Xsi Illuminated--Character: A Comprehensive Technical and Artistic Guide to Creating Character Animation Using Softimage/Xsi

by Anthony Rossano

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970753047
• ISBN13: 9780970753045
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Mesmer
• Length: 375 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Age Range: 16 years and up

Customer Reviews

Excellent overall XSI training

This book was an absolute surprise. As a new XSI 4.0 user, I had been disappointed with other books. The author focuses on character animation, but in discussing this objective, he takes the reader through an overview of XSI, its features, distinctive elements, and tools "how to." For example, he discusses sub-division, NURBS, and polygon modeling, explaining the differences, benefits, and disadvantages. I would strongly recommend a visit to the Mesmer.com website (publisher), for additional details on this and other training materials.

very good

this is a comprehensive book whihc doesnt waste time with obvious stuff...very good if your already familar with other 3d software...true it didnt have the cd of scene files which is strange but i never use those anyway and the info is very strong without them - highly recommended...the other xsi illuminated book is [not very good] ;)

Softimage released a patch for the crash bug

The scene files that accompany this book only crashed the free XSI "Experience" demo version, due to a backwards-compatibility issue in the software (not a bug in the scene files from Mesmer). Softimage was kind enough to release a patch to the XSI Experience CD that fixes the problem, just for this book series. The patch is available from the same place you get the scene files (due to the review guidelines I can't include the URL, but it's in the book).

Where's the beef?

This BOOK is amazing! From the basics of animation to the more advanced practices, this book is for any animator that wants to animate in XSI. Every animation feature is covered with this book. Unfortunately, since this book does not come with a CD that contains the scene files necessary, you must download them from Mesmer's web site. That's not the bad part. First, the contents were not uploaded. Then, when they were uploaded, they were a temporary version to make downloaders happy. Unfortuantely, when you finish downloading the 43.9MB file, you find that this "temporary" version of the scene files CRASH XSI. I'm sure that the scenes will be nice and relate well with this book WHEN THEY ARE UPLOADED IN THEIR COMPLETE FORM. Until then, this book is a great fundamental resource, but a poor learning tool. 4 stars = Good Book + Bad Content. 5 stars = Good Book + Good Content.