No comments about Visual Design on the Computer, Second Edition.

5 comments about The Animation : Master 2000 Handbook (Graphics Series).

1. This is more for the beginners. If you've read and understood the manual, then you don't need this book. It's just the same again more in depth and with more tutorials. The special features not mentioned in the manual (like flocking..) are kept very short in here. The online help of the software should often be enough. If you didn't catch the idea with the manuals explenations then.. buy it!



2. The only reason I bought this book was to learn how to use Animation Master. I have the Book that came with the software which is about a "2 ½ star" book. After much research and review of other animation programs, I have concluded that Animation Master is a "5 star" program with "2 ½ star support".

   Here is a simple analogy. A person needs to get to a street called "E street" and in order to get there they must know that there is an A,B,C,D, street. In comparison the author of this book constantly gives directions like take A,B,D, or A,C,D leaving out essential details thus leaving the student of this excellent animation program frustrated and confused. Basically the author of this book is probably an excellent animator and story teller. As a writer myself I remind the author that if the details of a story are left out a percentage of the audience will bail thus creating inappropriate and negative views about the potential of becoming animators and I believe that the author is trying to help people to become animation enthusiast not discourage them.

   If you want to be as good in writing your tutorials as you are hopfully an animator then please take the time to avoid assumptions about your readers. If on the other hand you have written the book to get quick cash because of very little competition. Then I will ask that someone who has more tolerance of beginners and understands the essential nature of including all of the steps A,B,C,D,E please take the challenge.

   In conclusion I believe that this is a program well worth the price of admission . I only ask for a larger group of us who are newer and can learn well with a more detailed tutorial book that someone please take on this needed to be done task.

   P.S. to Jeff Paries I an not trying to insult you. I'm simply asking for a more complete and linear set of tutorials from you or anyone else. There is a business need at this graphic revolutionary time even if you write two books. Beginning to Intermediate book one followed by Intermediate to Advance. Then we are happier to give the writer more money that they deserve and word of mouth advertising is expanded to a higher level.

   Thank you for your time. renzai@pdai.com




3. Its not a question whether I can recommend this book or not. Why do I say this? Its because the original manual that comes with Animation Master is so awful that you have to buy this book to make sense of it all.

   Now in the case of reviewing the book, there is some good things to say and some bad things to say:

   First of all, Jeff Paries is extremely knowledgable on the subject matter. The book is packed with so much information (600 pages worth) so that makes it a valuable tool.

   The biggest complaint is that some of the tutorials need clarification. I went through a lot of them and I find bits of essential information missing. Somethings I have to improvise and experiment (which is not necessarily a bad thing but it can be frustrating). I think the author (and the editors too) should take some test subjects and let them go through the tutorials and point out any inconstancies in the text.





4. I purchased the Animation Master 98 Handbook almost 2 years ago and found it to be very benificial to increasing my skills with Animation Master... to a degree.

   I recently purchased the AM2000 Handbook in hopes that it would cover/correct problems in the first book. Yet the incomplete, vauge, and at times, unreliable instructions that the 98 Handbook had left me with returned in the AM2000 Handbook

   99.9% of all my problems stem from the modeling tutorials, especially the Advanced Modeling section. At times you are left to "figure it out for yourself" instead of being walked through each step in the process. The most disappointing is the modeling tutorial of the female body. Where Mr. Paries spends 10 pages on how to model a simple fish, he spends only 11 pages describing how to model the "intricate" human female.

   If you own the AM98 Handbook, see if you can find this "updated" version at your local library, borrow it from a friend, or just don't worry about it. There's really not much new in this edition and very few problems were fixed from the preceding edition.

   If you are just learning AM, pick it up. It may not be the most complete and/or detailed book that it should be, but it will give you a good idea of some of the things you can do with AM.




5. I had some of the same problems using this aftermarket manual as I did trying to use the original, worthless A:M manual-and then it created some new problems of its own. Example: neither book includes anything resembling a "quick-start" guide, that is, a straightforward no-options approach to get a quick, trouble-free 3D result right off the bat. Oh no. Too simple. The official manual doesn't even reveal how to draw a line onscreen until page 199. The Paries book starts its modeling tutorial earlier, on page 47, but does it by handing the reader a prebuilt model off the included CD-ROM. How does that teach anyone how to design a 3D model?
   If I ever learn how to use this software, I'm going to write my own doggone handbook.

No comments about Spatial Multimedia and Virtual Reality.

5 comments about The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming (Prima Tech's Game Development).

1. I am now half way through this book and find it ok in some ways and not ok in other ways.

   The CD does not correlate at all well with the examples in the book. This is a serious flaw, imho.

   I judge most of the text in the book itself to be adequately written. It could have been better.

   The book does seem to cover the important issues, however, so it does have value.

   One can learn from this book.




2. I am not sure how to get the 3d examples to run in full screen, but if you make a few changes, they will run windowed pretty well.

   First off you need to change the function InitDirect3DDevice that initializes direct x.
   change to: d3dpp.BackBufferFormat = d3ddm.Format;
   change to: d3dpp.Windowed = TRUE;
   and comment out anything that starts out with d3dpp.FullScreen

   then there is something wrong with the printing of the frame rate
   comment out FrameCount(); from GameLoop()
   comment out PrintFrameRate(); from Render()

   it also makes it nice to change the window style to an overlapped window, hope that helped.




3. This book hardly qualifies to use the word Zen in its title if refering to Direct3D. Of the 16 chapters in the book, a mere 5 of them actually deal with things related to Direct3D. The first seven chapters deal only with Windows programming, which anyone who is reading a "Zen" book should already know. There is a lot of time spent talking about using the GDI with DirectGraphics surfaces which, by the author's own admission, is not adequately fast enough to write a game.

   The final project of the book is to simulate a solar system with planets and moons revolving around the sun. There is no discussion whatsoever about keyframe or skeletal animation techniques.

   Mr. Walsh may be living in a world where all 3D games are space shooters where we only have to be able to rotate planets and spaceships, but maybe he should realize that the rest of us are not. Anyone interested in really programming in 3D needs real animation techniques which do not just include rotation and translation.

   This is all beside the fact that you have to recompile all of the code on the CD because the compiled version is the same program copied over and over and over...

   Your money is much better spent on a better book. Even Advanced 3-D Game Programming using DirectX 7.0 by Andre Perez is a better but out-of-date choice.




4. I see that many readers seem to have had problems getting the samples to compile. Having trouble using your compiler and debugging tools? I ran into compile errors, fixed them. Had a few runtime errors, fixed them too. Got every sample up and running with no tears.
   
   Many of the readers who expressed dismay at simple compile errors go on to state that the have "solid" or "sound" or "extensive" C++ experience....
   
   My only real complaint is that EVERY SINGLE VOLUME in the original Premier Press series had that danged C++ primer section that takes up almost a third of the book, rewritten over and over by each successive author. Thankfully, the newer books in the series seem to have dropped this bad habit. The end samples had that "cool" console and background that resized the background image for every frame - thus bad framerates. If you resize the image on load and then render the new image to the buffer instead it eliminates tons of overhead - bringing framerates up to the cap of 60fps on most systems (I have a computer graveyard here and some of them were only able to reach 28fps - p2/400 w/256MB RAM and an old Voodoo 2). Eliminating the background starfield brought the framerate up to 60fps on all of my systems.
   
   Zen Lesson 1: Optimization is all in YOUR head.
   
   And as far as "figuring out what order to call" various functions - a little time with a piece of paper and a little know-how with flowcharts might help you out there.
   
   Some day you should try sitting down with a technical whitepaper on a system and try sorting things out from that. Too many people are apron-string programmers who can't figure out anything for themselves - hand-holding babies without a clue. Stop whining, learn something about the trade you're trying to embrace, and realize that mommy isn't going to code your game for you.
   
   Have a nice day and happy coding.
   
   Richard



5. I got this book dirt cheap at HalfPricedBooks so I can't complain too much, if you can get it cheap why not!
   
   I think it will be a good reference book for beginning directX programmers. What you end up with is a simple working 3d game engine. Most of what you get is functions to simplify the iterface with dx8.
   
   However I found the writing style highly annoying. My english teachers repeated over and over "take out the fluff". And when all you are looking for is information (its a programming book not a novel) this book has way to much fluff. The author actually says his English teachers would never have guessed he would write a book (or if he did it would look like this book).
   
   The examples he shows in the book are not all on the CD and he doesnt always give explicit enough instructions to setup the examples yourself (for me). Which code base am I suppose to use for this example, the final code base? chapter 5 code base?
   
   But hopefully this will serve as a basic (and cheap) introduction which I will supplement with some internet research. My next step will be to code a simple game using the engine from this book, but that will definitely require some additional resources

1 comments about Fundamentals of Computer Aided Geometric Design.

1. Very thorough cover of curve and surface topics,
   with many original results.
   Brilliant bibliography.
   Extremely useful for serious CAD research.

2 comments about Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 (Graphics Series).

1. Micromedia Flash, now part of the Adobe family, has long been thought of as an annimation tool for web sites. This book stresses that Flash is also capable of producing high-quality photorealistic illustrations. To get the most out of the book you should have some experience with Flash. As such, I consider it an intermediate level book.
   
   This is the second edition of this book, with the new edition focusing on more advanced illustrating projects, covering the new features built into Flash Professional 8, and covering points discovered since the first edition appeared.
   
   The format of the book is basically a tutorial. It starts with simple line art, like you might use to illustrate assembly instructions for a bookcase. From there it goes on to more complex items eventually getting up to what the author calls 'photorealistic.' The images are close to photo quality. As some of these illustrations are quite complex, they are included on a CD supplied with the book.
   
   Using Flash as the way to generate illustrations increases the utility of the program, their data storage formats are smaller than those of many other programs, and of course animation is available.



2. I'm not a fan of Charles River Media's books. They don't have color illustrations, aren't well proofread and just generally seem cheaply put together.
   
   Despite all that, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 is a must-have book for anyone using Flash. Firebaugh's use of Flash as an illustration tool is mind blowing, using simple vector tools to create photo-realistic images.
   
   The problems of being published by CRM are evident though. The black & white pictures make it hard to judge what's going on and there are a few confusing typos and mis-wordings. (he often says "delete" when he really means "cut") You end up stuck having to have the FLA files right in front of you while you read. It's a good way to learn, but rather inconvenient.
   
   I don't want to come off as down on this book just because I don't like the publisher. There's tons of great learning in this book. The source files are set up so you can poke through each step and see how things are put together. Also there are exercises at the end of each chapter to practice what you've learned.
   
   All in all, Illustrating with Macromedia Flash Professional 8 puts you on the path the to do things with Flash you never thought were possible.

4 comments about Handbook of Geometric Programming Using Open Geometry GL.

1. the book and associated library look interesting.
   i have not read it, only flipped through it.
   i almost bought it but decided to do a bit of research
   before hand. i'm glad i did, because the open geometry
   library is in fact a closed source library
   (as i understand it you must buy the book to get the source).
   the word open is apparently derived from opengl.
   the problem is that the word open in opengl is the 'open' of 'open standards' and 'open source'.
   this is at best an ignorance of the current trends
   in the software development world, and at worst, plain misleading.
   when the authors either change the library's
   license or the library's name to more directly reflect the true
   nature of its license, i'll be glad to buy the book and review it again.
   i think that they would find that by open sourcing their business model
   they would stand to make a lot more money, as they are not really
   in the business of selling software, but selling books. who wants to buy
   buy a book about an obscure closed source library that could disappear tomorrow?



2. Don't waste your money. This is some of the most unorganized, poorly commented code I've ever seen. Some of the code is in German! The book is in English so silly me, I expected the code to be use English words for variable and function names. An example of their lack of attention to detail is the first example in the book (circumcircle) is not even in try.cpp. Yes, I fixed the example myself, but this is an example of the author's sloppiness. How about file names like a.cpp, b.cpp, c.cpp, etc! This was an ... waste of time for me.



3. Open Geometry is a collection of C++ classes making it easy to program advanced three-dimensional graphics. The classes correspond to geometrical objects like spheres, conics, "path curves", b-spline surfaces etc. Open Geometry is distributed as source code, so you get, e.g., a project to open in Microsoft Visual C++. You can add your own source code to that project (or a copy of it). What makes the book so interesting, are the given 101 well-explained examples. Together with a large number of instructives figures, they build up a geometry book about kinematics, projective geometry, differential geometry etc. This seems to be a missing link between theory and programming practice. I recommend it!!



4. The 700 page book is worth reading: It's actually a geometry book that tells you about many geometric details which you might never have heard about before: I did not know, e.g., about a quite useful developable surface named "wobbler" or "oloid", and how one can fold and unfold such surfaces via computer. The book comes with a ready to use software. The user writes little C++-programs that are linked to the library. The code of the librabry is just there to be compiled, and is not very well documented. However, it need not, since the user should only focus on his oder her part. Therefore, templets are provided that can be modified (learning by doing). Within a few hours, one is familiar with the system.

No comments about Comic Art of the United States through 2000, Animation and Cartoons: An International Bibliography (Bibliographies and Indexes in Popular Culture).

4 comments about 3ds max 6 Animation with Character Studio 4 and Plug-Ins.

1. The word "esoteric" comes to mind while composing this review. This is not a book for a beginner and it also won't add much to someone with considerable experience with rigging and animating in Max. For the right person, however, the book will be a nice tool. The authors are from Ariorh studio and their work with Panzar studio is, without doubt, among the best Max work currently being done by a small shop. The CD included with the book has a few short movie clips of their work and I've never seen better use of reactor and ClothFx (Stitch) in Max. Back to my main point: If you are using biped rather than bones to animate your characters, and if you are relatively new at the process (but not an absolute tyro) this book will be useful to you. It's a thin book that hits highlights without extensive discussion but it does have 3D character files to work with on the included CD.
   
   The authors make the point that they almost always animate their own characters with bones and NOT biped, but this book is limited to biped-based animations. Hopefully, at some point they will produce a deeper treatment of character animation based on the extraordinary work they have been doing on their Chaos project.
   
   I give this book 4 stars for the user who meets the criteria stated above. If you're a rank novice or an advanced user I would turn to other resources. However, if you're just beginning to rig your own characters with biped skeletons I think you'll find this to be a nice companion that will point you in the right direction in several areas.



2. There are certain books that you read and you will spend many days going through the examples step by step. And other books that you just read and pick up some ideas.
   
   This book skims over some ideas and leaves it up to you to find more.
   
   So if you already have a couple max books then this one is nice and only if you are intermediate level
   
   To complex for beginners who need to get the BIBLE or max 6 FOUNDATIONS
   
   All advanced users will already know everything in this book



3. I agree with what the other reviewers say, and will add that the content is truely "short and sweet." You'll get some thoughts on modeling and texturing, but the majority of it is on character studio. This book is extremely short weighting in at under 200 pages, but in this author's case it does not much matter. In my opinion, he offers the best 3ds max information available in book form on a routine basis. Good information on skin modifier for character rigging, as well as character studio animation features and methods you might not know all that well. If you have 3ds max 7.5, you can do the cloth fx tutorial, or if you have the cloth fx plugin. In the end, if you have previously read other character studio books, then you should get this one, but if you need to learn character studio, get something else first. There is also some hair generator tutorials that you can work if you have the plug-in. If it was longer, it would get 5 stars.



4. This book is rather short, and quite expensive considering the length. Still, it contains alot of information. It spends the most time covering character studio, which was what i was looking for. Also, it goes over a few plugins, so if you want to use that part of the book, make sure you have the plugins.
   
   Overall, it was a pretty good book.

No comments about Geographical Information Systems and Computer Cartography.