3ds Max 6 Killer Tips: The Hottest Collection of Cool Tips and Hidden Secrets for 3ds Max

by Jon A. Bell

Illustrated in full color, this book offers help on UI customization, modeling, animation, lighting, materials and texturing, rendering, the Reactor dynamics system, Particle Flow, Bones and IK, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735713863
• ISBN13: 9780735713864
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: New Riders Publishing
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very useful book with a lot of short/sharp tips.

Firstly, please take itchybob's review with a grain of salt. With regard to his "issue" with the lighting setup tip mentioned, there is a reason almost everyone in the industry uses the same or similar setups . . . speed and control. If you are in a production environment, using skylight or radiosity takes incredible amounts of time and is just plain crazy. Therefore it is a very good tip. Anyway, onto the review! This was the first Max book I purchased and it becomes more useful every week. Why? Because Max is a big program and I am learning more everyday. Following on from this, the tips range from simple one paragraph hints to full blown MaxScript. As I become more proficient, some of the tips become more relevant to me. I would highly recommend this book as it really does provide *production tested" hints that will speed up your workflow and help give your work that extra oomph. Of course, the end result is up to you, but with this book you might have a little edge on the competition!

GREAT REFERENCE, VERY USEFUL

If you every wanted to know the in-depth functionalities and the "hidden" or more overlooked features of 3ds max, get this book. Full color pages are packed with tips of every conceivable kind-from materials to animating to rendering to max script to anything in between. I constantly go back to it to look up various small things that I can't find in 3ds max reference or tutorials.

A lot for everybody...

Let me first tell that I am from the games industry, and our use of Max is very specific and thus limited from the broad range the program has. As such I would say I am an intermediate to advance user in some areas, but a beginner in other features. The book does not aim itself specifically at any one industry, but rather has a lot for everybody. And as such it is VERY useful. It is chokeful of tips, work arounds and time savers in every single area of Max. Even if you know the Max 6 version almost inside out (and who can honestly claim that?), there will still be a tonne of reminders on good workflow and timesavers, easily worth the cover price. This is not the kind of book you read from cover to cover, but rather flip through, and then keep close to your workstation, as problems arise. I use the materials chapter the most due to the nature of my work, but I am deeply grateful for all the goodies on lightning, rendering and modelling etc. as well. This book is for everybody, save absolute gurus and people who have never touched a 3D application before.

Can't live without it book

There can't be very many Max 6 users who have so mastered its' incredible array of tools that they won't find something new in this book. It not only explores hard to learn topics, it provides new insights into creating effects. And the topics are all about the "cool" things that make using Max exciting and productive.

A nice organized book for all kinds of max users

I use max since version 3, so I consider myself to be an intermediate user. With this spirit I bought this book promising to be helpful to all users. Well, the truth is that you can find any kind of tips in this book, things that a veteran user could have forgotten, or that a novice would kill to find. The book covers all areas of the 3d process through 3d studio from customization of 3dsmax to final renderings and compositing, not exluding some maxscripting. Due to that fact, the amount of tips for each section is somewhat selective (not that it could be done in another way though!). I discovered many features in "unknown" territories (at least for me) and many tips that claryfied things for other sections. I only wished it covered more the lightining and rendering section (as it is now, it is evenly divided among all sections), because there are many more things I would like to find out about the mental ray, lightrace and radiosity settings.Overally, this is a good book, well worth the price, and it is almost certain that you will find something new in here. My wish is that it doubled its 300 pages.