuff so
he points you to the www.3dgarage.com
website where you can find more tutorials.
There are very few
things that I disliked about the book. I
found that the tutorials get you started but don't
really finish things off but then this forces the
reader to start experimenting so perhaps this
isn't such a bad thing. I thought that
perhaps more could have been written on texturing
although there is more information on texturing in
some of the videos. We never get to
texture the giraffe and although we create a rig
for the model we don't ever get to animate
it. To be honest though these are
getting a bit nit picky on my part. The book
is big enough and to add more would probably
require another book. As a general
introduction to the various aspects of LightWave I
think this book/DVD combo hits the mark
well. A beginner cannot go wrong getting
this book.
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