Game Design Books

i love the way this book gives you products to desgin that you will be doing at work. The projects templates that you can download are not available!!!

Not bad at all. Practical exercises relevant to the real world. You do need prior knowledge of the application before starting into the book. What you do learn is very useful though..

The book livews up to it's name, these were all projects you can use on the job. I have used multiple projects in my own work. It is helpful to go to the site and download the project files to follow along. There is one section in the first book that gives ou instructions on making the E that are wrong...this drove me crazy for two days until I figured it out. But otherwise, you'll recieve use out of most of this book.

I first purchased this book to try to help me with Illustrator 9 (yes, I know - it's for CS2, but I was totally lost trying to learn my inherited version of Illustrator 9 on my own, and I figured things couldn't be THAT different between versions, right? hah.) To anyone else considering this book for anything other than CS2: Stop. Turn back. It will only make you salivate for CS2, for the features CS2 has that earlier versions of Illustrator lack.

That said, I've since been able to upgrade to CS2, and this book, although modestly helpful -- (it uses projects to teach, and who has time to work through the book's projects? I've got my OWN projects to complete, and need to get up to speed, fast, on only the tasks required for my project) -- is not nearly as helpful for a complete Illustrator nincompoop (i.e. me) as is the Quick Start CS2 guide by Elaine Weinmann, also available here on Amazon.

This book is the one that should've been included in the box with the software, instead of the semi-useful one that was there. But it's not as helpful for a total novice as is the Weinmann book.

I'm a newbie to Illustrator, and I found several of the teaching projects in this book difficult to follow. There is a presumption in the steps provided that you know your way around a little bit more than a novice may be able to grasp. Also, a couple of the projects have mistakes in them which render the reader incapable of completing them unless you go to the publisher's website and download the errata PDF.

This book has become one of my all-time favorites. The photos are beautiful and the book offers helpful advice on how to maximize space in a room without sacrificing style.
Even the tiniest of spaces provides an opportunity for storage, display or utility with no wasted space to spare.

If you are a small-home owner, as I am, this book should delight you. I've kept it handy and have referred to it on quite a few occasions to spark my creativity or stimulate ideas that I could (and still can) easily implement in my home. Unlike many other decorating books, this was a great read as well. I enjoyed it from cover-to-cover.
Renters, this book is geared more toward home owners so I would suggest seeking it out from a library to enjoy the ideas without spending the extra cash.

This is, by far, the best book I've found on decorating small spaces. I pick it up again and again, and it always inspires me. It illustrates different techniques you can use to create the illusion of more space, maximize space, or create a cozy space. Although the styles are expensive, many of the techniques can be used even with a small budget, i.e., using mirrors, patterned wallpaper, furniture you can see through, hanging curtains above window frames, etc.

My husband and I don't have a lot of money. We live in a one-bedroom apartment in Cincinnati. But if you're accustomed to making expensive ideas work for a miniscule budget, it's a perfect book. True, most of the designers featured in the book live in Manhattan (which is woefully expensive; those great apartments you see in movies or on TV are actually more in the price range of folks making near six figures), and some of the ideas really weren't my style, but if you do a little reading between the lines, you get good basic ideas on how to maximize your space.

Truth be told, not all of the ideas used were that expensive. Slipcovers for chairs and sofas abounded, old furniture was given new life with decorative painting. Remember two things as you go through the beautiful settings: 1) these were done by artistic designers and certainly a good portion of these things were done by hand as opposed to bought, and 2) gorgeous, tasteful items don't have to cost an arm and a leg if you look in the right places.

After reading the last review, I decided to look at this book in the bookstore before ordering. I'm glad I did, because I will NOT be ordering the book after all. What a waste. Nothing there. A bunch of pretty little pictures of places that don't relate to my home or life or "stuff" at all. And I live in a pricey suburb.

This book contains many stunning photos and presents a lot of intriguing ideas. But it also brings out the final question: If you can afford that much on design why not move to a bigger space? A more appropriate title would be: Decorating Small Spaces in Expensive Cities (where you are too tired to move).

This book is worth reading if you are trying to develop flash games but don't read it as your first book on the topic ;) It gets into pretty advanced stuff that if you no nothing about Flash or ActionScript you will get a headache. I bought 6 Flash game dev. books and I think I tried to read this one second or something....I quit it and had to read the other books and then I read this last instead :D

Still, I'd recommend it if you are trying to make a flash game beyond 'click the monkey'... ^_^'

Very informative as far as what it teaches, but I noticed it's written for the experienced user...so why does it come with a demo of the software you're being taught? If you're experienced, you already own it, I think.

This book does not use the typical approach where various games of increasing complexity and size are used to explain concepts throughout the chapters. Instead, part of the book is dedicated to small games pieces or recipes and another to full games. In any case, there are many areas of Flash game programming that are covered. Some of the topics include game math, level editors, artificial intelligence (AI) and even multiplayer games. Of course not ever topic is covered with as much detail as others. But, plenty of references to both web links and books are provided throughout the chapters and in the appendix for more information on certain topics. The book includes a CD with demo software, game files, PDFs and other various files.

The first chapters (Part I) start with an introduction to gaming, including terminology and genres. Then is a description of Flash's capabilities and limitations. Surprisingly, there is no basic introduction to Flash or ActionScript that is frequently seen in other books. The rest of this section is dedicated to general development issues including game design and planning.

The core material of this book was cover in Part II (Chapter 3-14). Here many of the fundamentals of game programming were explained through small example scripts and incomplete games. Game math is one of the first topics introduced, followed by physics and then collisions (detections and reactions). Following the math and physics related scripts did get a bit difficult at times. However, full understanding is not necessarily required since the many scripts provided can be easily implemented into other games. Also, the PDF files on the CD consisted of some of the equations used in the scripts with the math worked out in pencil. Aside from the math intensive chapters, there was still a lot of useful material in the remaining chapters. The chapters on tile and isometric based games provided good information on how to handle them more easily and efficiently. In addition, the chapter on AI was original, since it covered maze creation and path finding as well as the usual enemy attack/pursuit scripts that many books focus on. There was even a decent, although single and short, chapter on sound, including using it in Flash and creating your own. All the material in these chapters were explained in detail and included numerous images.

The final part of the book concludes with discussion on several full functioning games. There is one game for each of the remaining chapters (15-18). Not all of the code from each game could be discussed, as the chapters from Part II took up the bulk of the book. Nonetheless, the key areas of each game were described in detail and the .fla source files on the CD did include comments. The CD also provided additional source files for a handful of full and incomplete games. Still, the games in these chapters were each complex and large enough to have warranted more coverage. The multiplayer chess game, which used a socket server (Chapter 16), could have definitely benefited from more content. Ultimately there were probably too few pages to fairly discuss the games in the final chapters.

This book is certainly not for a beginner, since it does not have a Flash or ActionScript primer that most of these books would include. On the back cover it is categorized as intermediate to advance and I agree for the most part. It was at least a notch above in difficulty from beginner level books I have read so far. However, with little coverage on object oriented programming (OOP), it probably can not be considered a true advanced book. Some of the examples did use exported class files, but actual discussion on them was limited. In the end, I found the middle part on game pieces to be more helpful. Nevertheless, "Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified" is still a good book and will work as both a reference and a standard guide.

Rating: 4/5

I was hoping that this book would shed some light on how to apply practical mathematics to AS2.0 in order to produce some realistic effects. It provides a good start and even gives good descriptions about the inner workings of some of the concepts.

I took two years of H.S. physics, trig, and calc and I still find the explanations lacking for those of us that require the "why's" to all our questions.

The examples on the CD are extremely helpful IF you understand the code. Sorting through the files to find the code is hard and some of the files seem unfinished.

I would get this used if given the chance to do it all over again.

I would suggest any books by Colin Moock or the Robert Penner book "Programming Macromedia Flash MX" over this book. I bought this book because I hoped it would explain some physics applications that I was having trouble with and because it dives into topics like multiplayer games. To be fair, I haven't gotten to the multiplayer games section yet, so it's possible that that part is clear and useful. The physics part is only helpful if you are content to simply copy and paste code into your flash apps. I'd like to really understand the topic at hand and for me this book failed miserably.

1. This book is poorly edited. I know it is difficult to make sure there are no typos when you're reading through code examples, but somehow O'Reilly press gets it done very well. I found several examples in the first few chapters, some of them actually interfering with my comprehension of the text.

2. This book does a very poor job of explaining complicated topics. In some places, the authors suggest readers turn to pdf files on the included cd for further explication. The pdf files I looked at, however, were simply scans of handwritten notes. This would have been acceptable to me, but the notes really didn't explain anything any more than the book or code examples did.

When explaining how to test for collisions between graphic objects, the book attempts to describe a quadratic equation. This appears to be a difficult thing to describe; however, this does not excuse shortcuts such as simply not explaining how/why the authors solve the problem the way that they do. I am particularly frustrated by an example of code in which the variables are named a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j... Yes, the authors need to create a number of temporary variables and perhaps this method was optimized. But for a didactic text? Use variable names that actually mean something, that actually convey what is being done.

Look elsewhere for your flash informationl.

I am frankly surprised at the bitterness of a few of the previous reviews. I have found this book excellent for me, a novice on Painter 6 (mac). It is true enough that in the first chapter, the CD lacks Mac versions of the "projects." However, the other chapters all work from .tif, .riff or .psd files and are fully supported by Mac. The topics discussed are the things I need to get going with this software.
As for the comments regarding the style of one of the book's writers, I can only say that she makes frequent and clever allusions to literature, history and culture. The fact that the previous reviewer does not recognize these references says more about the reviewer than the author.

The contents of this book should be focused on the functions and wiz-bang attributes of Painter -- you'd think. Instead, we are made to sit through the endless harangue of Rhoda Grossman (a name Dickens would have approved of!). Sherry London's opinions aren't as blatant, but when have you ever had to endure a bashing to find out how to use a product? Painter is an incredible product. Thank goodness I already know this or I might feel embarrassed about my choice, based on the commentary in this book. The book is a total waste of money. It gets one star only because zero isn't allowed.

Since expressing my frustration (below), I have since gotten some satisfaction from the publisher. I contacted The Coriolis Group's Technical Support Dept. (1-800-410-0192; JoannD@coriolis.com), and they indicated that defective disks were included with "some" of the books. If you have any problems with the CD, contact them, and they will send you a replacement. So far, it seems to work fine--and it includes Mac files that work in Painter! (So five stars for the tech support team.)

Now that I've been able to actually work through more of the book, I'd modify my total star score to a two (hence my three stars on this review to average my one star below). This text attempts to be helpful, but it is extremely disorganized--the first chapter jumps around haphazardly and does not make obvious connections between ideas. In the section on layers, for example, the authors leap into masks (a related but different topic) without warning, launching into a tirade about all the things the program can't do that they think it should; only after a couple pages do you get to what masks *can* do and how to use them.

The authors are trying, and I have picked up a few useful tips. Except for a meager center section in full color, the entire text is in black and white, making it hard to see what's going on in many of the screen shots. I don't think the book is as thorough or as well organized as it could be, and there are numerous mistakes that left me scratching my head and having to decipher the authors' meaning (even menu commands are incorrectly listed!); however, it has some uses.

If I were to choose a book to learn Painter 6, I'd use the user's manual that comes with the program and the Painter 6 WOW! book--the latter is incredible, in full color throughout, and overflowing with useful tips and hints. Rather than giving you formulaic, step-by-step lessons, the WOW! book shows you real art and describes the process and techniques for getting there. It treats you more like a creative individual. If it wasn't too late, I'd be returning my Painter 6 F/X & Design book for a refund.

As a new Painter user, I picked up the P6 Wow! book for tips and tutorials, based on my experience with the excellent Photoshop Wow! book. But I found many more tips than tutorials in the Painter Wow! Book, and I needed something to help me learn the program -- closer to a "Classroom in a Book" for Painter. This book has more tutorials/projects than the Wow! book. It also speaks frankly about Painter, its good and bad points, and lets you know where the program is buggy or could be improved. The examples are not as inspiring as Wow!, and the book is entirely in B&W with only a small (maybe 15 pages) color insert, but I think the tutorials and general approach are better for the beginning Painter user.

There are definitely a few problems with this book. I suspect most people who buy it are not that proficient with Painter. But the book expects you to fill in so many gaps where its explanations are lacking. Later on in the book you are presented with that same lacking infomation in a context where it isn't as absolutely crucial. So it can be an aggravating text to learn from. Sometimes I found items in different menus to that indicated in the text. Some of the material on the CD provided was simply inaccessible. Save your pennies and instead of this text get the Painter 6 Wow! Book which is truly excellent.

I've been programming with PHP professionally for just a year. This book was a good introduction to some concepts I hadn't encountered in my day-to-day work yet, but little more. After reading this book twice, supplementing it with information from the PHP online manual, and passing their practice exams three times in a row, I still failed the exam.

This book doesn't even cover all the topics presented on their practice exams, much less the actual Zend exam. It's riddled with typos (even some in the code, which I consider unforgivable), has no practice questions or coding exercises to go with each chapter, and contains no "for more information, see..." referrals. The streams chapter, for example, primarily covers file I/O and barely touches on network and socket streams. There are some questions I still don't know where to find answers to short of scouring through the PHP manual itself in hopes of stumbling across it.

In short, a good overview of the PHP language, but pathetic exam prep.

While there were a few perspectives that some might not have noticed or thought about. For the most part, this was pretty light weight compared to the practice exams. If you have been working in the language and keeping up with the world, you should have at least seen most of this before. I would not rely on it for more than a detailed outline of some of what you need to know cold - - - at least for the practice exams. Perhaps I will be surprised by the actual exam, and find that this is exactly what is needed - - - who knows.

This books covers a good amount of the topics on the certification, and I would definitely recommend it for the certification and general PHP knowledge. You will probably need more than this to pass the certification. I would recommend taking the online practice tests from the Zend certification site as well.

One can easily argue that the certification exam itself is a waste of money, but with this book and its associated practice exams, the case is a little more cut-and-dry.

Want to pass the exam? Know the following things:

1. What can and can't go in a function/variable name.

2. What typehints are, how they work, and where they're applied.

3. What all of the array_*() functions do. The more verbose array_*_*() functions which nobody uses can be safely skipped over.

4. How to use the SimpleXML library in a very general way i.e. access elements, attributes and convert to DOM.

5. Everything about the new object model, including abstract and final classes, the new constructor format, destructors, autoloaders and access specifiers (public, private, protected).

6. How and when to pass by reference.

7. When things go out of scope.

8. What the following php.ini directives do: allow_url_fopen, register_globals, enable_dl, disable_functions.

9. What goes in the superglobals and when ($_SERVER, $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, $_ARGV).

10. What all of the bitwise operators do (you should also be able to convert numbers to and from decimal, octal, hexadecimal and binary notation with nothing but your brain and a piece of scratch paper).

Database topics are covered, but you generally don't have to know any of the nonsense about mysqli or PDO--these things are all too buggy to actually use anyway, so learning about them is doubly pointless. If you can memorize function argument lists, do so with the preg_ and various string functions, because they like to throw some curveballs that use the optional args no one ever thinks about. If you can't, then don't bother because you can usually eliminate at least two of the choices they give you right off the bat and guess your way through the rest.

And please, please, please, leave comments on the questions that have misspelled words. They really need to fix that if they're going to charge $125 for a test.

I took the test and passed :) (I think that says it all ;-) )

I studied the book along with the PHP help in order to digg a little more on the functions. I also bought the online practice test to see which areas I needed to focus on.

I liked the book, easy to understand/read.

When I got this book I was like WOW! This Is good.But after I
read It 3 times and did what It said I was very disaponted!It said what a game shoud be but not how to do it!It only does a few short lines of That.If you want two completely copy Doom Get this Book,If not,Don't.

Whenever I am contemplating a new game development book the first thing I look at is the copyright year. Software books become obsolete so quickly but..... You don't have to do that with this one.
This is not about coupling up with the latest software and understanding how to make game graphics. This is about understanding the principles behind graphics for games. and that means it is very relevant.

It teaches how to create, manage, and manipulate textures and tiles and how to create seamless tiling. Lots of other stuff too including a nice, but short, tutorial on how to use the genesis 3d game engine to create a game. Very useful tutorial. The genesis 3d engine is open software and a copy of it comes on the CD with the book. This alone is nice because you can take this book and actually make a game. Everything is right there including software, tutorial and sample textures.

Perfect book for the person looking to make a 3d dungeon type game but has never tried to make a game before.


I found the tutorials easy to follow except that it uses Photoshop and if you are a starving game maker like me you probably can't afford photoshop so you will have to work through your own translation into your paint program. I use Paint Shop Pro which is superb and about 1/10 the cost of photoshop.

All in all it is a great book to teach you some fundamentals of game art and I refer to it over and over.

I picked this book up without much research. After a quick flip through the pages I decided it was better to have around than no reference material at all.

Strong points: Luke Ahearn goes through a step-by-step process regarding building texture libraries, and efficient ways to structure your directory trees for referencing. These are all valid lessons that apply directly to working in a professional environment, so pay attention! Also, his feedback on tiling and cleaning up of digital images is relevant, although not comprehensive.

As far as the other game art tips included, I haven't tried them yet. I use a different mapping engine (Quake 3 / GTK Radiant) but the tips and interfaces between many engines are similar, so if you don't have a commercially supported editor, I assume Wild Tangent's Genesis 3D one is adequate (it's really designed for web-based 3D gaming, and doesn't require 3D cards for all applications). At any rate, this book is not the end-all-be-all of game art and level design books, but rather a very good place to start.

Weak points: The author puts a lot of information into the book without focusing on any one particular area. Perhaps that is due to the nature of the work. Be a good 2D artist and make textures. Be a good 3D artist and make models. Be a good level designer and put everything together. It's a lot to handle, and a lot of it is crammed into the book but no one area is really focused on entirely. Also, if you're not using Photoshop for texturing, have fun adapting these lessons to another application.

Given Mr. Ahearn's professional experience (he did the level work and artwork for America's Army: Operations - the free 1st person shooter released by the US Army powered by the Unreal engine) it's safe to say he knows what he's doing. Don't purchase this book thinking it'll be the only tome you need to read to become a fantastic 3D artist or level artist, but consider it if you want to have a handy reference manual on how to make effective textures and intriguing levels for your games. Since modern day games can get very complex very quickly (bot pathfinding and logic, creating shaders and sky boxes, etc.) it's good to start with the essentials and build up from there.

There aren't a lot of books out there that cover this type of work, so my suggestion is pick it up, work through it, and hit some message boards to learn how to do the tricky stuff.

The learning curve to produce good 3D content is pretty steep. As human beings, we are very familiar with what 3D spaces should look like, and therefore it can be very irksome to us when something looks bad, unreal, or out of place. This book attempts to act as a primer on how to create art for compelling worlds.

I work professionally as a developer on a 3D authoring application and so I'm pretty familiar with many of the skills required to create 3D content. There are many steps from concept to final, and some of them require at least a rudiment of artistic or design background.

The author at least does a good job of taking the reader through most of the important steps, and certainly focuses on the design related ones. The author gives some good source material and basic techniques for dirtying up and making textures tileable, though some of the tasks require at least a moderate knowledge of Photoshop. He also offers a few key tidbits of advice in modeling and lighting environments, though nothing groundbreaking.

A large portion of the book goes to explaining how to use Genesis3D, an open source 3D application that comes on the CD with the book. I applaud the author in at least packaging a pertinent program so the reader can be given a chance to use their skills. Unfortunately it is typical of 3D-game world editors and isn't very easy to use. I would recommend at least looking around and trying other editors before investing much time in learning one. Though this is certainly a necessary evil to learn at least one if you plan on doing any level editing.

I'd say the main weakness of the book is that it is geared primarily towards the creation of typical first-person shooter worlds. Fortunately these are very popular, and surrealistic enviroments tend not to require as much finesse because limited or extreme lighting and environments can be used to hide limitations in modeling experience. It tends to be much more difficult to create 3D enviroments of the familiar (i.e. offices, house interiors, etc.) though who wants to make those anyway, that's what everyone is trying to escape from in the first place, right? ;)

In closing, this book is a good start, however, even though the author may be a really great level designer he definitely hasn't imparted all of his tricks in this book. I don't mean to offend, though it possibly might be from lack of experience. The fact that he talks about how to get rid of "flash burn" from a camera instead of teaching techniques on how to avoid it in the first place, such as buying an [inexpensive]off-camera flash (or if you can't afford that, at least putting tissue paper in front of the flash to act as a diffuser)

For more information of how to create good textures, I'd recommend reading anything Hayden Duvall has written in Game Developer Magazine or on game development Web sites.

For more information of fundamental lighting techniques, I'd recommend [digital] Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. Or, if you can afford it, take a technical theater course on lighting design at a community college.

Unfortunately, for 3D game level design there aren't very many good resources, they're all broken up by what editor is used to create the levels, so first pick your game/editor and then just look for forums dedicated to that one.

I am reviewing this book from a Software Engineer's point of view. I have zero experience with generating game art. Which is precisely why I bought this book. So keep that in mind as you read this.

The book is dived into two parts. "Part 1 - 2D Interactive Game Art" is devoted to designing and building textures in Adobe Photoshop. This was a bit disapointing as I can't afford to pop ($) for Photoshop. But I imagine the techniques are pretty much the same regardless of the software you use (assuming that part of the industry uses any kind of a standard). Part 1 also has a few detours into things like "Logos" and their design process and "Menu's and Interfaces." In my opinion, these detours are bonus materials. The author uses a tutorial based approach for learning how to build textures in Photoshop. Each tutorial focuses on a basic method, i.e., Creating A Rust Texture, Creating Brushed Metal. Then, a group of tutorials is followed up by a multi texture project that may or may not use the textures you created in the previous tutorials.

The texture tutorials are a bit vague. They basically follow this kind of format (I'm paraphrasing each step):

To create a rust texture in Photshop, follow these steps:

1. Creat a new image document and make it 600x600...
2. Fill the background with a light brown...
3. Add noise to this layer with the Noise filter: Choose Noise|Add Noise. Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic.
4. Blur this layer by choosing Filter|Blur|Motion Blur. Set the angle to 45 and the Distanceto 45...

If you are already a texture artist, maybe you know what "Set the amount to 40, Gaussian and make it Monochromatic" means. But I would have liked an explanation of these types of things.

The problem with the tutorial approach is it is specific to Adobe Photoshop. If you don't have Photoshop to follow along with, it is hard to understand what is happening in these steps.

I would have liked a better explanation of designing textures for tiling. There are tutorials for designing seamless textures, but again, without having Photoshop (and zero game art experience) it is really hard to follow.

Part 1 also has some good insight into creating and managing your texture library.

Part 2 - World Building: Genesis3D and Reality Factory, focuses on building game levels for use in the Genesis3D game engine (Reality Factory is an upgraded and improved version of the Genesis3D engine). Part 2 of the book is, again, a tutorial based approach to building a game world with the level editor. In fact, all of the tutorials are part of one project that part 2 focuses on: building a castle, courtyard and models (to place in the castle gameworld). The last chapter of the book focuses on Reality Factory and the goodies it adds to Genesis3D.

My goal is to write my own level editor and game engine. I have the software knowledge to do so and now this book has given me a peek at what a level editor should do and how it goes hand in hand with the game engine. At first I was put off by the tutorial approach until I realized that in order to learn this stuff you need to do this stuff. And to do it you need some software. So on second thought it was only natural for the author to pick some software and teach you how to use it. In doing so, he succeeds in teaching you about "3D Game Art and f/x Design."

SOFTWARE ON THE CD
Of course, the CD does not come with Photoshop. But the author does provide other game art resources including an free GNU Photshop-like application (...).

I was a bit upset when I realized the minimum OS requirement for software on the CD was Windows 98. I am still running a 1997 version of Windows 95! (I know, I know... I'm in the process of ordering a tricked out Alienware machine!). But, having experience with these type of requirements, I decided to install everything anyway. And it works! At least the level editor and Genesis3D game engine work. As my machine is a 166 MHz P II, I'm not even going to attempt to run the Reality Factory (min reqs: P II 200 MHz, 64 mb ram, NVidia TNT-class 3D accelerator. recommended: P II 400 MHz, AGP NVidia TNT2-class 3D accelerator). Fair warning now, Reality Factory will not run without a 3D accelerator.

The CD comes with a test game. Genesis3D uses the DirectX API. My machine does not have a 3D accelerator so Genesis3D runs in software mode. My frame rate at 640x480 was a whopping 5 frames/second (yes, I'm being sarcastic)! But the author does warn you about this.

When all is said and done, I was very pleased with this book. It gave me some good insight to Game Art. The level editor and Genesis3D game engine were bonus materials.

This book gives an introduction to almost all features of illustrator and how to use it. Using this book in conjunction with extensive personal practice and experimentation with the program will take you a long way toward mastering the software.

I bought Illustrator CS2 a couple months ago and had never used the program before. I have used Photoshop for years, so I was at least familiar with the general Adobe layout. This "100 Essential Techniques" book sounded like the perfect place to start, but I soon discovered mistakes and omissions as I went through the tutorials. And as a novice, ANY mistake or omission makes the difference between quick learning and total confusion. "Did I read that wrong? Am I not looking in the right place?" No, the book is wrong.

For example, #24 is called "Clipping with Masks". It's supposed to tell you how to use one object as a shape mask for another object. Here are the COMPLETE instructions for this section:

"The components of a clipping mask are the object to be masked and the masking object. You first create the object to be masked. Then you move the masking object on top of the object to be masked."

It fails to mention the important part about clicking "Object | Clipping Mask | Make". This I discovered on my own. Other sections (example #31) use the wrong terminology. In this section they used "Lasso tool" when they should have said, "Magic Wand." If I hadn't already been familiar with these two tools from Photoshop, I would have wondered why their instructions didn't work.

To summarize, this book isn't great for anyone. It's too simplistic for anyone who's used Illustrator, but has too many mistakes to be 100% useful to beginners. If you end up buying this book, buy it used and know that if you get lost reading the instructions, it's most likely the fault of the authors.

This book is structured exactly as you would imagine from the title. It's great for looking up a solution quickly when you get stuck. I felt that I needed more "Instruction", being a novice ... so I bought "Exploring Illustrator CS2 (Design Exploration Series) to go with it ... together they are great for the beginner! Both Highly recomended.

At first glance at this book, I really liked how the book was formatted by numbers and "quick tips". This made me feel like learning illustrator would be short and to the point. I liked the screenshots and shortcuts that were included and I felt like the first few chapters (or "tips") were a good way to get introduced to each topic in a quick and easy way. The reading in this book is good. It is easy to follow and straightforward. The reference guide is plus too!

But, for me personally--I did not find this book extremely helpful to my knowledge of Adobe Illustrator. I think it would be great for a REAL Illustrator novice--someone who has absolutely NO prior Adobe Illustrator experience because it explains to the Illustrator student how each step should be taken in a thorough and explanatory way. For someone who has had experience with Illustrator--you might be looking more for a tooltip book like the QuickStart guides that Peachpit press puts out. But for the true Illustrator novice--I think this book can be really beneficial for you!

One last point, I think that I would've liked to see more examples and images of Illustrator-created work as examples for each of the tools that were explained and expounded on in each chapter. This is what helps inspire me as a designer, seeing other people's work and seeing how I can do something similar with an ordinary Illustrator tool.

Again, for a beginner who is just starting out--this book is to the point, well written and can help you be on the road to learning Illustrator in an easy & topically driven way.

Yes, as stated in other reviews, this is a book for those new to Illustrator. Simple, to the point, and clearly written, this book takes the dread and frustration out of using a program that has such an extremely steep learning curve. There is a bit of redundancy when using this book cover-to-cover, but the chapters can also be used as stand-alone reference material in such fashion.

Detailed overview on strucuring in computer enviroment for the creation of
images whether they be human form or objects and machinery as well as the use of light affects such as ray tracng and fogs for affects and a long list of apps that work with it to do a complete animated or special efects film,many products mentioned are not avilable any longer though,similes may be found elsewheres.A complete handbook for endusers of such needs as film special effects and fine tuning of imagery in film or video.

This book reads like a "Secrets of the master's revealed." Yes, it assumes you know whats what, but if you do know what is what, then there is really no other book available. It took me the better half of 60 days to work this journey, but you come out bigger and bolder than ever on the other side. If you are dedicated and put in the hard time, this book will take you to a pro status. My eyes were once closed, now after reading this book, they are wide open. I can only hope that the great Mr. Kuligan and his associates write another book that covers the few untouched features of 3DS MAX that he did not address in this book . A true must-own for any aspiring 3d artist lying in wait....

I'm following the first proyect of the book, wich is the largest, and aplies many modeling techniques, and animation tools too, plus a little texturing. i won't denied it, it's a very prectical book, but I just get that sensation, that there has to be a better one, I don't expect to cover all the program tool, but if it says advanced modeling and animating, so I expect some great modeling techniques, and great animation tips too.
The book itself consist in two big proyects, where you finally get two animations, as the result of a extensive use of many tools. The rest of the book it's filled up with some quick tutorials, that are not very different from that ones found on the web.
In conclusion, I would expect a more modling and animating dedicated book, and not a book trying to teach you a little of everything without getting in depth in anything.

PD: If you are used to those step by step tutorial books, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK, it sometimes skip steps in the proyect, like assuming you already know how to reach the next step.

I recently bought Advanced 3ds max 5 Modeling & Animating
by Boris Kulagin, and in my opinion, i am advanced but this book is written for complete Pro's. Within 15 minutes of starting the first project i was already confused about how something got there, i followed the instructions exactly and even started again to see if i missed something and the same thing happened at the same bit. On one page you would have what you have and then you turn over and theres a completely different section. Later on in the book when i tried another project, again i got lost about something magically appearing, its as if i have several pages missing in the middle of a project. This book is VERY advanced and maybe more, you must have magical powers to know whats going on sometimes. I have read other books that are better in explanation, this book could have been better with about 100 pages more just to give those extra few sentances on whats happening. If you plan on buying this book its advised to get the previous book "3DS max 4: objects to animation" as there are many references to it throughout. The CD provided has a few useful plugins etc, but thats the best bit about this book. In honest truth to you i would shop around for another title. Espeacially if you are a begginer.

This book says "advanced modelling and animation". The modelling and animation examples in this book are of a beginner's standard and poorly executed. The tutorials are utterly uninspirational and lacking any creativity. The demo files on the accompanying CD are, frankly, embarassing. Why would you want to follow a tutorial that produces such a substandard result?
I find it offensive that an author can exploit the ambition of a novice - providing nothing but empty promises.
Free tutorials on the internet are by far the most diverse and useful resource available to an emerging modeller and animator.
DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

The book I ordered was in better than advertised condition. Shipment was very fast. Would order from again.

Hello,

In a nutshell: I was looking for a book to help build a high-end PC from the ground up. I ordered this book used. As others indicate above, if you like pretty pictures of exotic PCs, this book is for you. If you want specific pictures for how to build such a PC, avoid this book. There are no step by step photos that show how to assemble the Motherboard with components...where to put the chip (processor); how to hold the chip (and how not to hold the chip) as you place it on the Motherboard; how to apply thermal paste (Arctic); how to place a Zalman fan over the chip....Anyway, these are the important things one needs to know (+see) in order to assemble one of these high end computers.

My advice: look elsewhere for a how to build book. However, if you want pretty pictures of what a fancy computer looks like, or flashy color photos of a nice motherboard, or a nice power supply...then this book is for the dreamer in you. Trust me though: look elsewhere for a book that will walk you through step by step - how to build a PC adding one part at a time.

This is a very professionally done book on how to build your own computer. The pictures alone make it one of my favorite books. The detail is just right for anyone with some computer knowledge. The only knock is the fine print on the glossy photo pages can be a bit hard to read with tired eyes.

Not much more than a lot of nice pictures of what other people have done. This book is not for learning how to build a computer, so if your thinking about getting it for that reason look elsewhere.

This book has some great pictures of some really amazing cases and mods, but not much in the way if information on how to actually do the modding.

Since I work with a wide variety of ages, upper elementary through adult, I found this book to be a valuable resource. A lot of the activities are geared more toward the adult side, but I have very successfully adapted several of the activities to the younger aduience. The section at the beginning of the book with the How-To's for facilitators presents some excellent advice. The activities are categorized very nicely, and the lay-out of the activities themselves is very similar to an educator's lesson plan, which I also think is a big plus.

Although there is a lot of information packed into this book, I was very unimpressed with the layout and visual design. It looks like it was typed up in 1970. The graphics are ancient and the layout is just one big binder with no cross-referencing or indexing available. To find a useful game, you have to sift through hundreds of pages. It really is a shame, as there are some clever games here to loosen up an audience.
Frankly for this price, I expected something a bit flashier and filled with reproducibles that I would want to copy and hand out. The way it looks now, and with it's unwieldy format, it's going to sit on my shelf.
If I hadn't spilled water on it, I would have sent it back for a refund.

The best thing about The Complete Games Trainers Play is its sheer size. Actually, it isn't nearly as big as some reviews imply. It is really around 1000 pages, not 2000+. And for some reason, a significant percentage of those pages are left blank. But even with that caveat, this is still a sizable resource.

If you are willing to devote 30+ minutes to finding an activity, you are sure to find one (or five) that are ideal for your training event. The fact that individual "games" can be removed from the ring binder is also helpful. This allows you to use the activities without carrying the whole book around, and to easily photocopy sheets for individual participants as some activities require.

However, there are some significant downsides. There is no real way to find appropriate activities without flipping through virtually the entire book. A large number of the activities aren't very good. And, most of the book is in a strange "typewriter" typeface that makes it look like it came from 1972. (Oddly, there are some pages which are randomly sprinkled through the book that use a different, more recent-looking typeface.)

To really upgrade its usefulness, Games . . . would benefit from taking a leap into the computer age. In other words, along with the printed book, a computer CD should be included. This could feature a good, searchable index, which is now lacking. It would also make it possible to print out games, and modify handouts on the computer to your organization's needs.

I've never bought any other resources like this, so I can't say if this is better or worse than others. I can say that in spite of the steep price and the drawbacks, I'm definitely glad I purchased it. It was very useful to me, and will be again in the future. However, there are a few simple steps the authors and publishers could take to greatly improve it.

This is a great tool of Trainers. Keeping your trainees engaged throughout the training is always a challenge. This tool give creative ways to assess retention of information. The games are great and the administrative forms and suggestions are wonderful.

People love playing games a lot more than listening to lectures; this is indisputable. I didn't like all of the games listed here, but so what. Several I found helpful and intend to use.