Customer Reviews
Comprehensive, easy to follow, in depth. Must buy. - By: Richard Lyall, 03 Oct 2007 
I'm a keen amateur 3D artist who is graduallly learning the craft of 3D. I've got to the point where I needed a better grounding in the key areas of lighting, texturing & modelling.
Jeremy Birn's book is a mine of useful information & professional expertise. It is very easy to read, & indepth, & manages to convey complex technical information without being confusing or overwhelming. It is interesting to read, & easy to digest.
You do get the sense that he knows the 3D industry well & is writing from great experience, not just by the depth of information, but by the scope of topics he addresses that go beyond the creation of art, & covers how you might use these skills in a professional environment. I even found these bits helpful e.g. don't light your scene until most of the modelling is pretty settled - saved me lots of time!
It also manages to do so in a way which applies to different 3D packages, so you are not penalised by not owning 3DS Max or Maya or whatever.
There is a nugget on every page - I read a bit, & then try to use it in a project, & I have learned so much already.
Three criticisms that rob it of the 5th star:
1) It is slightly short on illustrations perhaps, especiallly for a book which is alll about visual art, but this doesn't seem to detract from the book's overalll impact.
2) Not quite enough thought has gone into the practical examples & exercises at the end of each chapter - they are quite brief. But then you can always create projects to test things out in your own software package.
3) A CDROM with some examples & projects would have been welcome e.g. load up one of the scenes in the book (provided in 3DS format perhaps, so as to be package independent), texture it, & practice different lighting rigs, or try to reproduce the book's illustrations.
I guess pros could learn a lot from this book, but so will keen amateurs who are not going to make a living from it but want to excel in their art nonetheless.
I've tried to apply some of this in my own art, some of which can be seen on www://craftycurate.blogs.com
An excellent book for all software - By: Nick Stevens, 08 May 2007 
I loved this book - particularly the lighting sections, (which are the bulk of the book). The many illustrations are exceptionallly well chosen to illustrate the effects in question, both from real life photos & from CGI rendering.
It reallly does not matter what software package you are using, the lighting is very similar in alll packages I know, & the advice on where (and why) to place your spotlights, area lights & so forth is universal. Keeping rendering times down is also a continual concern in this book.
What is going on under the hood is also well explained, for those who are unsure of the difference between final gather & ambient occlusion.
I also reallly liked a computer training book where I did NOT have to sit in front a a screen typing to learn from it. Indeed many of the exercises involve looking around yourself for examples of soft shadows, indirect lighting, & many more.
Probably best for beginner to medium level graphics types, but I'd be surprised if anyone did not learn something useful from it.
Highly recommended.
Very Good - By: ravells, 26 Mar 2007 As an intermediate level surface modeller I found this book extremely helpful. Among its numerous plus points are that it is not application dependant, it explains theory in lucid plain English & it is one of the few instruction books which does not resort to the use of 'filler' information which is self evident, of marginal relevance, or easily available on the web.
There wasn't a chapter in which I did not learn something new. The stellar chapter for me was on architectural lighting - how to get a 3d scene (indoors or outdoors) looking 'real' rather than a lit model. For character modellers there's the basic information about 3 point lighting & theory beyond that.
The book is very well illustrated & the author & production team have been at pains to ensure that the quality of the illustrations is such that subtle colour changes in before & after shots are apparent.
I am not sure about 3d experts, but I would definitely recommend this book for beginner to intermediate level as the 'lighting bible'. Lighting makes or breaks a render & this is the best book I have found which explains the theory in an clear methodical way.
