| A Creative COW Book Review |
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In this article, Gary Smith takes a look at 3ds max 6 Killer Tips by Jon A. Bell and published by Pearson Education.
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 Have you ever sifted through huge bulky books on a particular software to get some good tips, only to find them few and far between? Wouldn't you like one comprehensive book that would put assorted, extremely useful tips together as one?
If so, then this book is certainly geared toward you.
In 3ds max 6 Killer Tips by Jon A. Bell, you will find over 300 extremely useful tips in all aspects of the software.
If you are a beginner you should find some tips that will give you a head start on things that normally would take days of experimentation to master. The expert will also benefit from this book in that he will learn some very useful shortcuts increasing his/her overall productivity. The reader (no matter what level) will assuredly and without a doubt learn several things he did not know previously.
Reading over this information I found methods that would have taken me years to figure out on my own (or weeks of heavy reading).
Each tip consists of a full color picture as well as an in-depth description of the tip at hand. Jon Bell does not throw you off with a lot of technical jargon and is right to the point. His writing style can be best described as eloquent and very understandable. So eloquent, in fact, that I could read a passage in this book, put it down, and later on teach someone the technique without even done so myself.
Also he adds a nice blend of humor to a lot of the tips, so as not to have you yawning if you aren't interested at all in 3ds max.
Here are some of the books strong points:
- In depth look at very useful max tips
- Covers Interface, Modeling, Materials, Lighting, Animation, Rendering, Special Effects, MaxScript, and using other programs with max.
- Large, Full color pictures on every page
- Chapters organized from simplest to more complex tips
- Easy to read!
On the weak side:
- You must be somewhat familiar with max to get the most out of this book.
- An expert may already know a lot of the tips
- Not descriptive enough for the absolute beginner
I spent a lot of time trying to find more weak points of this book. The book is just too useful to find many. I really can't find anything that I would change about this book.
--vladdrac
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