Professional 3D with Electricimage Universe [With CDROM]

Lance Evans writes this book as if he were speaking directly to you. With wit, he covers topics thoroughly and in a manner easy to understand. I already had some EIU working knowledge, but no where enough to even create some of his examples. Through this book, Lance Evans has answered so many questions and provided excellent insight into so many issues not resolved by reading the manuals. Actually, it would have been great if he had been the EIU manuals writer. Furthermore, the care to detail is just simply superb! Thanks!!!

I am one of the minority of people in the industry that actually went to school for animation. Mr. Evans book gives us an understanding of how things work better than any professor I ever had in school. I am amazed at how he has taken subjects that ramble on for 50 pages in other books, and made them crystal clear in 10 pages. And even given more information!This book treats the reader as an intelligent and capable person. It does not try to teach you basic things like how to use a Bezier pen the way some other material we purchased has done. There is so much in this book that as diligent as we have been by working on it every day, there is still so much we have not done yet. I think this book will take us 6 months to carefully make our way through. Mr. Evans has included literally hundreds of tutorial projects on the disk, I have never seen a book like this before. This is why I say it is like a graduate class in animation.The other two things that I feel should be mentioned is the sheer number of topics that were covered in this tome, and how many of them are techniques I have never seen anywhere else. And I have a at least 40 other 3d books on my shelf. He tells you how to set up your render farm computers with extra TCP/IP addresses, how to manually add extra tessellation to ACIS models (I asked the developer this question and they told me it could not be done!), explains all the mouth positions for lip sync animation, teaches how to create UV data on models that don't have any, and even how to feather deformations. I could go on and on. The book even has a trailer online...I can't recommend this book enough. My company bought a book for our 3d graphics department, but each of the 5 people in it has since gone out and bought their own copy. Even though 2 of the people use other programs.

The chapters build upon each other to create a comprehensive reference. I was impressed with the advanced subjects, especially those in the deformation and morphing chapters. There are more tutorials than any other 3d book I have read, and the multi-pass tutorial was especially thorough.The section on the modeler application had tons of tips and works the reader through many different types of projects.

This is a terrific book. Lance Evans has upped my knowlege of Electric Image Universe at least 10 fold. We all know that Universe is powerful software, being used on television and feature films. The folks at Electric Image and dvGarage are doing their best to make it available to animators from hobbiest to professional, but getting into the meat of the program hasn't always been easy. Lance is a teacher, and he has created a well written, well structured book that brings you along in an easy going fashion. Each topic is introduced, explained, and potential pit falls discussed. You get the feeling that Lance knows where beginners make wrong assumptions and need assistance. The only criticism I could offer would be the title. This book is a great introduction to the program, but doesn't really get into advanced topics. So is it Professional grade? You bet! You could make a sweet living using just the techniques in this book, and try your hand at more advanced animations once you've got this material under your belt.