Best Cg Books

[Transform Gizmo]

one book i would recommend for character rigging and modeling is discreets advanced character design courseware

info: http://estore.discreet.com/dr/v2/ec_MAIN.Entry10?V1=356584&PN=1&SP=10023&xid=37482&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=0

[Fozzie]

Digital Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn
Digital Texturing and Painting by Owen Demers
Digital Character Animation by George Maestri
3DS Max FX + Design series by Jon Bell
3DS Max Professional Animation by Angie Jones and Sean Bonney Modeling a Character in 3DS Max by Paul Steed
The Illusion of Life
Shot by Shot

Foz

[Joebount]

3DS Manual, simply just to get all the basis, a MUST READ ! :wip:

[Tony Napa]

Fozzie, do you also advice Digital Character Animation II by Maestri

[DaCreep]

I think 'Inside 3ds max 4' from New Riders, written by Kim Lee, is a good choise to learn a lot of facets of 3ds max (4!!)

[Dr.Smart]

For 3ds max 4 :
Inside 3ds max 4
3ds max 4 Magic
3ds max 4 Media Animation
[digital] Lightening & Rendering
[digital] Textures & Painting
[digital] Character Animation 2

but I'm still waiting for books for the release 5 :D :hmm:

[Tony Napa]

When I look to sites they sell lots of books, and most of them seem to be a good book: like digital animation - film techniques for example. do you buy books like these you dont know?

[mlykke]

[digital] Lightening & Rendering

That is one VERY good book. The best about it? Its not a 3dsmax specific book.

[digital] Textures & Painting

Going to get that soon.

[Fozzie]

mlykke, I think that the theory and the non-application specific approach of the [Digital] books is what makes them so great.

I personally despise the "follow my steps but you have no clue what you are actually doing" books/tutorials (and there are a lot of those out there). So when I see a book that is of the sheer quality of the [Digital] series my eyes widen like a kid on Christmas morning :)

The texturing and painting book covers a lot of art theory about understanding light, age (as in history of the object), form, and color. This isnt a bad thing though considering most 3D artists don't come from a traditional art background. I have enjoyed reading this book thus far.

Foz

[LFShade]

I just went down to the bookstore the other day and had a read through this one:

http://www.premierpressbooks.com/CharAnim.html

It was fantastic! Almost completely devoid of application-specific, do-this-do-that nonsense (illos are done with Maya, but that's about as specific as it gets). The whole thing is done through interviews with high-profile animators, each one giving their personal workflow, theory, background, and lessons learned through their education and career. A really interesting read, with some good general information on how to go about bringing life to 3D animated characters. This one's definitely on my birthday wish-list!

I really look forward to reading the rest of the books in this series as well:drool:

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