3D Books

This is a nice little book young children can enjoy during the holidays. The illustrations did not have quite the variety, color and detail I expected but the printing of the poem along with the
pictures makes for an interesting visual experience and is a good
way to contain grandchildren and keep them quiet for awhile!
Thank you, Martha Morrise

The whole family spends time together looking at them. It's amazing to see the pictures pop out at you and to figure out what they are.

These 3-D things really irked me until I finally got it. I don't have a clue as to how it works but all of a sudden I saw a snowman on the bookcover! Nice stocking stuffer kind of book.

My daughter loves the, "...'Twas the night before Christmas..." poem. We pass the book around so everyone can see the 3-D pictures (which drives my husband crazy!...he can't see 'em!) Very clever.

Both my children, 5 and 2 love this book and all the others that we have purchased in this series. The pictures are fantastic and the text informative. Depending on which child I read to, I either just point at the picture and tell them what it is or read them some of the text. My older child is fascinated at even the most detailed information...not that many kids that age know how to say and describe metamorphosis (in fact I couldn't remember the word now and I ran to ask my son what it was!) but mine does. Later, when they can read, I know that they are going to love going to even more detail by reading the books themselves. And when my children ask me questions, then these books are great to look up answers you don't know. These books are excellent!

My son was covering "bugs" in preschool, so I picked up this book. Knowing it was going to be really for older kids, I wasnt sure he was going to like it. These books are so well designed however that for 2 weeks now, he requests the "bug" book every night before bed. The only problem is that the pictures are so detailed and zoomed in that some of the images gives my wife and I the heebeegeevees.

The other great thing, is that this book will be a great book from him to grow into.

We are picking up more!

This would be a great book for use in elementary school science classes. It has a wonderful layout, with many beautiful photographs (if insects can be called beautiful). The text, mixed nicely with the pictures, covers basic information on insects as well as various interesting facts.

I'm a teacher and I find the Eyewitness books highly educational. I like the way the concepts are presented in a form without backgrounds. This gives clear facts to the reader without over taxing the attention span. The books are highly informative, presenting difficult concepts in comprehendable chunks that stimulate interest. I have almost the whole collection for my own children and they LOVE them!

I find that anyone wishing to learn 3D and solid modeling should read,"3D Modeling in AutoCAD" by John E. Wilson. The book takes one from UCS positioning and rotation, to isometric projected drawings in no time. Watching your solid model drawing evolve after reading several chapters, gives one a sense of confidence. Not to mention, a better change of landing that autoCAD job.

As a 3D AutoCAD instructor, I am delighted with this book and as a textbook! My students are successfully able to 3-D model most objects, independently, without emphasis on step-by-step directions. Althrough this book provides step-by-step instructions as Chapter exercises; primarily, each Chapter explains the variety of modelling usages for surfacing and creating solids. This book guides the student with alternatives to solving 3-D modelling techniques.

An excellent reference with very thorough, easy to follow explanations and exercises. John Wilson is an exemplary instructor, laying a solid foundation, and then building onto it in a logical manner. If you have any difficulty understanding "Paper Space", for instance, read John's explanation - he makes it crystal clear.

This book by John E.Wilson provides answers for a reader at any level of expertise. It gives you clear examples of useful problems instead of dwelling on obscure ones. All options of a command are shown and explained so you really learn to use the software to full advantage. I really like the detail because I can now pick up the other areas I never understood. I especially like the chapter on rendering and applying textures. I tried some of the examples and the rendered parts look real, especially the transparent ones.

Written in a very own Allen's style, this item offers great tips on common topics that not always, and not necesarily, are mastered by intermediate users. Onstott's work is very useful also. Very good purchase for new users who wish to push a little more. And for the Professionals? Not bad. A very good reminder about seemed-to-be-easy daily matters at office.
Paper and Printing quality of the product are simply excellent.

It is not surprising, considering the fact that Lynn Allen is the Technical Evangelist for Autodesk and that she meets with thousands of AutoCAD users every year, that once again her book is packed to the ceiling with fantastic tips, insights, tricks and strategies for putting AutoCAD in high gear. The book offers invaluable information in bite-sized morsels which can easily and gradually be implemented into any AutoCAD-based process to simplify and streamline it. Lynn also maintains an equally beneficial blog at [..] if you want a sampling of the kind of material conveniently compiled in this book. Highly recommended for anyone seeking "AutoCAD PowerUser" proficiency.

I have been using AutoCAD since 1992, after the first couple years of using AutoCAD, I stopped learning new tricks and learning better ways of using AutoCAD because I was able to do my job with the set of AutoCAD skills I have. This book helps me brush up my CAD skills and taught me many new tricks to be more efficient. It was never too late to teach an old dog new tricks!

This book is fantastic!! It really allows a power user more options and tips and tricks. Every tip ends up saving time and makes CAD more fun to use. Lynn keep up the great work.

overall a very helpful set, fine introduction to the toolset, but damn, this guy has THE stiffest voice ever, somebody needs to put down the mouse, untuck his shirttails and go experience life, like for a full year. after an hour of that i was so begging for it to end.

Very comprehensive and loaded with good tips that wouldn't be found in the manual. The only thing I would fault it on is having to have the CD in the computer in order to watch the videos. It would be much more convenient to able to download them to the hard disk and call up a specific chapter when the need arises. But overall certainly worth the investment.

A very comprehensive overview of Cinema 4D and its features. I have watched it again and again to gain nuggets of information that I may have missed, or to help remember certain details. No, it does not cover everything, but it covers a lot and will fuel your mind to want to learn more. He walks you through the tools and also through projects. Modeling a spoon is a great first project. The comb project is also nice. One of my favorite instructions is the one on MoGraph, an add-on module. I sometimes double-check my object hierarchy against his lessons when things are not going quite right. I really like his somewhat laid back attitude, it makes it easier to learn.

For beginning to intermediate level this is the clearest and most helpful tutorial on C4D. It does not cover many advanced topics like the complexities of UV mapping or much on Mocca, but the basics are covered clearly and the lessons are short and informative.

This book is full of great recipes which are easy to make and us ingredients that everyone has on hand.

I bought the book at a trade show, and the lady said, the recipe for "Upside Down Apple French Toast" would be a new Christmas tradition. Was she ever right!!!! It is so lucious, and painfully easy, that my family insists we have it for Christmas morning!! It's just not Christmas without it!! (And it's a secret Santa gift for mom because I can throw it together in minutes, the night before!!!) She's right,, this IS "required reading"!!!!

This cookbook contains recipes from different B&B's around the state of Colorado. The bonus of this cookbook is that there is also a short description of the bed and breakfast along with contact information should what you read strike your fancy. (Or better yet, what you cook.)

The Colorado Bed & Breakfast Cookbook is outstanding. It is two books in one, a travel guide to 85 B&B'S in the Colorado area, and a cookbook. The recipes are all tested by Carol Faino and she gives helpful hints in "Carol's Corner". Carol Faino & Doreen Hazledine are also publishing a Washington State Bed & Breakfast Cookbook, coming out in late March 1998. It to will feature 85 Bed & Breakfast in Washington State.

Over the past couple of months I've read a small pile of computer graphics books from the "Inspired" and New Riders [digital] series and others. I would put 3D design in the position of being one of the first practial how-to books a beginner should work with. Each section is clearly laid out, doesn't confuse with too much detail, and helps you gently step into CG. This book will get you oriented and everything after this will just be deeper studies in specific areas.

A lush, beautiful introduction to the world of 3D. Perfect for newbies and those just wondering what 3D is all about. Plus it includes a Cinema 4D tutorial (building a photo-realistic pool cue).

This book left me wanting more from this publisher and this author.

The BEST book out there for beginning 3D artists. Period. Should be included with all 3D software packages. If you're thinking about getting into 3D design, buy this first!!!!!!

Digital 3D Design is like a visual dictionary for the 3D design world. Out of all the 3D books I own, this is the one I recommend the most in teaching 3D and animation classes (with Bill Fleming's Photorealistic Toolkit a close second!).

It covers concepts and terms (introductory and advanced) in very clear and concise ways, fully illustrated.

It discusses all the major 3D packages, including Maya, LightWave, Cinema 4DXL, ElectricImage, SoftImage and others, discussing advantages of each.

It covers views, 3D space, lighting, shading, textures, resolution, UV mapping, splines, curves, polygons, points, advanced modeling concepts, raytracing, rendering, radiosity, setting up skeletons, animation, inverse kinematics--everything you'd expect if you were looking for the ideal textbook for a 3D class (I'm using it for my modeling and animation classes).

All this for around less than $30. A book every 3D designer, and instructor, should own! Highly recommended.

I purchased this book to help my daughter and I get started with potty training. I found it to be geared more to an older toddler, rather than my daughter who is just under 2. I've purchased some other books that seem to be more of what I'm looking for. Since there is some useful information and the activities look like something she'd enjoy when she's a little bit older, I'm planning to hang onto it in the event we're still training when she's closer to 3.

This was the only resource I found that truly helped me potty train my 3year-old son... He would fight it and have accidents everyday until we began using the ideas supplied in this book... It was fun and entertaining for us both and made training alot less stressful for us both!!! Buy it!

There are hilarious songs, great ideas for rewards, and a variety of activities to help you get your child engaged in toilet training. A great gift for parents!

My daughter is going on 3. She had become uninterested in using the potty. She was back in diapers when I got the book, and I just gave it to her. She was surprised and proud and it worked! We took it with us on bathroom visits and she didn't want diapers anymore.

Though a book of the 90's I have just used this book as a text in my course on virtual architecture in our computer graphics program. It worked superbly. The text stimulated long fruitful discussions (some for three unbroken hours) and put students in the state of mind to produce 3D based sites of significant meaning. Students took to heart Anders cautionary assessments on designing cyberspace and produced work that leapt well ahead of the work they were producing prior to the discussions. Anders chooses all of the best sources for his analysis of the similarities and contrasts between actual space and cyberspace, especially his use of Jean Piaget's interactional psychology as a base.

This is an extremely thorough introduction to cyberspaces and has many beautiful illustrations. This is an intellectually sophisticated book for non-computer scientists. It begins with a rigorous intellectual picture and then continues to survey existing cyberspaces with many insights along the way, that will please even techno-nerds.

The book fills in many details in the history of building cyberspaces.

Next year in cyberspace!

The accelerating growth of personal computing over the past two decades and the unprecedented rise of the Internet in the 1990s has led to a countless number of books. Many deal with particular aspects of this revolution - linear historical accounts, analysis of emergent psycho-social phenomena, how-to manuals on the latest program or technology, etc.. Very few however, manage to capture a broad overview and comprehensive analysis of this explosion. Fewer still have documented the wide array of less common technologies and research efforts that have accompanied and in many cases, presaged, the more familiar aspects of today's cyberspace.

It's not surprising then, that a uniquely comprehensive view should come from a member of the original generalist profession - architecture. In "ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE: Designing 3D Electronic Spaces," architect and media theorist, Peter Anders has succeeded in delivering one of the best and rarest overviews of the beginnings of the Information Age.

Integrity demands that I disclose that some of my own work is featured in this book, but what I discovered to my great surprise and delight, is that it's also filled with many incredible technologies and ideas that I was unaware of. Such is the difficulty in being aware of everything that's going on in our rapidly evolving era.

Anyone interested or involved in the design and development of information technologies would do well to read this book. The future is not limited to just a simple extrapolation of what's most commonly known today. The real Information Age is a vast, barely explored region of possibility around us and ahead. We're lucky to have Peter Anders serving as both Lewis and Clark.

Something that makes Peter Anders' _Envisioning Cyberspace_ especially interesting is that it's the work of an architect and designer, for whom the issues of designing workable, user-centered cyberenvironments are comprehensible. He's gathered and comments upon a wide-ranging collection of work that he finds interesting, efforts that approach and address the big issues if not always fully realizing them. It often reminds me of the 1991 anthology _Cyberspace: First Steps_ edited by Michael Benedikt (another architect), or some of the hot early-'90s books on Virtual Reality, in that it's full of enthusiasm and enjoyment at the elegance of possible solutions. In this hard-nosed commercially-driven era that's a breath of fresh air; the real kind, not the virtual.

This book is pretty thorough in covering all the aspects of digital cinematography, such as what the production process looks like, how to construct a compelling story, camera direction, lighting..... The sections on Lighting are especially thorough and very much tailored for the "Digital" part of Digital Cinematography, with easy to follow examples of how to create different lighting schemes in a 3D environment. Also, the artist spotlights on professionals working in the animation industry are very good to read as they add other insights and help you understand how they think and use this information. With most of the educational art books that I look for, good visuals are very important, and this book doesn't dissappoint. Great examples of 3D animation to illustrate the points of the book.

Exploring Digital Cinematography is the perfect source to inspire or inform those looking to leap into the fields of animation and film. From those with little to no experience to those with countless numbers of years in the field, this book provides detailed knowledge about topics such as color theory, cameras, and lighting that will help pave the way to create a visual masterpiece. Mr. Donati provides plenty of pictorial guidance to help ease students into learning the subject material. He also provides some hard truths that few beginners to the field realize before making the decision to enter animation. One specific overtone to this book that makes it a great reference is that animators are film makers and artists first. There is no way around that. Make great films, animation, and art with the help of this book. Highly recommended.

This book is a great resource for animation instructors or anyone looking to improve their skills as an animator. As the title indicates, it is built around the premise that good animators are first and foremost filmmakers--a fact that few budding animators consider. Donati walks readers through the entire animation process, and I've used several of the sections in both intro and upper-level classes. It conversational tone makes the text fun to read and there are plenty of graphics to reinforce the lessons. His thorough explanations of color theory, storyboarding and camera work make my lessons in these areas more effective. The accompanying CD-rom is full of helpful material as well, including a fantastic tutorial on 3-point lighting. If every 3D student followed this, there would be no more floating figures hovering above the ground when they should be running on it! Finally there's a book that covers the essential cinematographer's skills as they apply to animators. Strongly recommended.

This book is perfect for anyone hoping to gain a greater understanding of all facets of digital cinematography and producing films/animations.

Super for use in the classroom and personal projects. The thing I like most is that the chapters give a nice basic overview then go into great detail for those that want a lot more.

-Michael