Good books?

[LucentDreams]

I'd recommend Arndt's over ansons personally but thats your basic option. Anne powers has a good book though more designed for educators.

[xeno3d]

You mean this one?

http://www.amazon.com/CINEMA-Workshop-Arndt-von-Koenigsmarck/dp/0240808975/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201446455&sr=1-3

Looks like full color as well.

[cookepuss]

If you've already got some C4D experience, also consider Arndt's "Virutal Vixens" book as more of a general resource.

1/2 of the book is kind of a D'Artiste book with 9 other artists giving tips, tricks, and testamonials regarding creating CG women. Some of the artists included are: Steven Stahlberg, Liam Kemp, and Max Wahyudi. I'm sure you've seen most of their work, especially Wahyudi's amazing Natalie Portman (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=310257). Some good "making of" stuff there.

The other 1/2 is a step-by-step tutorial of Arndt modeling, texturing, posing, and rendering a CG woman. The character itself is fairly generic, especially given those presented by the other artists, but you should find the techniques themselves to be invaluable. The techniques are presented in general terms, but you can tell that he's using C4D.

http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Vixens-Character-Modeling-Placement/dp/0240809807

My only dislike is that the book doesn't exactly "sell" C4D as a great app. This is thanks in large part to the choice of artist, whose work seems very 1999 compared to the other profiled creators.

Overall, it is one of the better character modeling books out there. Its not perfect and isn't quite D'Artiste level quality, but its a nice off-the-rack purchase.

[cookepuss]

BTW, as far as the C4D "Handbook" goes... Maxon's own documentation is far more informative. This book is simply okay. I remember buying the R8 version and regretting every penny spent. I bought the R9 one hoping that it'd be better. Nope. Pretty much the same thing with just a few version related updates. I don't expect that the R10 would be much better. Its a nice 101 type book if you've never used C4D before, but that's about it.

You'll find that you'll outgrow it quickly. If you've used other CG apps before your best bet is just figuring out the UI basics and referring to the help system and CG Talk search. UI is more than half the battle. Technique is the rest. The small, app specific details fall into place as you go along.

[xeno3d]

Thank you very much for the info. I took a look at the r10 handbook yesterday in store. I was not very impressed. I'm thinking I will just skip it and rely on the c4d help files and Cineversity. The Virtual Vixens book does look promising, however, I have both D'Artiste Character Modeling and they are amazing.

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