Desktop Publishing Books

I agree with many of the reviews already posted here. I found the CD-ROM to be especially thorough, with Bonus Chapters, Hands on examples, and lots of software demo and eval copies. In a working situation I had a question about curve editing, and I looked in the index of this book and found my answer explained step by step. A rival book did not have a "curve editing" entry in their index, and when I tracked down their explanation, it was not as clearly described or illustrated. Hats off to the Savvy guys, Watrall and Herber.

This is one of the best Flash study books I have ever used and I have bought many. I have to echo all the praise previous reviewers have written. I have tried to grasp ActionScript by diligently studying several tedious Flash books and never quite "got it" until I bought this one. This book is very well written and it intelligently guides you through Flash. I agree that it is written so that you can jump from topic to topic, but if you work though the chapters in a linear way, the book helps you build skills & knowledge of Flash from start to finish. Good for beginners or more experienced Flash users. The hands-on lessons after each chapter help you apply what you have learned and the inspiration design modules make it FUN! I LOVE this book and recommend it to anyone!

I learned some good stuff and the bonus chapters are good resources. However the teaching style is not a step by step proceedure. The author explains without demonstation then after 4 chapters of explaining, you do a hands on tutorial in which you do what you were supposed to learn. If you know Flash and are familiar with its processes this may be your book, if you want to see the steps in action, forget it. Over and over the author instructs you to create a file without letting you know what to create. Terms like "open a flash document and create an animation" appear far to often. The book is great for a reference but I thought there was to much explanation without demonstation. One further note, there were missing files on my CD, in trying to get the files downloaded i ran into a lot of hassle. Proof of purchase, broken links, and redirection to downloads that were not there. I believe a great teaching book on something like flash requires a support site that is equally great. I learned some neat things, and I use the book for reference, but for those first learning flash, buy the Macromedia Design Profesional series Flash.

Book: Flash MC 2004 Savvy
Author: Evan Watrall and Norbert Herber
Publisher: Sybex
(...)
Web: www.sybex.com
Phone: 510-523-8233
Pro: Easy to understand direct instruction, content progresses quickly
Con: None noted
Rating: 5
Reviewer: Rob LeFebvre

COMPLEX AND FULFILLING
This is the second book I've read by Ethan Watrall, and I have to say I continue to be impressed. Flash MX 2004 (the most unfortunate product name, ever) is a complex, mature program. As the authors state, Flash MX 2004 can be "used to create amazingly complex, interactive products, dynamic and data driven websites and online applications, cartoon serials, online (and offline) games, music videos, music players, instant messengers...the list goes on and on." This book, Flash MX 2004 Savvy, then, takes the reader through the basics of using Flash MX and MX Professional, the new interface, visual techniques for drawing and animation, symbols and text, and runs right on through to more advanced topics, like ActionScript, Audio, Video, and integration with other programs.

MAC-CENTRIC
Now, Ethan Watrall isn't the only author. His co-author, Norbert Herber, is the "mac guy" for the book. Both authors are faculty members at Indiana University. Their writing style is both easy to understand and thorough. As a Mac user, I appreciated the cross platform approach of the text, with key-commands spelled out for both Windows and Macintosh users, along with a variety of Mac screen shots throughout the book.

GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
Each section of the book (2 - 3 Chapters) ends with a "Hands On" section, where the authors walk the reader through a project that includes the techniques discussed within the content portion of the chapters. (...) Based on scenes and reused graphic symbols, it looks fairly accomplished, I think. The book is full of these kinds of projects, which really helped me feel like I was learning something. Many times, books that are references on a given software application don't impart this same feeling of "getting somewhere."

NOVICE LEVEL
This book is a beginner to novice level guide to Flash MX 2004. It doesn't cover form-based applications, publishing in multiple languages, data binding and web services, nor ActionScript 2.0. As you can see, these are very advanced topics. So, basically,. this book covers anything you really need to know about starting out and actually using Flash. The authors don't spend a lot of time on how to open and save files, or how to manage your computer directory structure. The book progresses fairly swiftly through the first 3 chapters on interface and usage of the basic drawing tools, a topic that I feel gets too much space in many "beginner" books.

MORE THAN JUST A BOOK
An added value to the book is, of course, the CD full of files for use in the Hands On sections, as well as demos of Flash MX 2004 and other Macromedia products. In addition, it has several Bonus chapters, to take your learning further. What surprised me, however, was that the authors ALSO include a web site to go to that enhances learning as well. (...). Finally, the authors provide their personal email addresses, which I find refreshing.

BUY THIS BOOK
I look forward to finishing this book. It's not one I'm going to leave on the shelf for reference; rather, I plan on delving into each content and Hands On section in my own learning of this powerful multimedia tool. I'd recommend this book for anyone starting out their journey towards Flash mastery. It's well written, easy to understand, yet thorough and full of information. It has evenly distributed Macintosh savvy advice, as well as screenshots that look familiar to those that use computers "for the rest of us." Buy this book now!

Getting started with Flash MX 2004? Get this book!

As a new Flash user but an experienced programmer / Web developer, I had been looking for a good reference to get up and running quickly with Flash MX 2004 Pro. I started with one book that had tedious step-by-step examples and little background into why things are done a certain way. I then bought this book and on almost every page I found myself saying "Oh, THAT'S why!". I gave the other book away.

This book is very well written. It gets to the point quickly and doesn't linger too long on any one subject. The writing style is clear, easy to follow. and even fun to read. The exmaples are practical in that the authors don't assume that you need to see every mouse click and keypress listed as a "step". Each chapter ends with an online site that exemplifies the subject of that chapter - good for inspiration.

This is not an expert book and only covers ActionScript in passing (fine for most beginners). The CD-ROM includes bonus chapters (useful) and "essential" ActionScript examples and references. Since it is not a complete ActionScript reference it's unlikely to make my collection of essential CD-ROMs, however.

If you are getting started with Flash MX 2004 / Pro I highly recommend buying this book first.

It was a little more basic than I was looking for. My daughter has enjoyed it very much!

This book is an excellent book for beginners to frontpage and for those who don't really know much about web programming.

This was a great book for users who are just starting out in FrontPage. It is AN EXCELLENT resource and I would recommend it to all beginning users. It took me about 8 hours to work through the whole book. It gives a great overview of the program.

This book is almost too basic. It goes into such details like: how to highlight text, move graphics on a page, and how to close the program.

It would be fine if that was only done in the first chapter, but it seems to go on and on and on. I would have liked a more "hands-on" tutorial where you actually build a web page along with the author, rather than just explaining how all the different functions work.

I work as a computer professional, so my viewpoint may be skewed, however, I believe that this book is fantastic. I needed to learn how to use Frontpage in a very short time, and this book helped me to figure out the functionality of the software, and to dive into deeper waters. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to learn Frontpage on the fly.

This book is well done and is good at simplifying the complexities of more advanced Flash concepts. However, I have found some typos in the book - one in particular that really threw me off while learning about absolute and relative paths (they had two diagram examples switched around so that they were saying one thing and showing another - my instructor even verified this). I have not read through the whole book and am hoping that there won't be any more problems like that.

It is also hard to find the exercises on the CD that match with the book because they are not organized on the CD in a manner that corresponds with the book. You have to sort of go digging for the exercises on the CD and open the files based on what you're looking at in the book. Not the best way to put so much info on a CD that goes with a book, if you ask me.

This is a good book to learn more advanced Flash concepts but it is probably not the best out there, in my opinion. I really like the books sold on lynda.com and I would recommend those if you are looking for self-paced learning tools.

I bought this book along with the basics version because I am new to using Flash and web design in general. I know when first learned programs with the help of books like this it sometimes feels as though they are talking about a completely different program because you can get so confused, however, with this book I am pretty sure they actually have written about a different version of the program. I definately have version MX 2004, which is definately what it says on the cover of this book, yet even when I copy their code exactly letter for letter, space for space, it will not produce the outcome they describe. For example the book repeatedly states to, "select the first frame of the root timeline, and open the actions panel," and from there it will instruct you to apply actions to a frame. Unfortunately in MX 2004 in no situation are you ever able to apply any action to a frame, actions are only usable for movie and button instances.

When the code in this book isn't completely not working, it kind of works if you trial and error long enough to figure out how it is really suppose to be entered, for example:

I am quoting this code directly from the book, on how to create a movable movie clip

instancename.onPress = function(){
this.startDrag();
}

MX 2004 will always let you know, however, that this is or contains a syntax error. After spending many hours playing the trail and error game, trying to figure out something that should be very simple with the help of an instruction book, I found the correct code was very similar to this

on (press) {
this.startDrag();
}

So more less I am saying this book is worthless unless you have an absorbant amount of time to waste trying to figure out why what they say in this book isnt working.

If you have some programming knowledge already, this book is a good way to learn how to apply your knowledge in the Flash environment. It has a good index and hundreds of pages of useful features explained so you may get on with whatever you are trying to create. I have found it so useful for user interface prototyping that I take it back and forth to/from the office whenever I am building prototypes.

I found this Visual QuickPro Guide very informative, extremely helpful and an excellent learning tool. If you want to learn ANYTHING, these Visual QuickPro Guides are the way to go!

This book has helped tremendously. Before I looked into this book, I was afraid of true actionscripting. This book has helped me to understand what others made confusing and hard. I don't think it is the final say so... as Flash is truly a vast application with many capabilities, but it's a terrific start for those who are familiar to designing in flash, but not superb at scripting. It will "Demistify" the actionscripting fear for sure. Now I can open other more in-depth programming books and actually make sense of code. I recommend this for any web professional that has actually worked with, not just dabbled in Flash.

This book come with a cd in which you can find all chapter in window media video files,is like the instructor is rigth there with you teching a lesson to you,great simple idea,the video clips are for each chapter of the book,so what I do is complete a chapter,then I play the video and BINGO,very good book to help anyone with zero experience or someone with some experience in 3d software,I never use a 3D software before,now I can said,I LOVE THIS BOOK,and Maya is not hard to learn,compared with other
3D softwares.

Thanks Mister Lammer and company.

Manuel.
ps.
All the tutorials are easy to fallow
Even for me,with a english as a second lenguage,ji ji..
Manuel.

I wanted a book to help me thoroughly familiarise myself with Maya basics when i moved to Maya 4.5 from lightwave, and not only does this book deliver excellent video tutorials and well written entertaining information, but it actually has a chapter dedicated to familiarising lightwave and 3dsmax users with Maya. This book has been in my bag ever since i got it, and i am truly grateful to the authors. My productivity with Maya skyrocketed after the first 10 chapters. However, it should be noted that this book does not cover subdivision modelling. It does have a tutorial involving smooth proxy modelling, but a subd tutorial would have been nice.

Haven't finished all of it yet, but it is really really good. I like it a lot more than the Learning Maya beginners book.

I would definately recommend this book to anyone that is on the intermediate or beginner skill level.

I used this book in my first Maya modeling class. I believe that the book is good because it takes you step by step on very basic concepts. On the other hand, the CD files for modeling polygons is weak, not well explained. The approach is pretty general for the topics discussed. I should say that the book is good to have an overview of the software and some of the tools, but not to have a strong base to start building advanced skills.

This book is excellent. The book was written so well that the book itself should teach you maya alone. AND the CD was done so well that the CD itself should teach you maya alone. Basically the first 4 chapters teach you all of maya and if you have some experiance you don't really need to go on. But the rest of the chapters are great also because they go into extreme details over all the different parts of maya. The authors did an excellent job with this book and the cd that comes with it. A lot of parts of the book can be used for future reference also. This book is worth a million dollars (in my mind).

I currently passed this exam by using this book and it covers almost all of the necessary materials and informations including VC development environment, MFC GUI, COM with SDK, MFC and ATL, debugging and deployment stuffs. For each topics it has sufficient explanation and illustration and the readers should have confidence about the exams after mastering these materials. I raised four stars since it would be perfect if more brain-storming exercises can be introduced.

Since this book is at intermediate and advance knowledge level, I would recommend readers to have introductory concept first before going on to purchase.

I just took the 70-016 and passed. This book helped, but now only covers about 50% of what is on the current exam (copyright 2000 - getting old). I HIGHLY recommend practice exams such as syngress and transcender. I would not have passed the exam without the practice exams...Good luck!

This book is the single best preperation for the test I have encountered. You could almost pass the test using this book alone. The questions are very representative of the actual exam, only a little bit harder. The explainations are clear and to the point, and the practice questions have good explainations. After studying take the practice test at the end of the book. Don't cheat. I got a 64% on the practice test. I used other books for my preperation in addition to BrainDump and the Transcenders. Passed with ease!! Make sure you know COM very well. GOOD LUCK!!

Quite frankly, this is by far the best VC++ desktop exam preparation resource out on the market. It is perfect for someone who just wants to brush up on his or her knowledge before taking the exam.

Although this isn't a primer or tutorial type of book, it can also be used to quickly grasp the concepts without a lot of hand-holding. It is a compressed study review with references so you can look up additional information.

Highly recommended.

This is an excellent review guide. It covers almost all the relevant topics and has very representative test questions. Read the book, study the material, and then take the practice test at the end of the book. This is a tough test, but the real test is tough too. If you score above 60%, no cheating, you are probably in good shape to pass the real thing. You will need to supplement this book with other study material in order to pass.

Here is how I did it. Re-read my COM books, and brushed up on COM programming. You will need to know COM very well. Read the Syngress study guide, an OK book but not tough enough. Used the Transcenders to test my knowledge and brush up on those areas in the Transcender tests where I scored poorly. Transcenders are a real help, the questions are very representative. Used Braindump's they can be real good if you are carefull to check the answers. Oh, for the practice test at the end of this book I scored a %64.

I passed with ease on the first try with an 813, passing grade is 534.

The book is very well written, but I have some difficulty undertanding some of the instructions partly because I have a diificult time seeing the changes to the photos in the lessons and am just learning Photoshop. While the book is written for CS2, I am using CS3 and Photoshop CS3. The CD is good and easy to follow with the text and lessons.

This book is excellent, things are explained in very simple terms and his exercises work perfectly and are easy to follow. The book comes with a DVD of high quality images for you to work on. Barry Haynes is a photographer and also conducts workshops at his home at Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada. I first learned about him from his articles in "Photo techniques Magazine" and found his instructions easy to understand. I really prize this book and recommend it to anyone who wants to learn digital workflow using Photoshop.

Last year I finally moved up to CS2 from Elements, about a month before CS3 was released. I got a good discount from Adobe, and decided to commit. Perusing the reviews of many of the CS2 manuals here, I found this one and recognized Barry's name from some articles he had written for Photo Techniques magazine. I decided to buy the book and have not regretted it one bit. The clarity and intelligence of the authors' style is apparent from the beginning. The most important lesson for me was Barry's detailed description of the workflow he uses to take his images from RAW to print. I had the opportunity to attend his workshop last summer and he reviewed much of the material in his book. He is a marvelous teacher, and his co-authors also do a fine job with their specific chapters. I have incorporated Barry's techniques into my own work, and am impressed at the difference it makes in my prints. If you have CS2 and are confused about how to approach enhancing your digital images, this book will help you immensely!

If you were to only buy one book on Photoshop this should be it. This book is clearly written, comprehensive, and well organized.

As a commercial photographer, PShop is a daily tool. I have several other PShop texts, but NONE approaches the excellence of this one. Geek talk is non-existent. This is easy-to-understand for anyone, but the advice for photographers is first-rate, and actually works. The CD material is also first class, and you're going to LOVE their Actions and keyboard Shortcuts to speed up your workflow. Get this!

Highly recommend this book - great examples that WORK. Have found this book an invaluable resource for my web graphics work! Worth every penny!

Playing with Fire is worth every cent. Great information on ways to do things with Fireworks. It was lots of fun.

I picked this up having browsed through it in the store. By doing so was as if I went to class! Within a few moments of going through the tutorials I had created some really cool graphics. By using those principles I learned, my web graphics have taken a giant leap forward.

This was good for a first book. There's lots of cool stuff you can learn from it that works in later editions of the software too. The author has written a follow up in e-book format that you might like too. It's called Razzle Dazzle. You can read more about it at
http://www.webdevbiz.com/pwf/

If you buy one Fireworks book - this is the one!

As a web developer, I have to have a working knowledge of many different skills and I readily admit that graphics is not my strongest area. Even when I develop a specific graphics skill, I may not use it again for six months, and well, to use a cliché - lose or use it.

That's why this book is so important to me - I can find the answers to my real-world, and I stress real-world, questions without having to read 5,000 newsgroup posts, browse through 50 other books, or the worst - actually pay a professional to do my graphics work!

I consult this book all the time. I really need to cut it apart and loose-leaf bind it. SONAR is such a powerful program, and while quite user-friendly, if you don't already understand sound recording, audio equipment, and the like, you don't know enough to be able to ask the right questions. For years I used Cakewalk only for MIDI, but someone told me that once I learned the audio part, all sorts of horizons would open to me. I couldn't agree more, and this book has been such a help as I've learned what all can be done to sound to make it better. Even with all I've learned, I've only scratched the surface, but know that as I read and apply more from this book, I'll just keep getting better.

I have Cakewalk Home Studio 4XL and found this to be a big help. Lots of great suggestions from set-up to the final product. A Great compliment to the minimal manual provided with the original product. The inclosed CD/video tutorial was worth the products price alone for me.

If you're a Sonar Home Studio owner with no experience in DAW this book is a must have. It takes you by the hand and clearly explains the features of this software. Without it I would have never fully understood the features of this software.

Scotts books are a must have addition to your manual. Thank goodness for Scott Garrigus. He has helped me use features and expand my knowledge of an already fine product. Scotts' books give you the keys to unlock the doors. Since ProAudio 9, SONAR 2.2XL and now SONAR 4, Scotts' power books have brought me to a new level of inspiration and production I never thought possible! Thanks Scott ! Ed.

If your new to Sonar Home Studio 4, then you definitely need this book, I'm still learning something new everyday!

King has some amazing insights and tips on how to get your website to respond faster. Your clients will be happy, your ISP company will charge less and your site will be faster.

The bandwidth you will save on a single month will cover the costs of this great reference. Plus, you get a good overview of search engine visibilty.

Description

The book has six parts.
The first part says that because web users are willing to wait for at most eight seconds and many use a 56.6Kbps modem, web pages should be at most 30KB in size.
The second part lists tricks how to write shorter html.
The third part lists tricks how to write shorter css and javascript.
The fourth part discusses graphics and multimedia optimization.
The fifth part explains methodically how to make your web come up high in search engines.
The sixth part details some server-side tricks for Apache.

Comment

This book concentrates almost exclusively on sending fewer bytes from the server to the browser. It gives a large collection of tricks how to write shorter html, xhtml, css, and javascript. Some of these tricks are useful. Others however go against standards, and some seriously go against maintainability. I'd be reluctant to give this book to my team. One may be tempted into shaving off bytes, spending a big effort and yet producing unmaintainable code. Unless one has a strong sense of relevance, one can be caught up in technical dispersion.

If you want to send fewer bytes, standard gzip-compression is far better than eliminating line-breaks and indentation.

The book does not go into server-side programming. It is oriented towards optimization of static pages.
With this orientation, King makes some bad recommendations. For example, he recommends writing javascript without comments, rather then recommending server-side comments that are not sent to the browser.

The book predates AJAX-like techniques.

Who should read it?

The book is useful for the person that writes the html that will be sent to the browser, if that person has a good sense of relevance.

Covering a wide variety of techniques, this book describes many of the common causes of slow pages and how to avoid or remedy them. While not specific to load testing, it is a valuable reference for those who have the task of making a site faster. Many of the methods provided here are simple but rarely implemented - they should be!

Michael Czeiszperger
Web Performance, Inc. Stress Testing Software
http://www.webperformanceinc.com

I can't argue with the strengths of the book which is detailed in the number of excellent reviews here, as they are all true. I bought the book based on those reviews, and while they are true, I still feel cheated.

In today's world, where "standards based" coding is becoming more prevalent and adherance to the W3C standards for HTML coding is being recommended, this book just grated on me. While there is a great deal of great information, there are also a large number of "gotchas" to watch out for as well.

The book proposes to use HTML tags without their corresponding closing tags, not to use required elements whenever possible, avoid using quotes in HTML tags, and many other ways of creating "non-valid" code. This will "optimize" your code a bit more by reducing the characters in it, but it will also create problems for you in the future.

In summary, while the book does give alot of good information, it often steers you away from standard code. If you are unsure what is considered "standard" and required for creating valid XHTML/CSS, you are best served skipping this book as it will teach you to create invalid code. If you know enough about XHTML/CSS to ignore those parts, it's a great book.

When the GUIguy reviews books, it is usually with the intent of reading fairly quickly to get a sense of the author's approach, their writing style, and the value of the content.

When I picked up Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization, an amazing thing happened: I was captivated by the content and the style. Amazing! A first! I found myself reading every word and every line of code, lest I miss some gem hidden within the letters.

Andy King's basic premise is clearly stated: "At current bandwidth-to-CPU speed ratios, bandwidth is the limiting factor." Therefore, optimization of code is vital for a well-received web site.

Sure, that's easy to write, but how do you do it?! The author meticulously goes through many, if not all of the ways code can be streamlined, addressing HTML, XHTML, DHTML, CSS, and even more.

As for style, you can almost hear the author talking; the conversational tone pervades the tome. The book is a delight to read, and the text is peppered with subtle and not-so-subtle humor like "Link to external style sheets site-wide to cache in." Even code snippets are occasionally injected with nostalgia and rib-ticklers. (There is a reference to Burma Shave signs-search the web if you don't know what that is- and even the Emperor with No Close. (sic))

And for those who wonder why all this optimization is important, the author opens with two chapters on the Psychology of Performance, with well-researched excerpts and citations from human factors writings. The forward is even written by usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

There is a companion site (http://www.speedupyoursite.com) that contains all the code along with all the references, chapter summaries, chapter excerpts, color figures, etc. After all, web sites are living documents, and having all this information on a web site allows it to be updated easily.

The only flaw that I found with the book is that there is no accompanying CD. I would love to be able to search the complete text for suggestions and tips that I probably won't remember when I need them-like when I redo my own web sites, a job that I must undertake now that I have read this book.

The main problem with this book is that the author isn't very good at what he does. He details lovingly how to make the artwork but he simply lacks the talent to create 3D art that's very good. The model he creates, Slogre is in the end, a lumbering snow man like mess of a creature poorly set up for animation.

The author spends a lot of time talking about concept art and why its important only to ditch it in production of the model, ditching all of its charisma to create an ugly mess that looks like it was created by someone completely inexperienced.

Most of the textures he creates end up looking very flat and ugly. The black and white printing causes a lot of his points to be lost. The best examples of this are on pages 225 and 226. He shows a demonstration of poorly tiling textures with noticeable seams. However, due to the cheap printing, the wall is just a solid block of grey making the visual aid wholly useless.

If you're completely new to 3D art, there are far worse places you could start. This book has some decent primers initiating readers with certain aspects of various art programs including Photoshop. There's a lot of information here and it's not all useless.

However, if you are planning on getting into 3D art, I would recommend you start out with Milkshape 3D and Psionic3D tutorials. (Google those. Amazon doesn't allow linking last time I checked.) For texturing, 3D Game Textures by Luke Ahearn is a much better resource than this.

If you have any experience in 3D art though, then you can probably skip this book without a second thought. There is likely nothing you couldn't have figured out on your own. The things that are worthwhile for the experienced here are already available in Internet tutorials.

The only thing that would make this book of any value to an experienced artist is the collection of nearly 500 royalty free photos intended for use in your own textures. To some, these are probably worth the price on their own, but they're photos that would be easy for someone to take on their own. Think twice about buying this book.

This book covers everything, from character creation, bones rigging, texturing of the character (and hundreds of general textures using Photoshop). The book uses 3DS Max 7 and Photoshop 7, expensive, but I've found that game companies use those avidly (or Maya, but not as much). Price is high for those but get a demo or hacked copy. The author covers character creation almost entirely, including export to the Torque game engine. The only down side is he doesn't include animation, but I guess that's a subject for another book. I hear he's writing a character book that will include this as well. Very cool book, A+.

totally cool book i got lots out of it. texturing was great too. got me totally into making models and using teh torque game engine. i think this book is killer so far

I was really excited when I got this book and could tell it was exactly what I needed since all aspects of making art for games was a mystery to me. However, I was disappointed that to go along with the tutorials, you had to use a TrueSpace demo or lay out the hundreds of dollars for the full program. The demo doesn't let you save anything, so that makes it very difficult when you're a complete newbie.

Every time you make a mistake, especially in undoable operations like Boolean operations, you have to start ALL the way over. :(

I would've preferred that the author used one of the more prevalent programs like Max or Maya - it made the learning curve even tougher, having to first learn TrueSpace before being able to do the tutorials in this book.

As I say - I'm glad I bought it, but it would've been MUCH more helpful to have been able to use a program/demo where I could save what I'm working on.

I agree with the majority of other reviewers on the content of this book, especially the sections of texturing. Very in depth and covers a whole lot of topics on inorganic and organic textures and how to use them. He also takes you step by step through the modeling process of a gun and a big ugly monster.

But instead of spending too much time repeating what everyone else is saying good about the book, I am going to tell you what I think isn't so good about the book because there are a few not-so-good things about the book you should know before spending half-a-hundred dollars on it. Though, I still give the book 4 stars because it has many more good points than bad.

The most depressing thing is that you really need full versions of all the software programs used to be able to follow along with the book the way you need to in order to learn what your reading. Sure, you get some experience working with a bunch of programs like 3d studio max 5 (very heavily used in 3d game model production) but you don't even do 3d modeling it. Instead, you follow along with the modeling process in TrueSpace 4 or 6. What you'll find REALLY frustrating about that is, unless you have $595.00 to spend on the full, legal copy of version 6.6, you won't be able to save any of your work using the DEMO version that comes with the book! So, you may spend an hour or more modeling your gun, and then have to close the program down and load the model that the author made on the book's CD in order to continue to the UV mapping, texture painting, optimizing and triangulating which is done in 3ds max 5 (of which the demo version is also included on the book's cd-rom). The modeling process could have been done just as easily in 3ds max 5 which is much more powerful than TrueSpace anyways. Why switch between the two programs when one can do both tasks? 3ds max 5 costs an arm and a leg (around $3,105.00), but can do EVERYTHING that TrueSpace & DeepUV combined can do. The full, retail (useable) version of DeepUV costs $795.00.

If you don't believe me about UV mapping for characters in video games using 3ds max, then check out the book "Mastering 3DS MAX 4" which has a section on modeling a character then UV mapping it just like it is done in DeepUV. DeepUV is a complete waist of money if you own a copy of 3ds max 4 or higher.

Now when texturing you use two different programs, Deep Paint 3D 2.0 and Adobe Photoshop 6. Both programs are equally good and equally powerful, though Photoshop is much more popular. I do not understand why he spreads tasks out across the two programs when he could have done just about everything in one program or another without using both programs. Deep Paint 3D 2.1 costs $995.00! Adobe Photoshop 7 costs you about $609.00!

See what I'm getting at? You gotta have a fortune to spend on graphics production software in order to fully and completely follow along with this book and to be able to do ANYTHING productive with the information you've learned after reading the book, especially if you are a game programmer like me who has to make 3d models, then texture them and plug them into a 3d rendering engine.

You can do anything and everything this book covers by having a full version of just two peices of software, Adobe Photoshop 7 and 3ds max 4 or higher. That's it...that's all you need. Buying two 3D modelers, a program for UV mapping, and two texture paint programs is a waist of a whole lotta money. I understand the good it can do because one program can essentially be better at one task than a similar program can, but how many of us hobbiests have over $6099.00 to spend on software to follow in the footsteps of the book author? Not me, certainly.

If the book was designed with the hobbiest or budding superstar in mind then it would have focused all it's attention on production software that doesn't require you to be a zillionare. In fact another software program out there, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 can also be used for making game quality textures and 2D sprite art very much like Photoshop 7 or Deep Paint 3D 2.1 but it only costs about $100.00 for the full retail version. And then there's 3D modeling software like Milkshape 3D which is also VERY cheap in comparison to 3ds max, Maya, Lightwave, TrueSpace, Cinema 4DL, etc. And the best thing about Milkshape 3D is that it was made specifically for making game-only 3D models (originally made for the game Half-Life).

Don't get me wrong, I do like a lot of things about this book. The book does a good job of showing you how to use an array of different programs and how to effectively use them for making game art such as 2D textures and 3D models and how to prepare those models for use in a game engine, and it even includes a demo game engine to plug your models into. But just be warned that owning those programs isn't necessary to make quality 2D and 3D artwork for games, but IS required to follow along with the book completely. You can "work around" with the book using the demos that comes with the CD, but don't get too excited because you can't even save your TrueSpace 3D models anyways, so how are you going to get the models into 3ds max 5 for further manipulation and game prep?