Insights and ideas from an award-winning author! Expert Advice. John Chismar provides a glimpse into the way he and his team function, complete with tips and tricks to enhance reader skills. Quality... This description may be from another edition of this product.
The Benchmark for All Tutorial-Style Computer Text Books
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This book is a fantastic example of how all computer text books should be structured - Step-by-step tutorials that demonstrate experienced solutions to real-world projects. I know I speak for many people when I say that I learn by DOING, not by reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text and lengthy descriptions of "what this app can do for you". No one likes to attempt to digest a "features description" manual and try to piece together the various complexities of a high-end application like 3DS MAX from various disjointed sources. I need a seasoned, talented professional, with years of industry experience, to step me through exactly how an application performs various industry tasks, e.g. how to make a 30-second TV spot from scratch, how to make a highly-professional News program opener, or how to make robotic-looking voting machines animated together in a 3-camera shoot. John Chrismar performs this tasks with a detail and finesse that is extremely hard to find in the computer textbook industry. I look for this style in every computer book I pick up, but don't often find it, if at all. The industry giants on the programming side of the industry, like Wrox Press, should use John's book as an example of how to write an effective computer textbook. Don't waste my time with information overload, stuffed together losely by a quasi-team of 6 geeks. SHOW ME how you solved a problem with the application or programming language, from start to finish, while I follow along, bit by bit, line by line, click by click. Show me how to build a genuine and valuable creation using the tool you are teaching me to use. This is exactly what John does.I started with the last of three tutorials and worked backward through the book, because the News Program Opener tutorial looked the most intriguing. I learned more about 3DS MAX after that one tutorial then I had by reading the documentation or from any of the other three 3DS MAX books I own. I saw someone else mention that there were some small mistakes and missed "figure" numbers on the screenshots here and there, but this did not detract from completing the tutorials in the slightest. Two extra seconds of thought got me passed these minor editing oversights very easily, and they were very minor in comparison to most computer textbooks.It was beyond refreshing to witness and practice along with a professional at work from beginning to end: from importing your vectors from Illustrator, to cleaning up the splines, to extruding, modelling each piece, assembling, naming conventions, creating materials, shortcuts, to animating, adding a soundtrack, right down to post-production and final render. I absolutely can not stand books where Step 1 is "Import our half-finished Design #643.2 from our accompanying CD-ROM". Not the case with this book. You are stepped through the process, end to end. When you are done with each tutorial, you have a finished work of media art THAT YOU CREATED and a head full of usable,
An Excellent Reference...
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
About two weeks ago I purchased John Chrismar's "Media Animation" book, and I must say that I am very impressed with this book. Having completed the three projects, and am now reviewing the final real world case studies, I think I'll toss in my two cents worth here. Maybe this will be useful for the next guy, maybe not. This book appears to be geared for the beginner to intermediately skilled 3ds max user (perhaps with an emphasis towards intermediate). The first tutorial (Funhouse billboard) covers most of the basics. While I already new most of the stuff covered here, I did learn a few handy tips and tricks I hadn't known before. You get exposed to just about all of the basics that become the foundation for the rest of the book in this tutorial. The final animation was pretty cool, although the sound track that went with it made me want to barf. Oh well, its the learning that matters.The second tutorial (Vote:2000) was in some ways simpler than the first although it had some interesting material editor stuff that I found very handy. Learning the use of DOF was cool although it bogged down my machine rendering for quite awhile. The final product was a cool animation with a nice soundtrack (I wouldn't be embarrassed to show this to my friends). The third (and best IMO) tutorial was the TV3 News Open. Now here's where the book really earned its price. An excellent walkthough on pro looking logo development. Excellent workflow with lots of good pointers on using the material editor and video post to pull off some very nice looking stuff. I learned alot in this one, stuff thats hard to pull out of your 3ds max manuals. I wish the whole book had more stuff like this one.There are a few points which are not so great and deserve a small amount of attention.1. Many of the illustrations are not correct in this book. The text will say something like "... as shown in figure x.xx". Then you look at figure x.xx and it has an image of something else altogether. Looks like some proofing problems here. If you're the type who DEPENDS on illustrations, you might get a bit frustrated. This happens quite a bit in this book. If you're already somewhat experienced with max then this probably won't be a big problem, more of an annoyance since the text is very accurate.2. I had some problems with the Funhouse video post glow. This however is not the authors fault. Once the glow is applied and you try to render the scene, max has a fatal error everytime. It appears to be a problem with max 4.2x. I had to re-install max 4.0 to get this tutorial done. The basic problem appears to be between the enviornment map and the video post glow effect. If you have a map in the enviornment map slot and then use the video post glow, the error occurs pretty reliably. Take out either the map or glow and everything works fine. So if you're using max 4.2x then you'll want to either downgrade or ditch one of the effects. Like I said tho, this isn't Chrismar
No other 3DS book has even come close. Really!
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Every 3D Studio book other than these Media Animation books are more or less useless. The author's try to cram every nook and cranny of 3D Studio Max into the book. They stretch what could be an easily understood one-sentence explanation into an entire page or even chapter. The result is the knowledge of tools without the know-how to use them efficiently. Don't get me wrong, this book also explains the tools, (I've been using max for years and didn't even know some of the tools I used for project 3 in this book existed until the author showed me) but it does so as you are working on projects in the book: you learn as you go. This book, 3D Studio Max 4 Media Animation, and the media animation book for MAX 3 are truly the most useful books for 3D Studio. I have learned more from these books, than every other 3D Studio Max book combined. The author, unlike most, gives you explanations on how to make things look great and stand out. He doesn't hold back his `secrets' to avoid anyone reaching his creative level like I feel a lot of authors do sometimes. What I like the most about this book is that it's not made up of 500 little scenes. He doesn't show you how to render a scene with fog, and then let you sit there wondering what the hell to do with it while he moves on to the next snippet like every other book. He has 3 large full-blown projects in his book. You actually create something useful, professional, and finalized. Most books tend to skip over the important things that actually make animations look realistic, not this Author... Realistic lighting, animated lens flares, realistic textures (in depth), transitions (combines multiple movies into one and animates them with crazy transitions) and so many other important things are covered in each of the projects. Most of all, he makes scenes in such a way that they are easy to build, and have unbelievable results. YOU WON'T come to a line where he is vague and tells you to do something, and you spend 5 hours trying to figure out what he was talking about. "Where's that tool? Is that a typo? That menu item isn't in my version! My outcome is completely different!" That usually always happens to me when I'm following a different book, or an online tutorial. It won't happen in these books. He shares his style, and shares his thought process while you are working through each project. He is a professional. The only thing this book lacks, is a successor. But I hope, in time he will release another book. His books just keep getting better. I would also recommend that you buy his first book: 3D Studio Max 3 Media Animation. If you're like me, your usually apprehensive about buying books for software that is for an older version, but that doesn't matter in this case. His previous book is built just like this one. It has other projects though, and you learn how to use other tools and techniques. Anyhow, back to this book. If you buy this book, I guarantee you will be extremely thankful, just like me. Thanks
How to be a pro...
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
I've been using 3D Studio since it was a version 3 dos based application. I could fill a bookcase with all the "How-to" books I have. This was by far one of the best. Mr. Chismar didn't just teach you how to model and animate but how to create something that was ready for primetime. I hope he does another book soon!!
Another Winner
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
"Another Winner" (for ISBN 0-7357-1059-7)In his latest "3ds max 4 Media Animation" book, award winning animator John P. Chismar demonstrates once again that not only is he extremely skilled in the use of 3D Studio MAX, he is also a superb communicator and teacher, and is able to transfer effectively his knowledge to others.There are several features that move his book to the front of the pack and make it one that most MAX users will truly enjoy. To begin, the projects are fun, and that's important when you're learning new techniques. When you reach the end of a section, the results of your efforts should demonstrate not only what it is hoped you've just learned, but also verify the professional skills of your instructor. In every chapter, it's obvious that the author has paid a great deal of attention to the small details that make the reader's life easier. Step-by-step instructions are meticulously designed, and complimented by an abundant collection of screen shots that ease you through procedures that otherwise would appear extremely complicated.....allowing you to focus on learning and creating, rather than wasting time trying to guess what is required to complete each step. Repeating a procedure several times during the course of a project is an effective technique for `painless' learning, and more useful than simply studying a manual, and the author utilizes this approach to great advantage. While this would appear to be a logical idea in any book of tutorials, the author has mastered this art better than most. This is not a book for theorists, but one for those who wish to expand their practical knowledge. In addition, maps, sound files, and everything related to the project, except MAX and the will to learn, are provided on the CD that accompanies the book, so the reader can focus entirely on the tutorials and not spend time creating maps and audio files. After a number of years of working with 3D Studio MAX, I feel reasonably comfortable with the program and can usually generate what I require. Why then would I be interested in purchasing another book of tutorials? The answers to that question are simple. First, I don't work in media animation, but it's something we see everyday and most MAX enthusiasts I know are always eager to expand their horizons and learn new or different things. The author takes the reader into his world, and, after only a few hours of working on one of his projects, one begins to appreciate what a fascinating world it is. Second, if one works somewhat independently most of the time, it's often easy to acquire sloppy habits such as moving the mouse to a menu instead of right clicking or not using an appropriate key stroke. I'll admit that I'm guilty of this sometimes. Working through one of John's books helps me improve my efficiency, and rediscover better ways to approach a project. Often there are several paths one can follow to accomplish the same goal in MAX, and because the program has so many features that
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