Introducing ZBrush

Product Description

If you want to take advantage of one of the hottest CGI tools available, Introducing ZBrush is the perfect place to start. Professional Hollywood animator and ZBrush artist Eric Keller dispels any anxieties beginners might have by offering the careful, step-by-step instruction you need to soon feel right at home with this revolutionary software. Each chapter explains core concepts, then reinforces them with fun, hands-on tutorials that will amaze you with your growing ability to create hyper-detailed, realistic, organic sculptures on your computer.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #147234 in Books
* Published on: 2008-05-05
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 464 pages

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Exclusive: Eric Keller’s Top 10 Cool Uses for ZBrush


1. Blendshape Facial Targets: Create blendshape facial targets for characters for animation in Maya using ZBrush - it's fast and easy!

2. Tiling Textures: Use ZBrush to create tiling textures for 3D objects.

3. Normal and Displacement Maps: Use ZBrush to create normal and displacement maps - it's superior to Maya's native difference map generator.

4. Texture Maps: Paint texture maps directly on characters and 3D objects.

5. Illustrations: Craft amazing illustrations with ZBrush's 2.5D painting tools.

6. Compositing: Render separate passes of an object from ZBrush with different materials applied for compositing in Photoshop.

7. Sculpting: Add ZApplink to ZBrushes' sculpting power with Photoshop and Painter brushes.

8. Material Capture: Design specialized materials based on objects in photographs with ZBrush's Material Capture tool.

9. Modeling: Build digital models for 3D printing and fabrication.

10. Character Creation: Shape the most amazing characters and creatures possible using ZBrush's revolutionary digital sculpting tools.

From the Back Cover
Create Hyper-Realistic Digital Models

If you want to take advantage of one of the hottest CGI tools available, Introducing ZBrush is the perfect place to start. Professional Hollywood animator and ZBrush artist Eric Keller dispels any anxieties beginners might have by offering the careful, step-by-step instruction you need to soon feel right at home with this revolutionary software.

Each chapter explains core concepts, then reinforces them with fun, hands-on tutorials that will amaze you with your growing ability to create hyper-detailed, realistic, organic sculptures on your computer. From creating illustrations in 2.5 dimensions to sculpting with digital clay, you'll master ZBrush's powerful tools for creating fantastic images and 3D models for use in animation programs, such as 3ds Max and Maya.

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Understand ZBrush's unique painting and sculpting technology
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Take a tour of the innovative ZBrush interface and tools
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Master 2.5D painting, digital sculpting, and texture painting
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Learn how to set lighting, create materials, and render in ZBrush
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Go through a production pipeline, from modeling to rendering to exporting models, textures, and displacement maps
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Transfer your ZBrush creations into Maya and other 3D applications for use in film, games, and illustration

VALUABLE COMPANION DVD
The DVD includes example files and models to help guide you through each lesson as well as ZBrush Macro scripts and movies to show you the sculpting process used in each chapter. It also includes a trial version of ZBrush 3.1 for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

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Learn ZBrush's Material Capture technology to create surfaces from photographs
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Work with subtools to create creature sculptures from multiple objects
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Use lighting and rendering in ZBrush to create 2.5D compositions

About the Author
Eric Keller has been working professionally as a digital artist and 3D animator since 1998. He is a high-end animator for film, television, and scientific visualization with clients including Disney, ESPN, Warner Brothers, Hewlett-Packard, Sony Imageworks, and ABC, and has created animations for scientific research and visualization at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Harvard Medical School. Eric is the author of Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide, a contributing author to Mastering Maya 8.5 and Mastering Maya 7 (all from Sybex), and has written articles and tutorials for industry magazines.
Customer Reviews

Amazing book5
This is a great book for beginners in 3d, specifically modeling. I've had my share of video tutorials but having a physical book that i can take with me anywhere is priceless, anywhere i go i can keep on reading any particular subject i want to learn further.

The explanations are clear for beginners and intermediate users of Zbrush, might be simple stuff for advanced users but there's never too much information in any book, it comes with a CD which includes a 30 day trial of Zrbush 3.0 and the exercise files for the whole book.

Great product, recommended.

Excellent book!!5
As a fifteen year veteran of the 3D art world, I can say that ZBrush is the revolution I've been waiting for, and the Introducing ZBrush book is fantastic!! I was able to complete projects within minutes of opening this book that would have taken hours, if not days using other apps. My wife was so impressed with what I created in so short a time, she asked to try...so, with absolutely no experience, she started the book, and in a few hours had an excellent understanding of the app, and was creating some very nice mesh. I read in another review that the CD didn't work, but I had no trouble with it at all, running XP Pro. I would recommend this guide to all.

Awesome!!5
Great book. I couldn't wait for it. I found it at a bookstore and after looking through it I bought it. It did not bother one bit paying the cover price. Great book.

Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c: A Shader Approach

Product Description

Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0c: A Shader Approach presents an introduction to programming interactive computer graphics, with an emphasis on game development, using real-time shaders with DirectX 9.0. The book is divided into three parts that explain basic mathematical and 3D concepts, show how to describe 3D worlds and implement fundamental 3D rendering techniques, and demonstrate the application of Direct3D to create a variety of special effects.

With this book: * Understand basic mathematical tools used in video game creation such as vectors, matrices, and transformations. * Discover how to describe and draw interactive 3D scenes using Direct3D and the D3DX library. * Learn how to implement lighting, texture mapping, alpha blending, and stenciling using shaders and the high-level shading language (HLSL). * Explore a variety of techniques for creating special effects, including vertex blending, character animation, terrain rendering, multi-texturing, particle systems, reflections, shadows, and normal mapping. * Find out how to work with meshes, load and render .X files, program terrain/camera collision detection, and implement 3D object picking. * Review key ideas, gain programming experience, and explore new topics with the end-of-chapter exercises.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #84690 in Books
* Published on: 2006-06-25
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 544 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Frank D. Luna is a program-mer for Hero Interactive. He has been programming interactive 3D graphics for over eight years and has been using DirectX since its fifth iteration. He is the author of Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9.0 from Wordware Publishing, Inc., and lives in Los Angeles.
Customer Reviews

Great Book5
Great read, I read 3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development (Wordware Game Math Library) along with this book to cover the math portion in greater depth.

Excellent intro to DirectX 9.0c5
Excellent introduction to DirectX 9.0c. Material is explained very clearly. You need to have at least an intermediate knowledge of C++. What is good about this book is that it also improves your knowledge of C++. I consider myself an average C++ programmer because I only use it occasionally for my work projects but this book has also improved my C++. Strongly recommended as an intro text to Direct3D. Keep a reference book like Deitel's C how to program or Horton's Visual C++ 2008 at hand in case you get lost and you are golden as far as how much you will learn.

Good DirectX Book Using OOP4
This is a very good book for DirectX. The author uses a Framework for all of his examples. I have always been against using Frameworks when learning a new subject, but Luna does a good job presenting it. You must know the ins-and-outs of object oriented programming to fully understand this book.

As far as the code. The code was written for Visual Studio 2005, but you can use it in VS2003 by opening up the .vcproj file in a text editor, (like Notepad), and changing the number at the top of the file from 8.00 to 7.10 (7.00 for VS 2002). Then open the .vcproj (not the .sln file) file in VS200X and re-save everything and your ready to go.

Character Modeling with Maya and ZBrush: Professional Polygonal Modeling

Product Description

Create believable CG character models with this unique book and DVD package. The stunning color images show just what you can achieve, and the detailed step-by-step tutorials show exactly how to achieve them.

Every technique and tip is backed up with practical tutorials, using the models, textures and video on the companion DVD to offer a crash course to this vital skill. Jason Patnode takes you from low to high-resolution modeling - helping you span the gap between game and film industry skills. Based on Maya 2008 and ZBrush 3.0.

You'll learn: Pipeline and modeling guidelines . Overview of Maya . Introduction to ZBrush modeling . Concept art . Anatomy . Creating a video game character . Creating a hyper-real character . Creating a photo-real character . UVs and texturing . How to create a demo reel

* Master professional techniques and workflow processes with clear, easy to follow tutorials
* Companion DVD contains video tutorials, plug-ins, models and texture maps as well as high quality art from participating artists
* Interviews with professionals connect the concepts to real world workflow and applications
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #377848 in Books
* Published on: 2008-01-14
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 408 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author
Jason Patnode teaches modeling and animation at The Academy of Art University, he has worked in both game and film production and was previously Lead 3D Technical Artist at LucasArts, a division of LucasFilm, California, USA.

Customer Reviews

Not worth it for me! 1
The book arrives and I'm hoping that it will shed some light on the workflow between Maya and Zbrush, with displacement and normals and so forth. I was hoping it would give me some insight to Zbrush and how to use it professionally. Instead.. I really have no words for how bad this book is. It is written for Maya beginners, but it also demands that you know stuff already. It goes in to detail on some things, and then skips other things completely. it is full of pictures, so that the book seems bigger and more pro, but alas, it shines through that this book is is not worth the paper it was printed on. I work with Maya every day professionally. Instead, I would recommend you to do a search for "video tutorial" or something like that on Google or Youtube.

A Real Letdown3
I bought this book earlier today Borders and I have to say this book is certainly something, but that doesn't necessarily mean its good. For a book titled Modeling with Maya AND ZBrush, this book just barely covers ZBrush. There is a 2 page tutorial on correcting bad topology in ZBrush but thats about it. This book slightly covers the tools and interface of ZBrush but even than its minimal.
On the plus side, this book does a decent job of covering modeling characters with polygons. Matter of fact, I'd say 95% of this book is dedicated to just polygonal modeling.

Side note: Reading through the small section of anatomy, I was unexpectedly hit with several nude pictures. It was totally unexpected and very much unneeded. There was no accompanying text explaining why it was there, it just was. I've spent several months studying anatomy so the pictures didn't bother me, but it felt to me as if the pictures were just thrown in there to add on to the total page count.

Amazing maya and zbrush book5
This is a great book for creating characters in maya and refining them in zbrush. It is written by a pro (the guy was Lead 3D Technical Artist at LucasArts) so he definitely knows what he's talking about. He covers the whole art pipeline process and gives a great overview, but also goes into great detail. It's the best 3D book I own, and I own many

Introducing AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009

Product Description

The new edition of this hands-on guide helps users of all skill levels learn the basics of AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009 easily and efficiently. Bestselling AutoCAD author and expert George Omura offers clear explanations, a task-based approach, and pages of real-world examples and exercises to make this thorough book more valuable and useful than ever. Whether you're new to AutoCAD or just looking for a quick refresher, you'll find the fast, focused introduction to AutoCAD you need to get quickly up to speed.
Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #226517 in Books
* Published on: 2008-05-05
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 413 pages

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
Quickly Master AutoCAD 2009 Essentials

The new edition of this hands-on guide helps users of all skill levels learn the basics of AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT® 2009 easily and efficiently. Bestselling AutoCAD author and expert George Omura offers clear explanations, a task-based approach, and pages of real-world examples and exercises to make this thorough book more valuable and useful than ever. Whether you're new to AutoCAD or just looking for a quick refresher, you'll find the fast, focused introduction to AutoCAD you need to get quickly up to speed.

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Explore the all-new interface in AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD LT 2009
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Navigate the new Ribbon panel to access the tools you need
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Master the basics of drawing and editing with precision
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Add and edit notes and dimensions
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Learn the fundamentals of 2D drawings and 3D models
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Understand layers, blocks, groups, and external references
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Find areas and distances quickly
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Easily extract hidden data

George Omura is the all-time bestselling AutoCAD author and was cited as the favorite CAD author by members of the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI) in AUGIWorld magazine's "Best of Everything CAD" issue.

About the Author
George Omura is a licensed architect, Autodesk Authorized Author, and CAD specialist with more than 20 years of experience in AutoCAD and over 30 years of experience in architecture. He has worked on design projects ranging from resort hotels to metropolitan transit systems to the San Francisco Library project. George has written numerous other AutoCAD books for Sybex, including Introducing AutoCAD 2008, Mastering AutoCAD 2008 and AutoCAD LT 2008, and Just Enough AutoCAD 2007.

Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and mental ray by Roger Cusson

Product Description

Bring new realism to your visualizations with a command of the 3ds Max toolset. Three step-by-step tutorials demonstrate exterior and interior, day and night lighting scenes. You learn the nuts and bolts of importing models from CAD programs, lighting, applying mr shaders and materials, and optimizing your renders. Mental ray is made simple with an accessible description of its tools.

* Color reproductions illustrate a wide array of subtle techniques.
* mental ray is made easy with accesible demonstations.
* Companion CD contains all of the project files.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #110899 in Books
Published on: 2007-04-15
Released on: 2007-04-15
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
344 pages
Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
Bring new realism to your visualizations with a command of the mental ray toolset in 3ds Max. mental ray is made simple with an accessible description of its tools and workflows. You can learn the nuts and bolts of applying materials, lighting, and optimizing your renders.

Step-by-step tutorials lavishly illustrate the processes and techniques required to produce renderings of existing models. Interior and exterior projects demonstrate how to:
*Prepare materials for interior and exterior scenes in light-free enviornments for efficient rendering
* Light a daytime interior scene including indirect illumination, color bleeding, and mr lights
* Light a nighttime interior scene including light decay, lume shaders, exposure controls, and rendering light tests
* Light an exterior scene in daylight with mr Sun and mr Sky objects
* Create a hazy exterior setting with mr Physical Sky and an applied bitmap
* Efficiently work a complex scene to reserve time consuming complete renders for the end

Valuable appendices provide direction on trasnferring CAD files from AutoCAD and Revit to 3ds Max, creating caustics and flash effects, HDRI, Render passes and Bucket rendering, common errors and the process of creating the high resolution image as seen on the front cover.

About the Author
caught the AutoCAD bug in 1985. After learning and applying the software to his profession, he became a consultant to Architectural firms implementing AutoCAD into their work process. Roger has been an active educator for years in the professional and academic communities. He has worked as a full time professor at Vanier College, and a training manager at Autodesk. He was lead author for 2 Autodesk VIZ books, and was a significant contributor to the 3ds max 8 Essentials book.
Customer Reviews

excellent book
At first I was reluctant to buy this book as the previous books about mental ray were not so helpful;being a 3ds max user. I have to confess that I was utterly surprised to find out that this book explores most areas of mental ray usage. Moreover, i was delighted to have seen for the first time a book that touches on the subject about common mental ray errors, and how to overcome them.The "flash light effect" tutorial was another big surprise for me; especially as this technique has always been linked to Maxwell renderer.
Having known jamie cardoso's work for years, I knew this book would be a good purchase.
All tutorials were innovative and very easy to follow.
Finally,the array of detailed 3D scenes,bitmaps and documentation make this book a very good value for money indeed. Many thanks to Jamie and Roger. ...Are you considering the second edition any time soon? This book left me wanting to know more.

I expected more...
If you've never done any design viz before (and I mean NEVER) you might benefit from this book. My biggest beef is that 90% of this book's content is laid out almost word for word in the Mental Ray tuts and user reference that ship with Max 9. At this price...hold off.

Not even close to realistic Architectural Visualization
I must admit that i am really dissapointed with this book. To me it seems like the author just took the reference help menu and made it his own. These renders are not even close to realism. I thought by buying this book, i would gain some confidance in the archviz field. Unfortunately that is not the case. I will have to look elsewhere to gain that confidance and to get a better book or dvd tutorial on archviz. I am not new to 3D. I have worked in 3D for 7 years using 3ds max, and Maya. This book is more accurate to be marketed towards beginners and not towards mid level or professionals.

Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max by Joep van der Steen

Product Description

Realize your vision with stunning renders of your 3ds Max projects that can only be achieved with a powerful engine like mental ray. Beginning with a concise review of the essential concepts, you proceed to step-by-step tutorials that teach you how to render scenes with indirect light or with specific effects, such as depth of field and motion blur. Contour line shading and various other mental ray features are presented in detail, then you learn how to use the different light types of 3ds Max inside mental ray and how to use mental rays own specific area lights and its new daylight system. Finally, the book reviews mental rayspecific materials and what effects can be obtained by using most of the specific mental ray shaders.

Key Features:
* Color reproductions illustrate a wide array of subtle techniques.
* Contains never-before-published information about how shaders work
* Companion CD-ROM includes tutorial project files
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #45725 in Books
Published on: 2007-03-20
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
256 pages
Editorial Reviews

Review
Put yourself on a path to productivity with Joeps deliberate approach to a logical workflow. Enjoy the exercises and the satisfaction you get from producing cost effective renderings and a foundation of knowledge that you can apply to your work.
Ted Boardman,
Author and Instructor

A solid foundation with thorough explanations, practical examples, and lots of pictures. Each chapter provides a clear set of objectives and insightful production tips.
Steven D. Papke,President, Vizdepot.com

From the Back Cover
Realize your vision with stunning renders of your 3ds Max projects that can only be achieved with a powerful engine like mental ray. Beginning with a concise review of the essential concepts, you proceed to step-by-step tutorials that teach you how to render scenes with

Indirect illumination options including Final Gather, Caustics, and Global Illumination
Render options such as Contour Line rendering, Camera Effects, Displacement, Depth of Field, and Motion Blur effects
Lighting options including those provided within 3ds Max, as well as the four mr lightsArea Omni and Area Spot inside the Standard Light group, and mr Sky and mr Sun inside the Photometric Light group
Material options available inside 3ds Max including Arch and Design and Car Paint, DGS and Glass materials, and Sub Surface Scattering materials
Shader options including mr material-related shaders, the tiny shaders that control small specific effects, and shaders that are used to create water, with all its effects

The companion CD includes tutorial files and sample files that demonstrate the possibilities.

About the Author
is formally trained as a civil engineer. He has worked in computer animation and visualization for the past15 years, devoting recent years to sales and training for 3ds Max and Viz within the Benelux countries. As an extension of his training activities Joep hosts an internet support portal (www.3dstudio.nl) with related tutorials and models, and annually teaches a high school level course on the fundamentals of 3ds Max. Joep mastered mental ray rendering by repeatedly throwing himself into its cold deep waters without water wings.
Customer Reviews

how to climb a mountain
Whenever you need to learn a new program, it tends to present itself as a huge mountain to climb. Mental Ray is no different. The lack of documentation comming with this Autodesk program makes climbing this mountain a sheer impossible task. Not with this book. Joep van der Steen takes you by the hand and showes you the paths. He does this by starting of with standard scene's and presets. Then with every tutorial he goes more and more into the details. Step by step you feel more and more at home with the program. Allready half way the book you have a good idea how to work with Mental Ray. But it goes on with more and more easy explanation of complicated stuff. The mountain turns out to be a joy to climb

Very Good to get you moving in the right direction
This book was extremely helpful to me as it relates to MR renders and what the various parameter do in the render dialog box. That part is worth more than 5 stars. The place it might be lacking by a small amount is the clarity in how the shaders and materials are explained. Very detailed in some places, but I found myself going back and forth from the book to the material editor to try to follow along and understand what was being explained. In the end, I learned a good deal but there were times too when I was confused by what seemed like contradictory facts, or at least I found them to be so. Like how the arch materials diffuse,reflection and transparency channels could not exceed a value of 1 when added together, yet I saw many materials constructed where those three channels added up to 3. The materials still worked as described, but I am the type that needs to understand the nitty-gritty before I feel comfortable with something. Oh well.

But all-in-all this book is WELL worth it. It will take a lot of the guess work and trail-and-error out of your MR renders. All I can say is, Good job, Mr. Van der Steen.

Yes, very good job.

The Book I Should Have Bought First Up
I've purchased several books on using mental ray and 3ds and this is the one I should have bought at the start. The author guides you through the process of using mental ray with 3ds Max, explaining and illustrating in the book what you'll see on your own computer. While setting up a rendering using mental ray is not difficult, its settings can appear daunting to both the beginner and the more experienced user. Joep goes through all of mental rays major settings in order to set up a rendering. Further, he explains how to use Final Gather alone or together with Global Illumination to achieve optimal results. This is something that not many authors do in the same depth, if at all. He also explains what each important mental ray setting means and how small changes to them affect your scenes.
A variety of interesting and different models are used throught the book and come on the accompanying CD, which is a very nice touch and so much better than the normal practise of doing everything with one or two boring models - this book is aimed at stimulating your senses through its presentation.
The author goes much further than simply setting up mental ray by covering the shaders that are included with 3ds Max and there is something in this book for just about any 3ds Max user, no matter what their level of experience. Using it as a reference will enable you to produce the renderings you've always dreamed about; and it will do so by increasing your understanding of mental ray. In the end it's the authors knowledge and explanations of how mental ray does things that makes this such a worthwhile and valuable reference.