3ds max 4 Magic (Magic (New Riders))

Diving into 3ds max 4 Magic is like immersing yourself in a pool of experience. Written by a montage of professional 3ds max users, 13 chapters cover everything from flowing water to asteroid impacts to using inverse kinematics for complex machinery, and more.

Spanning five sections, the tutorials are grouped according to effect. "Special Effects" includes two chapters illustrating particle systems. For example, "Impact" describes a technique for creating explosive surface impacts (an asteroid collision), while "Flowing Water" demonstrates how to create water pouring from a faucet.

"Lighting" is the next section, also with two chapters, followed by "Modeling and Animation" (four chapters, including one on setting up Max 4's Inverse Kinematics), "Materials," and "Expanding Max," which includes chapters on nonphotorealistic rendering (think sketchbook illustrations), camera matching, and setting up a scene and animating objects using displacement effects and MAXScript.

In addition to the tutorials in the book, the enclosed CD-ROM contains five more projects (two of which build on chapters in the book) that explore and teach things like facial expressions, lip-synch, and modeling and mapping a photorealistic head. The CD-ROM also includes the files needed for each of the book and CD-ROM projects, and a collection of shareware and commercial plug-ins for creating things like forests of plants and trees, hair, and more.

There are some fine tutorials here. Project 8, "Mechanical Machine," is a great example of solid writing mixed with an exciting project, and deftly explains a number of new key features in Max 4. Each chapter strives to illustrate a particular technique or new feature, and the book is worthwhile for users new to Max 4 as well as users new to Max. --Mike Caputo