Product Description

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 workflow
• Powerful new surfacing with the Node Editor
• Character modeling
• Bones and rigging for character animation
• Particle animation
• Hard body and soft body dynamics
• Rendering concepts with the new Global Render options
• Advanced 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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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #218459 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 744 pages

About the Author
Dan Ablan has been animating with LightWave 3D since 1989, and in 1994 he established his own business, AGA Digital Studios, which creates 3D animations for major corporations. Over the years he has written articles and tutorials for seminal 3D publications such as LightWave Pro, Video Toaster User, and 3D Design, and in1995 authored New Riders’ LightWave Power Guide. In 2003, Dan founded an educational division of AGA Digital dedicated to 3D tutorial courses, 3DGarage.com. For more information, visit www.danablan.com.

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Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.