3ds Max Animation and Visual Effects Techniques [With CDROM]

Contrary to some of the other reviews I think this is a great book; it's one of the only books I've found that gives a "complete" overview of the film-making process with 3ds Max. While the content may not be in it's final stage; I think the major problem most would have with it is the fact that it claims to be professional work instead of merely educational examples like most books. I've always found its better to learn with "real" examples, so while I don't know how good the film would do they are excellent learning tools.

This book actually told me how to build an entire scene, including the characters and buildings. It was fun and informative. Exactly what I was looking for.

I love this book! It makes sense of things in 3ds Max that I couldn't quite grasp before. I'm finally getting over the learning curve for lots of stuff in Max! Ya, this book is was made for more experienced people but I'm mostly a novice and it all seems to make perfect sense for me. I would have to recommend this book for anyone who likes animation and modeling.

Up-to-date sprung to my mind when I skipped through this book. It follows the paradigm of building a short animated film from scratch using all the latest features of 3ds Max 5.1 and Character Studio 4. It even has a chapter devoted to Combustion 2.1. Some of the chapters I was most impressed with were the human body modelling chapters. Finally someone has added a FULL tutorial on how to model a human body from scratch! The effects chapters are amazing too, thick, hollywood explosion techniques! Woohoo! I would say this book is aimed for someone who has used Max for quite sometime and knows a little about modelling. But I recommend this book to anyone that has Max!