Mastering 3D Graphics: Digital Botany and Creepy Insects Book

Computer graphics have evolved far beyond the chrome sphere amid the chequered plane. Digital Botany and Creepy Insects explores the techniques for creating detailed and photo-realistic plants, trees and insects.Author Bill Fleming has compiled a series of excellent tutorials, culled from the on-line magazine, mastering3dgraphics.com, into a useful book. Fleming divides the book into two parts, the first dealing with photo-realistic techniques for plants and foliage (the pine tree is excellent), and the second discussing techniques for several kinds of insects, including two beetles and a spiky caterpillar.Because each chapter is in a tutorial format, the book cannot avoid getting software-specific. However, each chapter illustrates techniques that could probably be adapted to almost any 3D application, and in fact most of the major 3-D apps are covered (Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, Strata Studio Pro, etc.).The only drawback to the book is the way that the CD-ROM was authored. Even though the CD-ROM contains additional tutorials in HTML format, the CD was not created in a fashion that preserves the folder hierarchy when read on a Macintosh. This breaks all the links when the files are viewed in a Web browser on the Mac. No problems were found using the CD on a Windows-based PC.Nothing states "The future is now" quite like the very publication of this book. Computer graphics of this nature, once done only on very expensive, proprietary workstations in a handful of major studios, is now being done using off-the-shelf hardware and software. What a pleasure it is to have first-rate instruction, like Digital Botany and Creepy Insects, to accompany the technology. --Mike Caputo, amazon.comRead More