3D Books

I had expected more focus on the word "Foundations", but the brief introduction to output primitives was sorely lacking. For instance, they cover, in detail, the Bresenham line-drawing algorithm, but they completely ignore the midpoint-circle drawing algorithm; it would have been nice to see a Java implementation of this.

I was also disappointed that all of the code in the book is subclassed off of any previous code. This is OK in the first couple of examples, but, when one goes further through the text, it becomes difficult to determine just what methods they are calling in their code, and where they come from.

So, in short, the book should not be used as one's sole introduction to the fundamentals of graphics programming, but it might serve as a good counterpart to learn some Java-specific implementations.

This book is of no avail to a student of computer graphics. Not only are the explanations in this book sorely incomplete, they are so poorly written that they require hours of careful examination to determine that they are incomplete. All throughout the book the author leads you on by making you think that you are about to be told something useful. You never are. Additionally, the code given in the book will often not compile or fail to execute properly. You will be very disappointed if you buy this book.

This book was theoretically written to be a introduction to OpenGL using the cross platform JOGL bindings. It fails to accomplish this task by providing incomplete instructions to get JOGL working, and extremely confusing convoluted example code. I am a professional computer programmer, and rarely have I come across such bad code. Furthermore, the algorithms discussed in this book are explained by confusing code rather than in words. To top it off, the author(s) must not be fluent in English. I had to read many sentences over several times in order to understand the poor English.

OpenGL is one of the most popular graphics languages around. And Java has some graphics capability, in 2d and 3d. But recently, JOGL has emerged. It is essentially a Java wrapper around the OpenGL routines, which are far richer than what comes with native Java.

The book attempts two things. One is a teaching of 3d graphics. Involving the extensive maths, which is mostly matrix algebra. The other is how to accomplish this in Java, using Java3D and JOGL. The first is done fairly well. A good introduction to the most common graphics ideas, like hidden surface removal and transparency. It is unclear, though, how well the second task is done. Java3D seems simple enough. The coverage of JOGL does at least give you an understanding of common OpenGL routines that you'll probably need.

I was on the waiting list to buy this book before it was released. I was expecting some good intermediate information on JOGL that was along the lines of implementation and Graphics architecture concepts. Boy was I dissapointed. This is a survey of OPENGL not particularly JOGL. This is the kind of book a professor would assign a freshmen programmer to read. They went to far into the details of the matrix mathematics behind the graphics library instead of practical implementation. Dont get me wrong knowing how things work is a must but dont sell yourself as anything more than a survey of graphics programming.

And I say 'PEN' in the title because this guy obviously has no idea of how to use a computer.

This book is just a copy-and-paste of various manuals that comes with software. Its badly written, impossible to follow and the examples of the author's work is below bad - Its embarrasing to look at.

Save your money and look for a real book instead.

The tutorials were confusing. Most of the book was spent mindnumbingly going through each tool and describing what each one does much like a manual. However this book neglected to explain any useful way of using any of the tools, much like a manual.

I can't express how bad this book is. Folks, in all honesty this book offers no more insight or at the very least tips and tricks, than the user manual for PiXELS:3D. Do yourself a favor and just go to the PiXELS:3D site and download the PDF and demo for the program. I did, and let me tell you that Mr. "Sham" must have as well becaue his book had nothing to contribute. You'd be much better off getting the Power User CD!!!

I gave his book 1 star merely because I could not give it anything less.

Everything is pretty straight forward in this book and easy to pick up on (except for the tutorials in the last couple of chapters.) If you want to learn all the tools and how to use them then this book is perfect. Although there could be more of an explanation on how and what the tools can be used for. I recommend it for all beginners.

this is a very excellent book about Pixels....Although it didnt touch much on IK, i highly enjoyed it....

View chapters Guide and Plug-Ins Lis

This book is a big waste of time and money. It shows you pictures of mediocre plugins, and the plugin authoring section is completely pathetic.

This book was made for a quick buck and nothing else. Not only is it out of date, the free plug-ins they give you only work with old versions of MAX. There are other MAX books that are much better. About as helpful as Cliff Notes on a bad day.

View chapters Guide and Plug-Ins Lis

This book is nothing more than a rehash of the small tutorials most plugin author send with their product. You'd have more luck playing with the plugin and learning through it's interface than making sence of the gibberish put out by the Reeses. This book is totally unessary and a waste of good paper. Nothing here that you can't find better on the net.

Low poly modeling is certainly a technique that warrants discussion. Unfortunately, this book glazes over many of the important steps that readers want/need to know in taking the process from start to finish. Some of the techniques shown prove valuable, but the overall coverage of the subject left me wanting for more. There was too much 'hey...how'd you do that?' and not enough 'here's how you do that'. Far too many steps left out. If money's tight...I'd probably keep looking.

I really wanted to like this book. Maybe my expectations were too high, but this book to me is far from the complete character design. It's more of a quick overview. The whole book seems to be written in a let's-get-it-over-with attitude. You can find much better character tutorials online (I did). On top of that, I find the character rather dull looking, especially since he was supposed to be the main character in a game and not just another NPC. The modelling part of the book may be hard to follow for a noob (but that may be true with any written tutorials on modelling. Modelling video tutorials are much easier to follow), the rigging and skinning part is rather confusing and poorly explained, laying UVs too (very little tweeking is done, which is essential in order to have textures without stratching), animation is limited to a few basic moves and the Photoshop part is rather basic (again, this supposed to be the main character, so the textures should reflect that). So all and all, this book is not worth buying, it brings nothing that was not explained in a much better way by someone else - be it an author of another book or an author of an online tutorial.

This book does what it says it does: It explains you how to model a character, how to texture it and how to animate it using the character studio plugin. I would have left the word "Complete" from the title. There are other aspects of character design for example the use of normal maps that aren't discussed in this book. You should take a look at the website of Ben Mathis to get more information about character design for computergames.

[...]

This book is bad. The character built wastes so many polygons that using their technique you will easily create a character with four time the amount of polygons of that of a regular game character and with a quarter of the detail. All this book can do is create bad habbits and you would be much better off not giving this a second thought. Every thing taught here can pretty much be found in any other 3Ds Max book and with much better and less confusing detail. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY OR TIME HERE

Just like all the other books from this publisher the tutorials are badly written with many holes in the descriptions. After much frustration I have started to use the tutorials in Help, which have proved much easier to understand.

This book is great! It heled me a bunch, I showeed some of my work to my boss and i got a promotion! But i really am a comp freak if you arent you should never even consider this book.

This author is not much of a writer or a teacher, this is not just my opinion, it is a fairly universal fact. Mr. Mortier has a strong reputation for his great quantity and consistency low quality/high price computer books. Please understand, this isn't your ordinary computer book - this one has been written by Shamms Mortier.

Shamms idea of teaching is to point out the onscreen buttons, and make the reader crank the parameters to their maximum settings to see what they do. Rarely does he explain the underlying concepts of the program or show the reader how to combine concepts to make something useful. Not to mention that his 'art' is of extremely poor taste and quality. This book is BAD. I have a couple working theories as how a book of this low quality was written. First of, Shamms Moritier must have left it to the last minute, the weekend before it was due. I also believe that his monitor must have broken down this weekend, or maybe he doesn't have a monitor, either way he sat down to write this book without the convience of a visual representation of the text. After typing up as much stuff that he could think of off the top of his head, he emailed this text off to the publisher.

This is the only explanation that covers all the facts, unless Shamms Mortier is a con-artist.

The book is not that bad. It isn't that good either. The problem I had/have is that the .mov movie files on the CD don't work with Windows 95/NT 4.0. I have sent numerous e-mails to Ventana and they refuse to fix the problem. My recommendation: Don't buy books from this publisher.

R. Shamms Mortier should reconsider his line of work. He has no business writing books that deal in computer graphics -a subject he obviously knows little to nothing about. His ideas are weak and his graphics are terrible. The average beginner can learn more from the Manuals included with RayDream Studio. I strongly reccomend the "Ray Dream Handbook" (available at amazon.com) it is far superior to any of the dribble that Mr. Mortier is spitting out.

There isn't a lot to this book. While Mortier warns the reader that the book is not for beginners, there isn't a lot for a mid-level RayDream user either. The examples are more art gallery pieces than step-by-step explanations, and the CD-ROM files don't add much content.

As with other Ventana (the publisher) books I own, there are irritating typos and incorrect cross-references that suggest sloppy proofreading and prepress checking. It's a shame, because it reflects badly on the author, who probably had little to do with the foul-ups. The technical content seems to be accurate -- I found no obvious errors.

Mortier seems to know his stuff, and his writing style is pleasant and easy to follow. It seems his publisher let him down. What this book needed was direction. A more specific topic and good editing would have made this book a good one.

Final recommendation: if you can get this book at a discount, consider it. Try to spend a few minutes looking the book over before you buy it.

Having read the previous reviews of this book I feel that they are a little unfair to say the least.

I bought this book with the understanding that the book (and code) are over 5 years old, and anyone with any knowledge of computers will know that operating systems have evolved a great deal, but the underlying worth will remain for the forseeable future.

Having read texts on OpenGL and done quite a bit of coding with OpenGL I wanted to learn about writing my own 3D library to gain a deeper understanding of what is going on. "Getting under the hood" as some people like to say!

The combination of the text and the source code has allowed me to gain a good understanding and I am now starting to apply the lessons learned from it to my own programs.

Buying this book will depend on what you are looking to learn. If you just want to write little 3D demos go out and buy The Red Book or the OpenGL Superbible. If you want all aspects of computer graphics get Computer Graphics: Principals and Practice by Foley and Van Dam (which is over 10 years old!! oh no!). This book covers some aspects that these other texts touch on, but is more a guide on how to apply techniques to real applications using some simple (and not so simple) tricks.

I have not finished reading the book yet, but have learned a lot about applying 3D graphics, rather than the theory behind it (which I already had a firm grounding of). The theory covered is backed up with sample implementations in the source code which make understanding much easier.

This book is not for the hard of thinking! Converting code from 16-bit to 32-bit and compiling it properly is not too difficult, and would provide an interesting and educational challenge to anyone who has an interest in it.

There is no attempt made to demonstrate building a highly complex 3D library anything like OpenGL, but what is provided is an easily extended library that has some nice features.

I would like to thank the Author, Philip Taylor, for his help with source code, and his very prompt response to the questions I have asked him (which I'm sure seem trivial, but they have genuinely helped me out). Thank you.

If you are considering buying this book, first ask yourself what you are wanting to learn, then decide.

"3D Graphics Programming in Windows" just sucks. the code does not compile in any compiler! Also i must mention the all the 3d algorithems are old, and useless. I dont recommend anyone to buy this book.

When I first purchased the book I was extremely excited but after reading it and especially trying the listings out I was disappointed. The code does not compile cleanly and is full of mistakes. I would never recommend this to another programmer.

Programmers purchase a book such as this one to learn a topic and examine the code to get an intuitive understanding. The code is worthless, and the explanations are even poorer. Every attempt to ask the author to put out a cleaned up version is met with resentment and finger pointing. Get the OpenGL books if you want to understand 3D programming.

This book and CD roms are worthless for modeling. I found maybe 1 percent useful models. You will have better luck on 3d Cafe or some other free site!

A catalogue of nicely rendered images, yes. Fine for your coffee table, but no use whatso-ever for any 3D work.
All of the poly meshes supplied are (poorly) auto-reduced versions of the original geometry that the images in the book were rendered with. At best, the supplied meshes can only contain 5% of the orignal geometry. You will find highter resolution models on a games console than on this CD. There are one or two "high res" models included on the CDROM, but they're not worth bothering about.

As an example of how weak this is, take the aircraft model that has a 350k two tone tif texture (could have been 4k) which was actually bigger then the 300k .3DS file. Many of the textures themselves are pooly produced, badly sized or badly anti-aliased, so if you're thinking it's worth the money just for the textures, then think again.

If you like pretty pictures, then get it. If you want 3D models then simply don't bother with this.

Most of the models in this package are nice, maybe too nice. I was hoping there would be some low-poly models suitable for gaming, and could only use about 5 straight out of the box. The rest were high-poly count models, although I was able to optimize a few more models to use. The book is small, the dimensions of a CD only thicker. The texture are fairly nice, but a few are kind of dull looking, but what do you expect for less than ten cents per model?
I was looking for WWII era models myself, and there were quite a few actually, but there is a nice wide selection of models in this package. Everything from ancient warships to the Bismarck to a 1940 USA Harley Davidson. There are aircraft, animals, architecture, cars, civil and military ships, motorcycles, etc...
There is a little bit of everything, and almost every model is excellent. The Tiger tank was a thing of beauty when I imported it into my game engine.
It's definitely worth the asking price if you want some high quality .3ds format models.

The best that can be said for this garbage from Taschen is that it's "only" [$$]. There is about a 1% (that's right, one percent) chance you will find something you can use, in which case you will get your money's worth.

1. Of the 500 models, only 20 to 30 are any good -- 20 or 30 out of 500! The vast majority, as another reviewer has noted, are of VERY low resolution. A high-resolution model can be reduced for game development -- but the reverse cannot be done.

The images are very deceptive -- clearly made from hi-res models.

2. Whoever developed the CDs should be drawn and quartered. Many path names are wrong. So you will spend a lot of time browsing to reestablish the paths to image maps.

3. Worst of all, many of these are FREE on line. Check the back cover for the URL of the company that actually made the models (deespona.com). There, you will find many free models -- in original Max format (not 3ds, as on these CDs) and with path names intact, etc.

This book is so bad, I'm considering filing a consumer complaint (since once you've opened the CDs, you can no longer return the book).

It is my long time desire to find a better graphics software to visualize my research project. However, because of overstuffed schedule of daily life, I have to keep using the tool I have been using to meet the deadline.
In this holiday season, I picked this book and I think I found a shortcut to the place where I can get an up-to-date overview for the numerous graphics tools. This book provides a concise description to computer graphics principles, which help readers to better understand the graphics tool. More valuable to me, this book summarizes 266 graphics software tools by application category. Now I am sure I got a better view for the graphics tools in the current world and I know where I can find them. This book will be an excellent reference book on my desk.

In addition to his lack of mastery of the English Language, the author seems to lack the organizational skill to put useful information together in a useful way. I flipped through this outdated book at the library and I discovered that I could find better information by doing ten minutes of Google searching. As said in a previous review, the book contains a lot of references to outdated technology and contains little information about the fundamental concepts of graphics programming. This is a terrible book, If you can, go to a college library and look through it before buying, I am sure you will decide not to.

This book will not teach you computer graphics techniques, nor will it teach you OpenGL. What it mainly provides is an index of products -both free and commercial - that can be of use to people who already understand computer graphics programming and OpenGL. What's worse, the book is really very tied to its date of publication, and by now many of the websites mentioned in the book are dead links. Also, technology has outgrown or started to outgrow many of the graphics tools mentioned. For example, there is a section on virtual reality that talks a great deal about Open Inventor and VRML as though they are current tools when in fact technologies such as X3D and MPEG4 have largely replaced them. The table of contents are:
PART 1- A Shortcut to Computer Graphics Principles
Objects and Models
Transformation and Viewing
Color and Lighting
Blending and Texture Mapping
Advanced Topics
Part 2- Computer Graphics Software Tools
Low-Level Graphics Libraries
Visualization
Modeling and Rendering
Animation and Simulation
Virtual Reality
Web3D Tools and Networked Environment
3-D File Formats
APPENDIX: List & description of Graphics Software Tools
As you can see from the listing of the table of contents above, only the first five chapters comprising part one of the book has anything to do with graphics programming techniques, and it is so brief and disjointed as to be useless. Part two is about software tools for a variety of subjects, and this is the part that has really become outdated, as I mentioned before. In particular, the chapter on 3D file formats is particularly useless, as it does not give you enough information about any particular 3D file format to be helpful at all. Also, the stuff on virtual reality and Web3D is just plain incomprehensible to a novice and of no use to anyone who already knows something about these subjects. In short, avoid this book because it succeeds at nothing.

Not only are his language skills extremely lacking, but his coding is sloppy and his teaching leaves MUCH to be desired. Don't think I'm just a disgruntled student who wants revenge on the professor, because I got an A- for the course and I slept through it. The book really is not all that good. The majority of the book itself is references to other resources. What's left is only four chapters that do not delve very deep into any of the concepts that they supposedly cover. It is not worth it to get this book.

Review of Taffix. Learning CDs: Being a newcomer to 3D Studio Max, I found that the tutorials on the CDs are really good, especially the basic tutorials. Most of the tutorials have fairly good instructions. What is not covered in some tutorials, has been covered under "Procedures", so one only has to go through these. Things like "Lofting" and "Scale Deform" were especially well explained and therefore easy to follow. The "Problem solver" tips were very helpful as an easy reference. The "How to for Materials", is good. It is simple to follow and I had no problems in using this. Some steps though, needed more explanations, for example, in instructions for Path Deform, step # 4, could use a little more instruction, I had to figure out that one as the option to change percentage values was not available, until I figured out why. However, I would recommend these CDs to anyone who is using this program for the first time, as it covers almost everything for a starter.

There is no organization to these tutorials at all and they run very poorly. From the looks of the packinging (a jewel case with a crappy ink jet printed picture for an inside cover) I wouldn't doubt that this set was made by a complete amature. There are many other books and references out there that are much much better.

Mr. Clayton obviously knows what he's talking about; the user will not. IF the CD is organized at all, it should really be accompanied by a companion CD of tutorials that will explain the methodology of that organization. The tutorials are abstruse and require more time to decipher than the program should to learn. I bought Mr. Clayton's CD by accident (I meant to buy a different one), but even if I had intended to buy his, doing so would have been a mistake. (One star by duress)

This book is a great picture book for children who can be amazed simply by three deminsion pictures if you have the special glasses you need. The story is about about a kid who just switched schools and is having a rough time being the new kid at his new school. He is looking forward to his favorite time of the school day. This time happens to be lunch, but the new school's lunch isn't exactly what he has expected. The lunch is disgusting and to add to his troubles he slips on some of the slime on the floor walking to his lunch table. After he is done in the cafeteria he is so disgusted by his surroundings he hurls it all out. He claims to have learned a valuable lesson by the end of the book... bring a lunch from home.
-Derek Kelly
Mrs. Nelsen
English 9A

This disturbing, misinformed book paints a frightening picture to students and adults about the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs. The moral of this book is that school food is disgusting and the cafeteria is only a source of fear.

These are indeed harmful, disturbing messages in a country where 60% of enrolled students choose to participate in the USDA National School Lunch Program. The president of ASFSA, Martha Hill, notes in her letter sent to the CEO of Golden Books (Richard Snyder) that school food service professionals are friendly, caring people who are truly concerned about children. In our Tucson District, managers not only serve nutritious, tasty food, but also are charged with Nutrition Education of all the students. This program is not only extremely important, but also very popular with students, teachers, and administrators. School meals are healthier than ever, and healthy, nourished children, we all know, learn better.