Product Description

Are you an artist ready to try your hand at 3ds Max 8? Beginning Game Art in 3ds Max 8 gives you the skills you need to hit the ground running, covering the basics of this amazing program. It is filled with step-by-step instructions and sample projects from actual games. Fine-tune your new skills as you learn to build objects, environments, and characters. You will also learn the basics of rigging and animating your game characters. Using this book's hands-on approach, you'll jump right in and begin creating your own art using the amazing features of 3ds Max 8.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1610958 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Les Pardew was born and grew up in Idaho. His home town was a small farming community where he learned the benefits of hard work. His graduating high school class only numbered 33 individuals. From this small beginning Les has grown to become a recognized leader in interactive entertainment.

Les Pardew is a video game and entertainment industry veteran with over 20 years of industry experience. His artwork includes film and video production, magazine and book illustration and more than 100 video game titles. He is the author or co-author of eight books.
Game Art for Teens
Beginning Illustration and Storyboarding
Game Design for Teens
Mastering Digital Art
The Animation Reference Book
Basic Drawing for Games
Game Art for Teens 2nd Edition
Beginning Game Art in 3ds max
Everyone Should Draw
Game Character Animation All In One
Figure Drawing With Virtual Models
Maya 3ds Max Side-by-Side

Les started his career in video games doing animation for Magic Johnson Fast Break Basketball for the Commodore 64, He went on to help create several major games including Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Star Wars, Wrestle Mania, NCAA Basketball, Stanley Cup Hockey, Jack Nicholas Golf , Where in the World/USA is Carman Sandiego, Starcraft Broodwars, Rainbow six and Cyber Tiger Woods Golf to name a few.

Les is an accomplished teacher having taught numerous art and business courses including teaching as an adjunct faculty member at Brigham Young University¿s Marriott School of Management.

Dan Whittington launched his career in the video game world of 2D and 3D modeling and animation at Sculptured Software, where he worked on such titles as Mortal Kombat, MechWarrior, Turok, NBA Jam, WrestleMania, War Zone, Combat Medic, Snow Cross 2, and Need for Speed 2. Whittington is the owner of IMAGE Art & Design and also teaches at SLCC as an adjunct instructor.

Customer Reviews

Stay away until the files are available for download...
The model sheets for Chapters 4, 6 & 7 are missing from the companion CD, rendering the majority of the book impossible to follow. Chapters 3 and 5 also demonstrate some dubious modeling and texturing techniques with enough omissions in the text that a beginner is certain to be lost.

Also, how can game art production be discussed seriously without some reference to baking textures and exporting to Direct X?

Find another Max 8 book
Avoid this book and spend your time on another if you want to learn Max. There are numerous files required for the tutorials that are missing from the CD, and easily dozens of omission/typos that will have you going in wrong directions if you don't figure things out on your own. I even contacted the publisher re: this and they simply pointed me to their website that has the downloadable color versions of the book's black & white screenshots, but they haven't bothered to make the missing textures and guide images available.

This book was simply not edited nor were the tutorials tested in Max after the authors wrote it. Seriously, don't even buy this used as you will not get your money's worth. LOUSY!!!!!!

Missing Files
This book is terrible. It's hard to follow and the majority of the files needed to follow the exercises are missing from the CD. Even after you get the missing files from the publisher's site, the book is difficult to follow. I have some experience with 3DS Max and I could not imagine having a new user attemping to create the P-51 in Chapter 4.