LightWave 7.5 Primer [With CDROM]

The Lightwave 7.5 Primer is a good book to introduce you to the Lightwave program. The thing I most enjoyed about the book was the quality of the tutorials. All files were easily found, and all the examples worked! This doesn't always happen with other books. A 3D package is basically lots of programs rolled into one. Modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, rendering. All these could be there own area of study. Mr. Beck's book does a fine job of introducing the basics of each of these to the reader. Only a few noticible typos and errors are found through the whole book. The appendices of CD content and system requirements should definitly be at the beginning of the book. And although the book is chatty enough and very approachable I found that it ended a bit abruptly. But these are basically nits I'm picking. After completing this book I feel more ready to dive into some of the other Lightwave books out there.

For any Lightwave newbies, save yourself some angst and get The LightWave7.5 Primer (Patrick Beck)Mr. Beck makes everything seem so clear and easy. I wish I'd had this when Iset out to learn Lightwave. I think this should be included with every copyof Lightwave, especially now that the unwashed masses (like myself) are getting into 3D.

The Lightwave 7.5 Primer by professional animator Patrik Beck (Founder of Electric Crayon Studio) clearly, carefully, and accessibly instructs the reader in the fundamentals of using the LightWave toolset to craft three-dimensional animation. Individual chapters adroitly address the basics of LightWave, techniques for crafting surfaces with texture and luminosity adjusted to the right degree, animating object deformation, particles, hypervoxels, and much, much more. Numerous samples and black-and-white photographs enhance out the thoroughly "reader friendly" text. An accompanying CD-ROM offers a small but utilitarian library of files useful for undertaking the instructional projects of the primer, including images, objects, scenes, color versions of the book's figures, and rendered animations in MPEG and QuickTime. The LightWave 7.5 Primer is an essential and very highly recommended instructional reference for the novice, and has a great deal of informational value to offer even the more experienced LightWave user.