This book was exactly what I was looking for. I could'nt put it down.

Tutorial after tutorial of information relevant to today's industry.

There's everythig from creating and placing textures onto simple objects,

to the more advanced character tutorial which goes into fine detail.

Definatley worth the investment if you are interested in creating game

content.

It's Got my vote.

This book is probably your best bet at getting a job in the games industry.

It takes you through the basic stages of prepping up a scene right through to the interview stage -pretty much everything has been thought of.

While some may want to skip ahead of the first few chapters -don't! You'll learn a lot about techniques and workflow essential to the job.

Most books will give examples of how a program performs certain tasks and you will struggle to use those techniques as a common practice -not so here, as you will be tutored in industry proven techniques and principles.

If you believe you have the talent but need a focus, welcome to your first port of call. highly reccomneded.

I've played around with 3ds max for a few years but never really got to grips with it until now.

3ds Max Modelling for Games has taught me more in a month than every other book and DVD I've wasted my money on all together.

The book is extremely simple to begin with, taking you through modelling a box, step by step.

Now I thought that this was a joke initially until I realised that the tutorial was not about modelling a box, but about setting 3ds max up properly with automatic backups, units, scale and the core principles of mapping and unwrapping textures. It even shows how to get a great looking render out of the simplest of models - something I had struggled with in the past.



The book moves on teaching more complex modelling techniques, more complex mapping and even how to take your own photographs and turn them into great looking texture maps - I didn't expect a number of great Photoshop lessons in a 3ds Max book.



Again the tutorials get more complex and cover normal mapping, dirt maps, ambient occlusion, scratch maps, specular maps, and complex lighting and rendering.

But the best thing about the book is that all of the tutorials grow all fit together as pieces of the final finished scene which is an abandoned warehouse. The models, the vehicle, the character - everything all fits together to make a scene with lots of rendering advice to put a good portfolio together.



Finally the book ends with some of the best advice I've ever seen on putting a portfolio together and how to act in an interview.



I haven't been able to put this book down since I got hold of it and I'm now looking forward to the massive character modelling tutorial.



5 stars from me.



p.s. The book has an accompanying website with extra content promised too.

I wrote this book as the definitinve guide to starting out modelling for the games industry.
The book shows you exactly what you need to do to start creating 3d models and textures to be used in todays commercial software titles.

Once you have a good grasp of basic modelling, I take you through texture creation and using photographs to create texture maps in Photoshop.

Once you have a good grasp of modelling and texture creation, the tutorials get progressively more advanced in simple to follow, step by step tutorials ending in some really complex character modelling and texture baking.

To end everything off, I take you through a nice environment modelling tutorial and give you a great professional approach to putting a portfolio together and how to conduct yourself in an interview.

This is the very best guide to getting into the games industry on the market, and is completely up to date with 3dsMax 2009 and next generation techniques.

As well as the book there are hundreds of refernce photos from a photoshoot in an abandoned mental hospital in England - more than enough to keep an artist of any ability busy for the next 6 months. As well as the photoshoot and lots of example models to copy and adapt, there is an acompanying website with new content, photoshoots and tutorials planned throughout the comming months.

highly recommended