5 comments about Web Design With Macromedia Studio MX 2004 (Internet Series).

1. I have not been the type of person to look at computer books of any kind. I have suffered through some really bad ones. When I picked up Web Design with Macromedia Studio MX 2004, I was blown away with the way this book in laid out. I found it to be helpful in everyway. The knowledge this author, Hunley, demonstrates in this field is outstanding. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the right way to do things.



2. As an experienced Macromedia-based developer, I was concerned that this book would be too beginner for me. Instead, I found that it filled in many of the weak points in my knowledge.

   I can see where someone who is just getting started with Macromedia's products would use this book to begin to build their skills. The examples take you through all of the major bits and pieces of each program without being overwhelming.

   For me, the book let me get my feet wet with Freehand, which I don't use (until now), and got me started writing custom behaviors in Flash - something that I can use in my day-to-day development.

   This book is NOT for someone looking for the nitty-gritty details of rarely used aspects of Macromedia's product line. Instead, it focuses on demonstrating each of the Studio's major capabilities - a job that it does well.




3. I bought this book based on the other reviews on this page. Maybe I didn't read them thourough enough. This seems to be more of an overview than an instructional manual, which I was looking for. Rarely are there steps to any of the excercises.. more of a 'Look at the example in 5-2..". One thing that really bothered me is when there was numbered steps the examples always seemed to be on the flip page.. not on the opposing page making you turn the page back and forth. I've gotten thru 1/2 of chapter 5 now and it's agonizing. It does tell you about all the new features but I think it assumes that you've got a bit of experience with the products already. I'm going to look for a more step by step book or online training.



4. This book is by far the most comprehensive manual for a product I have ever used for software. It breaks everything down to nuts and bolts! Great for DIY (Do It yourself) projects. From the amateur to the professional can benefit from it! Great Work!



5. This is a great book for people jus starting out using the Suite. It didn't help me much at all, which is not surprising...I bought it on a whim!

2 comments about Dynamic Simulations of Multibody Systems.

1. This book is very unique in that it successfully combines
   Physically Based Modeling with Computational Geometry.
   Everyone in developing realtime dynamic simulation systems
   with 3-dimensional computer graphics should have one.



2. This book teaches physics using mathematical equations and does not provide any source code. However, being a programmer, I have found this very easy to read and understand.

5 comments about Inspired 3D Character Animation (Inspired 3D).

1. I found that for the first time, a character animation book actually talks about character animation and NOT what is simply in the manuals. It's about time that someone talked about fundamentals AND HOW THEY ARE APPLIED IN 3D COMPUTER ANIMATION. Anyone can read a manual and make objects move but making them live is another thing entirely. Take it from someone who has had to review endless reels filled with junk, no timing, no command of overlap, anticipation or holds. Just by learning AND IMPLEMENTING the information in this book, you can put yourself ahead of 90% of all applicants for character animation jobs. Tips on approach, especially by Sean Mullen and Richie Baneham, are priceless. I recommend reading this title in all rejection letters we send out.



2. This book is definitely got a few good articles, but the price makes it absolutely overrated and not worth.



3. This is probably the worse 3d book i've ever read. It tries to meld in traditional 2d animation and 3d together but it's attempt fails. The author admits to not really relating figure drawing to his line of work while all the interviews with the animators swear by it. Gesture drawing the figure is the primary fundamentals of animation according to the best animation schools, best 3d studios, and best animators in the industry. I do however respect the artist for being a stop motion animator. Also the tutorials are too concise. If you're not too familiar with the Maya interface and langauge then you'll be very frustrated. The interviews are so lame where the author leads into Q&A and answering his own questions and fulfilling his own answers.

   I'm glad i checked mine out at the library. Save your money and look for a Maya book with better reviews.




4. I bought both Inspired 3D Character Setup and 3D Character Animation books 2 years ago now, and I still refer to them on a regular basis - to the point that they are literally falling apart. I am doing post-graduate studies in 3D animation and specifically I am focusing on traditional 2D skills and how they can be utilised and/or adapted in the 3D workspace. For me, this book has been an invaluable source of reference, and it reminds me that I really must keep an open mind about animation production methods and procedures and encourage and accept helpful criticism from my peers - otherwise you get stuck in your ways and don't grow. I especially enjoy the interviews, because I really like to hear first-hand industry experience from experts, but I must say that ALL of the content has been relevant and helpful to me.
   One criticism that I have read about the inspired series is that the pages are too wide, but I actually like them like this because the book will stay open on the desk so that you don't have to hold the pages down with something.
   Yes, I think I would prefer that a CD was provided with the book, and yes, I think it was a bit expensive, but I definitely got plenty of practical, helpful advice from it - much more than many other books which are supposedly addressing 3D character animation.



5. I'm a bit surprised at the bad rap this book has gotten in earlier user reviews. Suggesting to "just read the manual that came with the software" is preposterous -- these comments are often made by people who think that knowing how to set keyframes in a piece of software makes them GOOD animators, and nothing could be further from the truth. A thorough understanding of how the body moves, how the mind thinks, how external forces affect the body, and other sometimes slippery subjects are critical aspects of the good animator's toolset.
   
   While there are no earth-shattering revelations in this book (how many could there be when the animation industry is over 90 years old), the topics discussed in these pages, often illustrated with short exercises, make a good launching pad for people wanting to go from someone who knows how to make a character move, to someone who knows how to make a character come alive.
   
   The book does a good job of relating traditional animation concepts to the 3D medium, and several of the interviews are enlightening. As a college animation instructor and professional computer animator, I find satisfaction in opening this book in my classroom to point out that artists from celebrated studios such as Industrial Light & Magic and Sony Pictures Imageworks are saying the same things that I am telling my students. My Advanced 3D Animation students spend several weeks reading chapters from this book and applying the information through mini-assignments, which I hope lead them to realize all that they must consider in bringing a character to life. This book is not designed to teach something new to the computer animation veteran -- instead, it fulfills its purpose of showing intermediate to advanced level students of animation a path that they need to take in becoming successful character animators.
   
   While the price of this book is a bit steep, there are several pieces of advice that should be in any character animator's mantra. The information can lead to a big payoff if you really absorb it.

No comments about Maple Animation.

No comments about Certificate Physical and Human Geography (New Oxford Progressive Geography).

5 comments about Essential Flash 4 for Web Professionals.

1. I really liked this book. It contains 2 projects and it guides you through all the steps you need to complete them. But the book doesn't really provide any explanation of what you are doing or why you are doing it, so I would recommend that you have another Flash book on hand that you can use as a reference. Despite this I think this book is a great way to learn Flash for those who have no previous experience with it. It is an easy introduction. You don't have to read through pages of information and explanations, which is the case with other web books, to get a good basic knowledge of the application.



2. In most ways this is a typical tutorial book. Talk about a feature . . . work on a project using the feature. The exercises were pretty good and so were the explanations. If you are already good at Flash, this may not be a good choice of books, as it doesn't get very advanced.

   One thing I like about this book is that the publishers have all of the source files for download on a web site (as opposed to putting them on a CD). You'll notice that this book is considerably cheaper than similar books. When you download the files, you have the choice of loading them one at a time, as you need them, or you can download them all at once (packed into a zip archive).

   The one thing that sets this tutorial apart from others is that it makes available, the source files for the projects at every step of the way. As I complete tutorials, I like to experiment a lot. It was very useful to have these source files to resort to in times that my experimentation totally screwed up the project.

   If you are a beginner or intermediate at Flash I recommend this book.




3. This is a really well written book for those who want to learn Flash and had no prior experience with it. After this you might want to get some other book to learn more about it, but for beginners this is the book to start from.



4. I had to make a dynamic website under a tight deadline. The book served very beneficial for abeginner like me who virtually knew nothing about using flash or how it worked. The book teaches everything from scratch. The first 5 chapters are the most useful in the book. I would highly recommend the book for someone who is new to this technology.



5. As an advanced Flash user and working web/graphics professional I would say that this book is not essential for web professionals. I didn't learn a thing from this book, I've learned much more from many other Flash books, but not this one! This book covered very little in a very complicated manner. I was dissapointed with the complex way in which simple concepts were explained. I would not recommend this book.

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

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.