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3D STUDIO MAX ANIMATION BOOKS

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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 6 Bible
Price: $32.99
Save: $17.00  

More than 150 tutorials give readers valuable hands-on experience under the expert guidance of 3ds max master Kelly Murdock

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3D Studio Max Books - 3D Studio MAX: Tutorials from the Masters 
Price: $72.95

In this book, Michele Bousquet presents more than 20 challenging and exciting tutorials written by some of the world's best MAX users. If you're interested in becoming a master in 3D Studio MAX, this is the book for you. Power users model with booleans and fit deformation, both of which are covered in detail. Scenes come alive with compound materials and intricate lighting setups. Since animation can be so much more than moving objects around on keyframes, animation controllers, a new MAX feature, are unraveled here. Keywords: 3D Studio MAX
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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 6 Animation: CG Filmmaking from Concept to Completion (Consumer)
Price: $29.69
Save: $15.30

Bring your animation career to life with this one-of-a-kind guide illustrating in detail each step of production of a short film. Follow examples and situations proposed by the author designed to facilitate coverage of most aspects of CG animation, touching specifically on important areas such as contemporary character modeling, convincing body animation and dialog driven emotional facial animation. It also covers the creative areas of character design drawing, storyboards, and art direction.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 6 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, First Edition
Price: $14.95
Save: $7.04

The most efficient, affordable, must-have guide to the leading 3D modeling and animation application for Windows. It covers all of the new features in the latest version, 3ds max 6. This popular format functions as a tool for learning 3D modeling, animation, and rendering, and as a handy reference. With 3ds max 6, illustrators, animators, game designers, and special effects designers can create and animate dazzling, highly realistic 3D graphics such as those seen in summer blockbusters like Minority Report and Spider-Man. That's one reason so many art schools offer 3ds max training to aspiring professionals. The complex interface and powerful technology underlying 3D animation and modeling software can be intimidating to newcomers, but the 3ds max 6 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide breaks the process down into manageable tasks to remove the fear factor. The amply illustrated, task-based format also makes the book an invaluable reference for experienced users upgrading to the new version. This is an efficient but authoritative guide. After a thorough introduction to the program's interface, navigation, and display tools, the book gets to the real heart of this QuickStart Guide: modeling and transforming objects, surface mapping, 3D rendering and animations. It covers all of the program's new features, including enhanced character animation, the Active Shade interactive renderer, improved UV mapping tools, advanced lighting and shadows, and more, and presents them in the straightforward, well-paced style that characterizes the Visual QuickStart Guide series. This book is essential for anybody wanting to gain or enhance professional skills in 3ds max 6.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 6 Killer Tips (Killer Tips) 
Price: $28.74
Save: $11.75 

3ds max 6 Killer Tips features 275 hot tips--all illustrated, all in full color, for all levels of 3ds max users, from newbie to advanced. Get instant help on UI customization, modeling, animation, lighting, materials and texturing, rendering (including mental ray 3 secrets), the Reactor dynamics system, Particle Flow, Bones and IK, the Portable License Utility, and more! Learn how to enhance your 3ds max renderings with programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Discreet Combustion! Speed up your workflow and create stunning effects with more than 40 MAXScript tips, created by guest contributor and scripting expert Borislav Petrov. Written and edited by Jon A. Bell, professional 3D artist (The Discovery Channel, The History Channel, National Geographic) and author of the best-selling 3D Studio MAX f/x book series, 3ds max 6 Killer Tips is a must-have reference for every 3ds max 6 artist!
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3D Studio Max Books - 3Ds Max 4 Media Animation
Price: $36.10
Save: $13.89

Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com - Unlike many books trying to cover all things Max, 3ds max 4 Media Animation focuses on a specific use of the popular animation system from Discreet: creating opening graphics and logo animation for video.
The book assumes the reader has some experience using Max, and in creating animation for video. It focuses on the design and production of six different animated openings, and three of those are real-world on-the-air clips from networks like MSNBC and NBC News.

Four main sections of the book cover the projects step by step. No sections take the user on a tour of the interface, and there is no history of computer graphics. Instead, each chapter methodically describes only the steps involved in creating each particular project. If you've used Max and know the difference between a viewport and a roll-out, this book is for you.

There are plenty of details to absorb, since each project is fairly complex. The "Funhouse" tutorial is more about lighting and texturing, with some emphasis on modeling. The "Voting Machine" project is mostly about modeling, while the "News Open" project is a combination of lighting and effects. Each chapter is liberally illustrated and clearly written.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 4 in Depth
Price: $59.97

3ds max™ 4 In Depth provides readers with a comprehensive reference for creating effects for film, movies, and games. This book covers the modeling and modification of structures from primitive objects, plus other parametric design tools found in the program. 3ds max™ 4 In Depth contains various projects to strengthen concepts learned with a color studio to showcase the results. CD-ROM is included with maps or clips needed for each exercise.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3ds max 4 Fundamentals
Price: $29.10
Save: $10.89

From Book News, Inc. : This tutorial textbook introduces the basics of using the three- dimensional graphics program, in which three-dimensional models are usually rendered in two-dimensional format. After discussing some basic topics of computer graphics, the chapters move into the program's tools, discussing shape modeling, surface colors and patterns, lighting, animation, and rendering. Final chapters offer examinations of new and updated software features. The CD-ROM contains files used in the text's example project, figures reproduced from the text, and some related third-party software.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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3D Studio Max Books - 3D Studio MAX 3(r) Professional Animation.
Price: $32.99
Save: $17.00

3D Studio MAX 3 Professional Animation is the only book that take you extensively through the 3D Studio MAX 3 animation process, showing you the techniques that professional animators use to create everything from simple animated particle effects to complex character animation for Web sites, video, film, and other multimedia formats. Written by a group of top-flight 3D animation professionals, this book features the real deal--real-world applications and advanced tutorials: make bipedal, quadra-pedal, and multipedal characters walk; use Cstudio's Biped and Physique; build and animate a realistic human skeleton using MAX Bones IK; create complex scripting with MAXscript to enhance MAX's capabilities; produce muscle-based, multi-layered facial expressions and lip syncs; create deformable objects and fine-tune them with space warps; display and edit trajectories; and animate cameras, lights, and atmosphere.
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3D Studio Max Books - Sams Teach Yourself 3D Studio Max 3 in 24 Hours.
Price: $23.99
Save: $6.00 (20%)

Sams Teach Yourself 3D Studio Max 3 in 24 Hours teaches you to complete an animated short using upwards of 30 features within the program. And, by creating a final real-world project, you'll experience the concepts behind the entire process of creating 3D models and animation.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3D Studio Max 3 Magic (with CD-ROM for Windows).
Price: $32.59
Save: $12.41

he 3D Studio Max application is big and has great depth, but most of the available books that cover it are either of the all-encompassing "bible" type--which are great reference books, but often lack in-depth tutorials--or the getting-started type--which are designed to orient the new user without inducing a bad case of "featuritis overwhelmus."
3D Studio Max 3 Magic nicely fills the need of the intermediate or advanced user. It assumes the reader is already familiar with Max, has been working with it for some time, and is ready to move on to the next level.

Featuring 20 chapters written by nine top 3D Studio Max artists, 3D Studio Max 3 Magic is designed to be read, used, and worked through, but not necessarily in sequence. Each chapter is an independent tutorial, demonstrating a specific technique, and each is well written and lavishly illustrated. Every page is in color, helping to make the book a pleasure to flip through and each chapter easy to work through.
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3D Studio Max Books - 3D Studio Max 3.0 Workshop
Price: $23.09
Save: $11.90

3D Studio Max 3 Workshop confidently leads beginning Max users through the dark forest of installation, interface introductions, and core concepts. Illustrating the design, construction, and final rendering of a single project, and introducing new features as needed, it drives toward a final goal and artistic vision that started out as a sketch on paper.
The first noticeable thing about this book is the keyboard/icon tear-out sheet, which is invaluable. Featuring every icon in Max's many toolbars on one side, and the most commonly needed keyboard shortcuts on the other, this two-page sheet printed on heavy paper helps the new user get more proficient in Max through keyboard shortcuts and by making it easier to decipher onscreen icons.

The 10 chapters illustrate the step-by-step process of creating and refining an idea, building the set, applying materials, adding lights and animation, and putting it all together in the final rendering. Each chapter is clear, concise, and designed to build on previous material while introducing new functions. The only downside is that the book has no color images--a few pages of color graphics would have been great for illustrating ideas that were presented in the chapter on lighting or surface materials, for example.
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