Game Design Books

there's a lot of mistakes in the book, if you already know a little bit of programming you can probably see the errors but for people who does not know anything it will be very difficult to understand cuz it won't work with so many mistakes, I think the author need to check the book again and correct them.

The what this book is and isn't is a very simple story. This book is a basic introduction to programming video games in Java. This book is not a book that is going to teach you everything about Java. Despite the fact that the cover says it has 53 gaming projects, you will actually be making 12 different games through the course of the book. The book gives you all of the code and brief information on what you are doing, and it is great because you can start making games with little frustration.

How to use this book: If you already know some Java, but you want to get into game programming, you can just pick up the book as a standalone tool. The descriptions are simple enough that you can figure out what you are actually doing. If you want to learn Java and Java game programming, do not ONLY use this book. However, I wanted to learn both, so I picked up this book along with a "learn Java" book, which is a deadly combo! This book has been great for helping me visualize how the code can look for a game, see the relevance to what I was learning in my "learn Java" book, and have a little fun with programming. I switch back and forth because my "learn Java" book explains in detail what the heck I'm doing, while Game Programming for the Evil Genius keeps me interested in learning Java. Also, if you want to create games yourself, but couldn't give a hoot about learning the code behind the game, this book may be for you (though I don't quite understand you!). With this book and limited Java knowledge, you can create these games, monkey with them a little bit, and pretend like you've accomplished something!

Side comments: Not all of the code in the book is completely accurate (as is always the case with programming books). However, if you can't figure out what is wrong with your program, you can always download a working program from the book's website and compare the code. Also, I can't stand NetBeans. The book suggests you use NetBeans (which some people really like), but I used Eclipse SDK, which is also free (www.eclipse.com). Use whatever makes sense for you.

Closing remarks: This is a great book to have some fun with Java programming. You are NOT going to create the next Halo or some complicated game, but you will learn some Java game programming essentials. If you use this book in the right way (detailed above), you won't regret your decision. Also, this book is for anyone interested in learning Java game programing, no matter your age group. It would be great for teens, and anyone older (I'm in my mid twenties). Sound like a salespitch? Maybe. But I'm glad I stumbled across this book and the good reviews I found!

Considering Cinnamon has such an in-depth grasp on gaming at his young age, I certainly recommend this book. I also recommend continuing to keep an eye on anything he produces in the future.

What I really like about Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius is that it taught me Java by building video games. I really liked doing the projects from scratch and can't believe I made these games work! Very cool.

The book goes one line of code at a time with illustrations. It starts simple and gets more intense. But as long as you take your time it works perfectly. Every time I thought there was a mistake in the book I went over it again I figured out it was mine!

I've been programming for over a year and I haven't found a better book to learn Java from.

Awesome and outstanding! I hope there's a volume 2.

This is a great book if you know what you are getting - a text that teaches you the basics of Java in parallel with simple game programming. In that sense it is somewhat mislabeled. This is great for high schoolers and up who are interested in both subjects, and is particularly good for people who don't have the patience to go through Core Java(TM), Volume I--Fundamentals (8th Edition) (Sun Core Series), which is the best book on Java programming on the market, in my opinion. The games are pretty simple, so you won't get bored with the details, but there is enough meat here that you will learn something. However, don't expect to get excited by the results of the simple games that you write either. When you're through, you'll have some idea of how to think like a game programmer and have a basic understanding of Java. Once you do understand Core Java and this book, you might want to check out Killer Game Programming in Java, which is the best book out there on game programming specifically in the Java language, even three years after it was published.

This is no doubt a very good book, but as a professor who wants to use it as a textbook, I can't make a powerpoint lecture notes from this book for my class presentation. I would like to have a disk version that goes together with the book.

Contrary to what the other reviews say, I believe this is an excellent book for beginners in the 3D computer graphics world. However, that being said, you will need some basic math skills to be able to understand and apply the concepts in this book. If you are unfamilar with linear algebra, you should probably start with studying up on your math skills first. With the basic math skills, this book does a great job of introducing the basics to almost every major topic you'll see in 3D computer graphics programming. The book doesn't go into great detail at times, but the simplicity of this book is the winning ingredient that allows beginners to grasp the basics before moving on to indepth research in paticular topics of 3D graphics that interest them.

This is an excellent book for all those who want to delve into the theory and process of computer graphics. Some basic concepts are covered in vague detail, and some other reading into concepts such as vector maths, are required. But it provides a solid foundation for programmers, artists, and the alike. The book is not terribly detailed, thus may not serve the purposes of an advance CG artist. But regardless, a book that I will be refering to a lot.

I am a junior student at Computer Engineering major. I am taking a computer graphics course and unfortunately, the instructor chose this title as the textbook.

I am not saying it is a bad book or something, but it is targeted to people who have some experience with computer graphics.... (e.g: for people doing graduate studies in computer graphics) As for me, my first encounter with computer graphics in this book made me hate the topic so much. The book makes you feel that graphics involve so much mathematics, especially analytic geometry. It is so hard as an introduction to the topic of Computer Graphics.

I would not recommend this book at all as an introduction to computer graphics, it may be good for those who have some (actually a lot) of experience in this so advanced topic.

I have an earlier version of this book and I've always found it to be one that I return to time and again. It was one of the first three graphics programming books I bought during the same early career book shopping session, it was definately the most useful of the three and it's stayed with me ever since, where other books have been and gone.

It's generally very easy to read and very informative. It has a good progression of topics that introduce the reader to graphics programming concepts.

The thing I most like about this is that it covers much of the foley and van dam book, but avoids the many irrelevant sections and is a little more to the point. It's like a more concise reference to that book, which is also one that I would recommend.

The only thing I don't like about the updated version is the new layout, typeface and style. The old version just seems so much more appealing to me.

If you program game or computer graphics, then this is a reliable book to have in your collection.

This is a decent book on digital panoramic photography. It seems to be geared to the Photoshop skilled person. While it's somewhat easy to follow, I found that if you're not familiar with Photoshop you'll have a hard time with this. Thankfully I have used Photoshop quite a bit, so I was ok. It doesn't go as in depth on each image as I'd prefer, but it's good. I find that it gives you enough information to be dangerous. Lots of good ideas on how to process and stitch together your panoramic images. The only downside is that it only really recommends on specific type of panoramic stitching software (Instead of manually doing it in Photoshop) and the one recommended isn't that great. The software they recommend is grossly overpriced and not as easy to use as PTGui in my opinion.

If you are fairly familiar with Photoshop, I totally recommend this book. It'll give you ideas to have fun and play with.

If you're looking to start taking QTVR or the likes kind of photo, you're better off reading off the Internet and/or visiting forums to ask about taking the shot, finding the nodal point, stitching them together, publishing them on the web. This book takes 8 guys who takes 8 different pano then put them into a book. That's about it. You won't learn anything new in terms of technique/s. Like for the one on Almanarre Beach, instead of advising readers how to minimise doing the photoshopping away of waves and people which the book covers a lot, they should have advise users to take as little shots as possible. I guess this book is trying to cover on Photoshop techniques pertaining to pano photographers.

I got this book hoping it would be a step by step guide to assist me in developing my work flow and technique on up skilling my panoramic knowledge. But it was not.. it made very simple things overly complicated and some of the most popular great tools available were not highlighted or used.

I found this book to be a great book on artistically making PANORMIC Photos, and More...

It is an excellent book in showing different techniques as well as the art of "Assembling" Panoramic pictures. But it is also a work of art in helping you get an idea of the artistic and somewhat abstract way of doing this.

I followed the techniques, for example taking multiple shot of the same subject and then assembling that together, as another example I used the planning that is pointed out in this book, and multiple shots from the same view to make it super high resolution.

I used PhtotoShop for the "Stitching" and I got the same outstanding results.

This is a Great book for photographers.

Bruce Razban
Silicon Valley, CA, USA

This book is small but really comprehensive. Through specific examples people that knows the secret of panoramic photography, gives tips & tricks for a good panoramic photo using normal cameras and lenses.
In the beginning i read it very quick but then i discover more more than even in the smallest paragraph there is a nice tip.
The only "bad" is that most of the writers use realviz stitcher as main stitching program. Why this is "bad"? Because the program costs more than 400 euro. There is also a express release around 100 euro but with limited use.
But the tips and tricks are still there. I personally use PTGui with Pano2cube software and i can use most of this books advices. it is highly recommended for the photographer he wants to involved in panoramic photography.

This is the best crochet bead book I've come across. I used it as a beginner's book for self-teaching. I do have experience with crocheting, but it is minimal. The directions for making the corded bracelets are very easy to understand. I also purchased a DVD made by this author. It was also very helpful. The only thing wrong with the DVD was that the selections wouldn't highlight, so I had to guess which selection I was clicking on... but since I'm not reviewing the video, it won't change the five stars I've given to this book. Happy crochet beading!

The information was OK but not geared for beginners. What bothered me about this book was all the pictures of the little girls wearing makeup and jewelry. It isn't 'cute.' It just creeps me out.

I recently took a class to learn bead crochet, and this book was one recommended by the instructor. It has beautiful pictures, and does a good job of describing how to string based on graphs and charts, and a very enlightening discussion of the different types of stringing materials and their pros and cons. I had hoped for instructions on how to modify some of the patterns, but it doesn't have that. I'll have to work that on my own. I would not attempt to teach myself bead crochet from a book - you're just asking for trouble, but this is a great book once you have mastered the technique.

This book has an adequate technical description of the techniques and is helped if you also get the DVD book(?), Create with the Designers Beaded Crochet, of hers that contains some of the projects from this book where Ann Benson gives a good demo of the basics.
I guess some consider the projects tasteful but I think the majority of them are very old fashioned and I am a 66 year old grandmother! My main objection to this book are the photos of young girls dressed up with lots of makeup wearing these 'jewels'. This is where my review title comes in. These pictures are far too reminiscent of that poor child, JonBinet Ramsey, and therefore Kinda Creepy!

This book had lovely pictures of young girls wearing jewels but in my mind lacked the instruction/s I was looking for. When ordering a book to increase my bead crochet abilities that is exactly what I want - a how to book. This book did not fill that desire. This is not a book that I would necessarily keep in my library.

"A step-by-step guide to creating stunning, futuristic images" is on the front cover of the book. Yet none of the examples have more than ten steps. For images this detailed, there are about a thousand steps the "author" omitted. The artwork is excellent, but the tutorials are an absolute joke. Do yourself a favor and type in "sci-fi art" in google images, and save your money.

I really enjoyed reading this book and the pictures are marvellous. Also, the way it covers Sci-Fi with the usage of various software is revealing. Very good!

It is no more than this. It has some fair techniques on how to achieve several effects, but someone cannot expect to learn how to make digital sci-fi art.
Also, it seems a little outdated now, even though the copyright says 2004.

My opinion is do not waste money on some collection of outdated artwork and look for something else.

This book is really more of a book full of images that inspired me to do more sci fi art work. it has a cpl of pseudo tutorials that are good. If you are doing this for the first time i would suggest something else. But as a person who needs inspiration for actually sitting down and doing something I would suggest this book. It has a whole range of really well done artwork that u can get tons and tons of ideas from.

I recently took courses in 3DMax, Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. Ok, so now what? This is where Mike's books come in. His books are not step by step technical instructions on how to create computer graphics art but more about stimulating the artistic side of your brain and imagination as to the kinds of art that can be created using computer graphics tools. This book is not about CG technology, it's about CG art. If your background is purely technical I would recommend this book in conjunction with a couple of art courses. Great computer art is not created by CG technicians but by CG artist. Mike gives you guidelines as to what you can do as a skilled CG artist. He does not show you in detail how to create the art shown in the book. I guess he assumes that if you know the CG tool well enough then you should be able to figure out the details. Again this is a book about computer art, it is not about technology.

I loved this book. I learned how to write a game proposal.
There were a lot of thought provoking ideas on how to make a
game that isn't just geared to pre-teen boys.

It is ironic that a book on gender inclusion would be so insulting to the gender of its target demographic.

Several anecdotes throughout the book cast men as crude, immature, and violent neanderthals. At the same time, it portrays women as nurturing, mature, and sophisticated. If the target market were embittered women with a bone to pick with the opposite gender, the author's approach would be appropriate. Unfortunately, I find myself disgusted rather than convinced.

I admit that there is some interesting and eye-opening information in the book. However, this information is infested with insulting material and poorly handled and delivered scholarship. In reading the text it becomes obvious how unwieldly good information is when placed into the wrong hands.

The title may as well be: "Catching Flies with Vinegar: How Ugly, Brutish Men Can at Least Appear More Sympathetic to Women in the Sexist, Violent Games They Make."

The book states that women are more comfortable with indirect communication than direct confrontation. If we are to take that into account, what motivates a book that is titled "Gender Inclusive Game Design" and proceeds to insult the male gender again and again comes into direct focus.

A personal account revealing directly the motivations of the author's feelings and intentions would have been honest and understandable. I would have sympathized. What we get, however, smacks of vendetta while it pretends to objectivity.

Noticing this, indirection then becomes underdstood as a euphemism for lying to both oneself and others.

I have spent quite some time in the industry, designing games - as well as playing them. During my time in the industry, most of the women I worked with were in HR; very few were in game development.

Which made arguing my point with the men I worked with rather challenging, since the ratio of men to women at work was so much greater, and I was frequently told, "women just don't play games." Which I knew to be patently false, as there were and still are several online forums and sites run by women gamers. There just weren't that MANY of them at the time, so no one was interested in giving a player a choice in gender.

Times have changed, and many games offer up male and female characters, so it's rather easy for a woman to play a decent, strong, female character. I believe that there are more female gamers today than there were, say, 10 years ago. Perhaps that is because the younger female generation is getting turned onto computers instead of make up, clothes and popularity contests like they were in my generation. Then again, perhaps I'm just reflecting upon my own personal experience here.

I'm not sure I believe the 70% ratio (women to men) where "causal online gamers" are concerned. I am still quite a gamer, and do not experience that ratio in any of the MMOGs that I play. I feel that the number is more like maybe 15% F/M, as that is what I've experienced over the years - I'm being generous here, too. (Does that percentage include Pop Cap games, perhaps? Online card games? If so, that's a completely different beast.)

All in all, I do feel it is important for there to be games that allow both genders to play strong characters of both sexes. There are girls out there who game, and they deserve to have games available that allow them to create and play what may very well become a strong role model for them - as for many of us, our characters are simply an extension of ourselves.

Graner Ray raises an important topic: how game designers can create games that appeal to women as well as men. Unfortunately, her advice is simplistic and poorly motivated. This is a summary of what I take to be the most important suggestions the book has to offer:

- Don't use stereotype or hypersexualized avatars
- Provide a well-designed tutorial
- Don't force the player to resort to confrontational resolution of conflicts, provide non-confrontational options
- Females only respond physically to emotional and tactile input, males only by visual input - so include an engaging back-story in the game
- Males prefer punishment for errors in a game, females prefer forgiveness
- Females want non-zero-sum (mutually benefitial) game designs
- Males want to conquer the computer, females want to work with the machine - so don't include hidden benefits that you have to "explore" the interaction space to uncover (e.g., hidden combos in fighting games)

The research results quoted are, when not of questionable quality, often taken out of context. Graner Ray also has a tendency to generalize from isolated anecdotes, which doesn't help. Another problem is that much of the research is dated: some of the games research quoted is from the 1980s and is surely not relevant today! Because of its publication in 2004, the book does not foresee the cross-gender success of titles such as World of Warcraft, and it only consideres the North American market: Europe and Japan are ignored altogether.

Game designers that wish to expand the market for their products to include women probably won't have much to gain by reading this book. Since they already have the necessary motivation, they will acquire more relevant information from well-executed market research and focus group testing than from this book. The book may be an eye-opener for game designers who have never considered women as potential buyers, though.

So many books on game design slide into relatively useless territory: They fail to give the reader concrete things they can do to make better games. Not so this book. It's got plenty of examples (backed up by research) that can be used when you sit down with your tools and try to make a new world. I think her viewpoint is quite refreshingly mercenary. There's no femenist rhetoric here. The author is trying to figure out a way for the game industry to reach beyond the traditional male market and thus make more money. Very pragmatic.

The scary thing is that most of the changes she's proposing to games are relatively non-intrusive and easy to make, as long as designers are involved in the games from the beginning. Good read. Opened my eyes a bit to some issues I never considered before. What if the player is female, indeed.

This book was an excellent read. Kohler does a terrific job of showing the culture links video games have created between Japan and the Western world. It also shows the stark cultural contrasts. It made me reflect on how much Japanese culture I've been exposed to without knowing it.

This is a good book about japanese videogames and their impact in the western world. The problem, and I agree with the other reviewers, is that the focus deals only with the mainstream and most popular games like Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy. Sure it talks about Dragon Quest(relatively unknown in America until recently) and ICO, but still left many open holes.

But if you forget this flaw, it's really a great and satisfying reading, and the author constructs the text very well. Worth your time. It's a four star book, but I'll give four and half stars (five in Amazon) because it's a good and very little explored theme.

History in the eye of the beholder

The boot has very useful information for video game collectors and researchers who are looking for information related to mostly Nintendo oriented lore. I stress its for game collectors and researchers vice enthusiasts. Enthusiasts are looking to be entertained as well as informed and this book does very little entertaining. I found my self reading parts of the book over the course of several months. It just wasn't the page-turner that some other visual treats like "High Score" were. All in all it was worth 13 bucks, however I liken it too a History book on the 20th Century, with key events missing like World War II! Sega is not even mentioned as a footnote! Phantasy Star, Shining Force and several other important events in Gaming History never even captured the interest of the author, and it painfully shows here. Three Stars.

other people have commented thoroughly about the generalities of this book, and i by-and-large agree. i'd like to add, however, that some of the most interesting parts of this book are the omissions.

for example, they author segues straight from talking about Ninja Gaiden to NOJ/NOA's localization process and standards for content. he mentions that religious iconography, drug use, etc, are all prohibited from being portrayed in Nintendo software, and the list of prohibited content includes cigarette smoking.

the author fails to note the irony, however, that in the aforementioned game there's a bad guy leaning against a light post smoking a cigarette he throws aside before dashing at you. i can only assume it slipped past the censors without them catching it, but my friends and i had noticed it years ago and marvelled that it had been made it through the review process intact.

it's these kinds of things that make me feel like this book is a good general source, but anything deeper than a surface look at the topics covered would require some additional reading/sources.

there are quite a few nuggets of interesting trivia in here - more than enough to make a gamer smile (dragon quest being legally prohibited in Japan from selling on any day except Sunday or a holiday, for example). my copy was a gift; i can attest that it makes a fine one.

I enjoyed this book, mostly. Within its scattershot set of chapters about Japanese games in general, there's a fascinating, albeit sketchy, history of Nintendo that contained many small revelations for me, despite that I've been playing video games incessantly since 1987 or so. But the rest of the material was less compelling for me. The chapter about music games and music in games actively frustrated me--it gave only a brief survey of either topic, and seemed to spend most of its words on a tedious, obsessive examination of Final Fantasy albums. A chapter about Akihabara, Japan's premier consumer electronics marketplace, pushed the trivia-to-insight ratio similarly high. In his effort to treat video games as if they deserve the attention of artists, Kohler concentrates too much on material that is only interesting to fans.

Still, on the whole I'm glad I read this book, and I hope Kohler's stated desire to encourage further such works is satisfied; there is clearly much more to say.

This is an update of a classic book on procedural texturing and modeling by the main founders of the field. The book presents lengthy discussions of classical procedural texturing using various noise functions of the sort originated by Ken Perlin (one of the authors). It discusses newer texturing techniques such as cellular texturing, which can be used, for example, to create convincing stone patterns. Other chapters focus on animating solid textures (e.g. marble forming, volumetric gasses, etc.), fractal terrain generation, and tips for utilizing existing graphics APIs and hardware for realtime procedural texturing. This is only a sampling of the topics covered.

Code samples in C and RenderMan are given throughout, although most algorithms are given in only one of those languages. This can be a bit of a problem, as many readers will probably not have access to a RenderMan implementation. Nevertheless, it is not too difficult to translate the RenderMan code into C code in many instances.

The biggest drawback to this book is its lack of rigorous technical coverage. The decision to omit many mathematical details was a conscious choice on the part of the authors. Instead the book is mostly prose discussion of the techniques and the coarse descriptions of the underlying concepts. Although the prose is mostly clear, many times I felt myself in need of more specific, technical details. Fortunately, the book's authors are the primary researchers in this field and most of the ideas in the book have been published in academic journals. It was very easy to supplement the book with these primary sources.

Overall I found this to be a very interesting and useful book, with many algorithms essentially ready-to-run right out of the book. It would get five stars, except for the lack of technical and mathematical details mentioned above. Every serious worker in graphics needs to have this book on their shelf. I use mine often.

I'm using this book because I use a shading programing (shaderlab pro 2)language for truespace that is derivitive of renderman. In that sense it was helpfull becuase it filled in the gaps of the poor docs that came with shaderlab. It took me from scratch to a basic understanding of procedural coding. Oddly, the one thing it didn't include that I assumed would be there was a discussion of the worelynoise function and feature points. This was totally strange because one of the authors was worely! Even stranger was that "advanced renderman" did do a decent discussion of it, so now I'll have to buy that! Some people might want to check out "advanced renderman" because it's less intense mathematically and gives more basic insight to renderman usage.

This book has several serious problems.

The most glaring is that a significant number of the examples are coded in the "Renderman shading language". This language serves, in this book, to hide detail, detail specifically related to producing textures. Of course, if you know the language, you're fine - but most won't know the language and so this is a grievous error.

By way of welcome contrast, other examples in this same book are instead presented as C code fragments or functions. That's just the ticket - using a broadly known, freely available, relatively low-level language with no recourse to unknown hidden graphics functionality is precisely the way to go when explaining ideas in the domain of those this book is intended to convey.

The second problem is one of content. While being concise to the level of a math text is not desirable, this book contains a very sparse field of useful information considering the number of pages. The margins are too wide, the text too large, the form factor of the book too small, and the authors too wordy to possibly convey a good basis for texturing in general - it is a broad and fascinating field, touched only in the briefest and most unsatisfying manner by this book.

I do take issue with the reviewer who complained about the exposition on how to make a brick texture; that area of the text, while it may be already quite familiar to many who are interested in texturing, contains precisely the level of detail that needs to pervade a book of this type, and detail about steps that underly critical basic texturing ideas. Without understanding those basic texturing tools, a novice misses the first step on the stairs and fall on their face. The problem is, this approach is not consistent for more complex ideas in this volume, few as those actually are.

The book is entitled "Texturing and Modeling". While there is a moderate amount of texturing information in it, whatever you do, don't get it if modeling is your goal. It is very nearly devoid of modeling information, and what there is (smoke, a planet simulation, a few other items) is very basic indeed.

Finally, as a general critique, the authors (all of them) need to learn the basic idea that when presenting a function in any language to a new audience, one should precisely define the domain (and rationale) of the inputs and outputs of the function. As an example, one might encode the function for Perlin noise, and have no idea whatsoever as to what values to feed it to get particular types of results. For those of us who can read and understand what the function is actually doing (which is esoteric, make no mistake about it) the answers will eventually be illuminated by careful study of the function. However, this is very advanced material, and I am absolutely certain that many readers will be unable to figure out how to effectively use this function without a great deal of trial and error. You can also read that as "wasting a great deal of their time." That is because they won't be learning anything that could not have been conveyed by the author(s) in a single short paragraph of domain information.

In summary:

The 2 stars is because I didn't think this was a very good book. On the other hand, it is one of the very few books that deals with the subject at all, and for that reason, you should definitely own it if textures are an interest of yours.

If you're newly interested in textures, this will give you a basis for further exploration. It won't give you a cookbook by any means.

If you're looking for cookbook and "how to" approaches, get on the web and the newsgroups.

Finally, if you're considering writing a good book about creating textures, by all means, please do. The world needs a good one: this most definitely isn't it. I'd be delighted to be one of the first owners of your new book.

This book is for experienced programmers who want to understand the fundamentals of procedural graphics generation. This book is not for artists looking for practical applications of procedural texturing and modeling concepts.

The authors cover a very large array of topics in the field, including many pertinent code examples, mostly in the RenderMan shading language. It focuses on the groundwork of the field from the first texture maps in the 70's onward, with a cursory mention of the state of the art at the time of publication.

Representative text:

"The particular kind of fractal we're building is called fractional Brownian motion, or fBm for short. fBm is characterized by its power spectrum, which charts exactly how amplitude relates to frequency. Oops! Pardon me - I'll knock off the math."

"Long ago I gave this idea the wonderfully unpretentious - not! - moniker "generalized Impressionistic texture," or GIT for short. (We need more TLAs - threeletter acronyms.) The GIT matrix generator system takes the form of a time-varying swarm of color samples in a color space, usually the RGB color cube."

This book has five authors, and that is exactly the way it is written. It changes character practically at the beginning of every chapter. It is obvious that the authors have a great deal of knowledge of procedural textures and modeling, however, it is all just lumped together into one big hard-to-sift-through mountain. You will have to do a great deal of work to extract algorithms from this book. Only because there is good information there do I give this book three stars instead of two. Truthfully, it is probably a 2.5 star book.

An example of the authors' inconsistent narrative style is this: Chapter two goes into great detail on the obvious - clamping, antialiasing, and the brick wall texture. In chapter 15 on "Fractal Solid Textures", the authors brush over the complex issue of how to produce fire, water, wind, and rocky terrains. Also, the vast majority of the time, rather than show the procedural modeling with pseudocode or with a high level language such as C, the authors choose "Renderman", which is unfamiliar to many people and makes the included code useless to those uninitiated in that language. Plus, in many cases Renderman has functions that hide the details of particular algorithms. This is counterproductive, since the algorithms are supposed to be the point of this book in the first place, or at least I thought that they were.

My advice to people interested in this subject is to skip this book unless you can find it at a greatly reduced price and look online at Elias Hugo's webpages on procedural modeling. Mr. Hugo explains the authors' techniques much better than the authors themselves do.

I specifically targeted this book because of the disintegrate material effect but was unable to follow it cos of missing parts in the tutorials/scenes. upon trying to work it out my self , I still havent I will have to put this book in the toilet as emergency toilet paper. I was really dissappointed when I sent emails to coriolis to try and get the proper tut file scenes (2 years ago) and still havent recieved any feedback, this is so frustrating. I'll never buy another coriolis text again.

This book isn't much more than a picutre book, showing what 3D Studio MAX R3 is capable of. The tutorials are poorly put together, and some of them are missing steps which for some users might not be able to complete them. Not a book I recommend buying.

Wow, I don't know if they have awards for these kinds of books, but Jon Bell should be able to run away with this one.

He covers a lot of great stuff in this book including all the new things that R3 has. Including Flex, the new material options, plus it has some sweet models you can try. Like the SR-71 Blackbird, and an alien.

The CD that comes with is also the best to come around in a long time. It includes a bonus material library, hordes of free plugins including Greeble!, lots of free maps and chapter files. The Cd itself is worth the 40-50 bucks.

This one is worth the money!

If you want to get more out of 3D Studio MAX, then this book's for you. The chapters on advanced materials and lighting helped me create better-looking scenes immediately, and the special-effects stuff (including the great Greeble plugin) is well worth the price of the book. Highly recommended!

If there were ever 2 things I couldn't do well they were making good Materials and Organic Modelling...until I bought this book. Unlike other books that tell you how to recreate their effects, this book tells you what the steps presented do, allowing you to recreate and tweak them as you need. Excellent book!

I went to the McGraw Hill page set aside for the images in the book so that I could use them to work along with the book. This is always a very big factor in my decision to buy software oriented books. Most software books now have a companion site if a CD was not included. Literally, over 90% of the 20 software books I have bought in the past three months have a companion site online if they do not supply images and other goodies on a CD in the book itself. Being able to follow along with the same images is an invaluable learning tool. This book advertises the availability of images online on the cover and within. I'm afraid however, that the web links on the companion web page lead to nowhere and McGraw Hill's technical support person could not have cared less. He never got back to me as promised, the links are still broken and if I could I would return the book. The person I spoke to simply didn't care about my problem (apathetic beyond description)-it was quite evident in his tone of voice and in the ultimate not fixing of the problem. And yes, I spoke to the correct department. This is all Unfortunate, as this book has the potential to be a terrific workbook. Now it is nothing more than a run of the mill book and I don't like to buy from companies that do not stand behind their products and mislead their customers as to what their purchase includes. Shame on you Osborne/McGraw Hill. Hopefully, someone from this mega book supplier will see this review and fix the companion site. For now , I will not be buying any books from Osborne/McGraw Hill or any of its associated companies.

This is an extremely comprehensive guide that is packed full of clear illustrations. I consider the volume to be very readable and useful for a range of users, i.e., users new to CorelDraw or intermediate level and above. No wonder they call it the "Only Authorized Reference on CorelDraw 12"!

I selected this book after reading reviews on Amazon.com. I found the book an excellent supplement to the lynda.com training I purchased for the same program. It helped to fill in the gaps and expand upon the online training. I cannot compare it to the Coreldraw 12 unleashed cd since I have not viewed it, but I am pleased with my purchase. I enjoyed the book from start to end and that says a lot for a discriminating reader of technical publications. Because I use coreldraw 12 primarily to construct business cards, I do wish the book would have addressed color matching. However, there are other sources on this subject on the net. Enough said - great book!

If you're looking for a book to get you up and running with CorelDraw 12, this ain't it. This book uses the "Start with the File Menu..." paradigm. The first several chapters are taken up with mind numbingly endless descriptions of menus and tools and options, how to save files (duh) and discussions of features, the function of which the novice user has no clue. You don't actually get to draw anything until way into the second section of the book. (Note that I said Section, not Chapter). Even then, the explanations are so obtuse and convoluted that it is almost impossible for anyone without a vector based application background to figure out what's going on.
I suppose if one has experience with Corel or the Adobe products, this book makes sense and probably covers all the bells and whistles. But if you're a relatively computer literate person who just wants to learn how to use CorelDraw 12 from the ground up, get a different book.
DB

I use this book to supplement our graphic illustration course at a local college. It's amazingly precise for a third party manual and extremely thorough in covering every aspect of the program. We follow the tutorials to create our practical design projects.

One reviewer mentioned he had troubles with the companion Web site, but we've never had a problem downloading the files. We follow the Downloads link and locate the book from the alphabetized list. It's a couple of clicks at most.