[.ca] 3D Lighting: History, Concepts & Techniques (ISBN 1584500387)

From Amazon.co.uk:
The majority of computer graphics books are either too application-specific or too general. The field of 3-D computer graphics possesses tremendous depth, and any aspect of it is worthy of a focused career. In large studios, artists concentrate on just one phase of production, be it modelling, texturing, animation or rendering. If you are interested in learning about the field from this perspective, read 3D Lighting: History, Concepts, & Techniques. It's a pleasure to peruse, because it shares the large-studio focus. The book does feature examples, project files, and some instructions for specific applications, but it is mostly about concept and theory in computer imaging. For the most part, it avoids application-specific discussion. This is a good thing--any experienced artist uses more than one application, and can easily port this information from one app to another. There are eight chapters in all, starting with "The Nature of Light" (how light works) and "The Physiology of Seeing and Perception" (how we see light), and moving on to "Fundamentals of Photography and Cinematography" and "Colour and Materials". But it isn't until chapter 5, "Computer Graphics", that the book gets into the specifics of how 3-D applications treat light and colour. The only real drawback of this book is its lack of colour images. While there is an eight-page colour plate section in the middle, it is hardly enough to sustain a book devoted to lighting and colour theory. And although the accompanying CD-ROM includes most, if not all, of the pictures used in the book, it is hardly the same as a colour picture in the text. The liberal use of black and white images throughout the book is almost an insult to a book about colour and light. While application-specific reference books have their place, there are far too few that focus on specific concepts. Lighting is as important as texturing, animation and rendering, and 3D Lighting: History, Concepts, & Techniques is thoroughly important to the field. --Mike Caputo

THROW IT IN THE WASTE BASKET:
This book should be thrown in the waste basket. I have no doubt that Mr. Gallardo knows his stuff, but he really can't explain it to an average MAX user. Majority of book was full of run-on sentences and prepositional phrases strung together. His writing style was so distracting, I had to throw the book in the waste basket to calm me down. I have the feeling that Mr. Gallardo had to fill those pages so the book will look more impressive. Don't impress me. Stop printing this book and save the forest.

Wish it had been more useful...:
This book looks and reads so much like a textbook that it made me think back to my high school biology class. It's a big solid book, and walks through definitions of a lot of terms and concepts, but unfortunately it wasn't very useful or relevant to rendering 3D scenes. I wish that more of the sections had been tied together or made relevant to 3D graphics. For example, the lengthy chapter on the anatomy of a human eye could have been copied from an encyclopedia or anatomy book, and just seemed pasted-in to this book, without leading into any conclusions or techniques related to making your own images. Some of the most important parts of the lighting process (that I'd like to do more of in my projects!) weren't covered at all - there was nothing about matching the lighting from real-life background or combining and compositing your renders with real footage, there was nothing about casting and receiving shadows and reflections from real-world scenes, or rendering multiple layers and compositing them to build more realistic surfaces. The actual images and sample scenes in the book were very basic - the author never moves to anything more sophisticated than lighting that same statue head and model of his desk scene, none of the images in the book are any more challenging or professional. (I give this book 2 stars to reward the author's effort, but if I were grading this book on how useful it was to me I only would have given it only 1 star, because it didn't teach anything new or useful.)

MAX r4 Simbiont update info:
Darkling Simulations now have their updated Max r4 plugin (Simbiont) as well as the updates for LW 6.5/7.0b and trueSpace 5.1 and are available online as a demo if you do not have Darktree 2.0. This update will make it possible to use the tutorial scenes with MAX r4.

Great insights but a caution to 3d Max 4 users:
I found Mr Gallardo's book extremely informative on the history, theories and science of light. Also, the light array models used in the tutorials gave me some nice insights for my own work. Unfortunatley when I went to use the tutorials I found that the required plug-ins of the third party texture creator (Dark Tree) didn't work with 3D Max 4. The demo for the upgrade of this product wasn't available and I had to try to simulate the tutorial using Max's on material editor. I'm dissappointed that the author did not use these materials in the first place. I would also caution anyone utilizing these tutorials to have a decent computer to run them on. Some of the exercises use a lot of grouped lights along with raytracing and it can take some time to see the results.

Excellent book on Lighting:
I would like to second the Amazon Technical review. This is a fantastic book that covers everything from theory to application. For students who really want to understand the whys, whats and hows of lighting I think this book is indispensable. In fact I will be using this as a text for a lighting and materials 3D animation class that I teach.