Inside LightWave v9 | Dan Ablan | A must for Lightwave users

Inside LightWave v9 | Dan Ablan | The DVD is critical

books:

Inside LightWave v9

	Inside LightWave v9 Dan Ablan New Riders Press, 2006 - 744 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

You hold in your hands the best-selling guide to NewTek's LightWave 3D animation software, completely updated for LightWave v9 by award-winning animator and trainer Dan Ablan. Rather than rehash the documentation like other books, this down-to-earth, easy-to-follow guide offers an invaluable set of project tutorials that teach you the ins and outs of LightWave and show you the techniques you need to master this powerful 3D software. Inside LightWave v9's accompanying DVD features hours of high- quality video training tutorials that will help you take the projects in the book to new heights. No other book has taught more LightWave 3D users than Inside LightWave.

Featured tutorials cover:
Insights into the new LightWave v9 workflowPowerful new surfacing with the Node Editor Character modelingBones and rigging for character animationParticle animationHard body and soft body dynamicsRendering concepts with the new Global Render optionsAdvanced camera tools
Accompanying DVD-ROM offers hours of unique training videos created just for this book, exclusively from 3DGarage.com (requires QuickTime); a demo of LightWave v9 for Mac OS and Windows; all of the projects from the book; royalty-free textures and reference images; and full-color screenshots from the book!

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A must for Lightwave users

Any user of Lightwave v9 will find this in-depth reference has been completely updated for this latest version, comes from an award-winning animator and trainer, and offers a set of project tutorials which teach the program by example and project rather than the usual tutorial which focuses on concepts and ideas of applications. From character modeling and particle animation to hard and soft body dynamics and advanced camera tools, INSIDE LIGHTWAVE v9 offers up all the keys to success using tutorials based on real-world experiences, and will prove a must for Lightwave users and any comprehensive, in-depth computer program reference library.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

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The DVD is critical

My biggest complaint: you can't always tell what's "selected" from the images in the book. It's difficult to tell the difference between selected and unselected edges in the wireframe views. Also, some of the pages aren't fully inked, and the images on those pages aren't at all helpful. However, the DVD contains hi-rez, full-color versions. Either I never knew that or I forgot by the time I got to chapter ten, because I couldn't follow the penguin tutorial with the book images. Having discovered the DVD images, I'll re-read that chapter.

Also of value on the DVD, the videos extend the tutorials in the book. They aren't just a recap of the book tutorials; they're additional content, and they're quite good. There's so much video content, in fact, he couldn't fit it all on the DVD. There's additional free material on the author's website, though. As of August 2007 there are no videos available for chapters 15 and 16, though the chapter 14 video seems to indicate that there are. Also, there are objects and scenes missing from the DVD that are supposed to be used in the chapters 15 and 16 tutorials.

For many of the chapters I felt the book tutorials didn't go far enough, like they had ended too soon. The videos are necessary to continue the tutorial. While I gave credit for this additional material above, this is also a drawback to this book. I bought a book because I like that format. The videos are nice, but I prefer printed tutorials. As the book is already a hefty 700 pages, I'll just have to conclude that LightWave tutorials of this depth just don't fit in one book.

Also of note, this is very much a learn-by-example book. It is comprised almost entirely of tutorials. Remember that you have LightWave's manual as a reference, and Mr. Ablan reminds you of that throughout this book.

LightWave is a very deep program and this book doesn't cover every option available. It does cover a great deal of material, though. You'll get more than just a taste of what the program can do. The tutorials are easy to follow, and perhaps credit to the LightWave program itself, when Mr. Ablan tells you to do something you've done before, without explaining it again, you'll usually not cry out, "I don't remember how to do that!" Things that need to be explained are explained.

The Node Editor is a huge new addition to LightWave. Mr. Ablan does a fine job explaining how to use it, but in just one book he can only scratch the surface in explaining how to achieve specific effects. I hope the lighting and texturing books I've ordered cover this in more detail. If Mr. Ablan wrote a whole book about the Node Editor I'd surely get a copy.

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Easy to Understand - A Little Bit of Everything

This is a solid book. Coming in at 722 pages and including a lot of good content on the DVD, Dan Ablan's book covers most everything you need to use Lightwave 9. If you are a beginner, this is a great book. It may or may not be worthwhile if you consider yourself an intermediate, which is what I would consider myself. That said, Dan's workflow is solid. His tutorials are great and I found myself finding many better methods I should use rather than my own. One of the lengthiest and most detailed sections is wrapped around network rendering and setting up Screamernet. If network rendering is something you need and its a new concept to you, this is well worth the price of the book here.

I would say this is a must own if you are a beginner and a not-a-bad buy as an intermediate. Skip it if you consider yourself well versed in Lightwave's ins and outs.

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Missing just one thing...

I actually really enjoyed this book and thought it was quite helpful. Some reviewers seemed to dislike the fact that the author would continue the lessons with video files on the accompanying DVD, but I actually really enjoyed that way of learning. There were a few places where I wish he would have written more and done video less, but in general reading, watching, and then doing proved to be a very effective way to learn for me. Of course the best way to learn is very much based on personal preference, but this system worked well for me.

My biggest complaint is simply that Ablan omitted a topic that I thought should have been discussed in the book: UV mapping and unwrapping. Basically the art of unwrapping the polygons of a complex model into a flat template so that you can go into an image editor and paint textures on to the model. I know a little bit about this process, but it is one of my biggest problems with any 3d package that I have tried, and Ablan seemed almost completely avoid talking about the process, which was kind of a let down for me, and will probably result in me buying the competing book "essential lightwave 9".

Other than the omitting of that one topic, I thought everything else was covered very thoroughly, and made me a better lightwave user. Lightwave 9.3 has been out for a while now, so anything that the older reviews said about the book having material pertaining to a unreleased or finalized product is no longer valid. Like I said, I just wish he covered UV mapping and unwrapping, other than that, great book, great accompanying DVD, and great way of learning.

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Get LW v9.2 Beta first.

I actually wrote a review for this book but now I look back and it isn't here. Hmmmm. That's minus one star.

The good news:

Overall, I like the way the author writes. I like the layout of chapters and the step by step method they are written in, however I wish he would explain the goals of certain actions before jumping into the steps. I find myself reading through the chapter to figure out WHY I'm doing things and then attempting them using the steps as guides. (Minus one half star.) Besides that, the book is clear and well written and I haven't come across many errors in 10 of 16 chapters.

The videos are great, even if they didn't get all of them on to the DVD. Downloading them is simple enough once you find the link in the author's website.

The bad news: Most of the exercises in this book can be done with out the book files, but I like to look at the samples and see what the author has done. Unfortunately, LW v9.2 begin its beta during the creation of this book and at that point, the file format changed. You can't load the v9.2 files with v9. Since there is not a backward conversion utility, you can't use the files in the last half of the book unless you get into the v9.2 beta. I couldn't, so no files for the last half of the book for me. Beware. Minus one star.

Just to be nice, because besides the obvious rushed-to-print problems of the book, it is well written, I'm rounding up. So 3 stars. Once LW v9.2 leaves beta, Netwek puts a free update on their site, or the book comes with a title change (to Inside Lightwave v9.2), I'll up my review.

Note that I am very new to modeling but I have an extensive 3D graphics background from the programming side. I found the book easy to comprehend, but if you have less experience, don't take my word on it.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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