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| ISBN10: 1598220594 |
| ISBN13: 9781598220599 |
| Publisher: Wordware |
| Pubdate: 08-08 |
| Pages: 552 |
| Weight: 2.5 lbs |
| List Price: $44.95 |
| Discount: 20% | | You Save: $9.00 |
| CBO Price: $35.95 |
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Essential Zbrush
by Wayne Robson
Essential ZBrush offers a detailed overview of the popular digital sculpting tool as well as a guide to mastering digital sculpting. From the basics of ZBrush to the creation of a number of models that demonstrate hard surface sculpting, realisitic organic sculpting, and environmental sculpting, this book provides readers with the tools to produce high-quality digital sculpts.
With this book:
- Explore the various ZBrush palettes, brushes, and settings, and learn how to customize the interface.
- Discover how to create a base mesh using ZSpheres.
- Find out how to use normal and displacement maps in both 3ds Max and Maya.
- Understand the importance of properly posing your models.
- Explore a variety of production-tested pipelines and workflows.
- Learn how to create and apply materials to your models.
The companion DVD contains more than 3 hours of video tutorials showing how to model and texture the image shown on the front cover. It also contains full-color versions of the images in the book.
Wayne Robson is a world-renowned artist and teacher who uses ZBrush as his tool of choice for digital sculpting. He has authored and contributed to atricles for many magazines on a wide variety of 3D subjects with a concentration on ZBrush and has produced many popular DVDs that are used to train artists at some of the biggest companies in the world of computer games and movies.
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Amazon Reviews: Average Rating: 4.5
| It's a good book indeed. |
(7/30/2009)
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First of I would like to say that I had no problems in understanding Wayne accent. I'm Portuguese and I could understand every word that came out of his mouth. Enjoyed his sense of humor too.
No doubt it's a tick book, but the majority of the pages are big pictures (Black and white), showing the brush results and the sculpting. Just wished that it was in colors. But wait, there's a DVD included as well and Wayne shows from start to end how the cover model is sculpted. Just the DVD itself it was worth every penny.
I also agree with other reviewers, there are sections of the book that assumes you have the basics of the program, specially when it comes to the technical part. I think when it came to the technical part, the author could have given some examples or explained in more dept. (I ended up finding the solution after a long online research. I've also emailed the author twice but got no reply).
I have recommended this book many times to new users and will continue to do so. I'm looking forward to his new mudbox book. Thank you.
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| Best instructional zbrush book!! |
(6/17/2009)
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This books is huge, have 744 pages of instruction. The author show every features and how to use every tool in the pages theses are rich illustrated, step by step you going learning and enjoying it. Every page your read you going felling much more confident, this books is amazing. 5 star is not enough is worth of one thousand stars.
Special thanks goes for Wayne Robson for writing the best instructional zbrush book. Sure a great investment!! |
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| "Essential ZBrush" is a solid offering |
(5/17/2009)
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I would really give this book 2.5 Stars, and the included DVD 3.5 Stars.
This book assumes the reader has at least some familiarity with the program (and frankly, there are some excellent mainstream DVDs that fill that purpose very well). It is also aimed primarily at Game artists, as the publisher's name suggests, but it still contains info useful to all digital sculptors.
The book skips around a lot; a discussion of UV Maps precedes any overview of the sculpting tools, for example. I also found myself mentally "rewriting" parts of the narrative as I read through the chapters. The author occasionally uses an odd turn of phrase and seems generally averse to commas; the prose is certainly understandable, but you my have to read some lines more than once.
In terms of production values, the book is printed in black & white on thin, medium-quality paper; screen-shot images are uniformly dark and muddy. This is not entirely the fault of the publisher. Too many modern 3D programs seem to be embracing a dark gray UI, which can make even the software's onscreen appearance hard to read. One nice thing about the book is that the step-by-step approach to the writing is mirrored closely by an abundance of related screen grabs. These figures are rarely labeled, other than by number (e.g., Figure 5-13), but they are placed very near the pertinent copy, which is a welcome design decision. (I recently bought another "how-to" book in which copy and its corresponding image were sometimes pages apart: not fun to try to follow.) However, it does does result in a very long book, at almost 750 pages.
The accompanying DVD is actually a much better package. Although slightly marred by occasional ambient background noise (most notably the persistent ticking of a timer!), the videos provide a very interesting and engaging presentation of an excellent artist's workflow within ZBrush. The author has a very strong English (Welsh?) accent, but as an American (and one from Texas, at that), I had no trouble understanding him. The quality of the QuickTime movies is very good and allows a lot of flexibility to replay certain parts, or to pause and resume playback later.
All in all, I recommend this book. Its in-depth, step-by-step approach is thorough and highly informative. |
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| Good overall review |
(5/1/2009)
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Good book, much better than Wayne Robeson's dvd's, especially if you are an American, as his accent can seem to be inaudible at times. In addition, with his dvd's he often goes off on tangents. However, the same zbrush tasks are more clearly explained in simpler terms in his book. Whoever proofread his writing for the book did an excellent job, enabling him to stay focused on the tasks at hand and articulated for the layperson. His sense of humor comes off much better in the book as well, preventing you from falling alseep or getting bored with all the technical jargon. The highlights of the book are the excellent zbrush workflow concepts which are explained thoroughly and are supported by specific examples. One example is the thorough explanation of creating normal maps and why they are used in game character creation instead of displacement maps (which can cause your system to take a huge render hit). Most folks don't have a render farm in their living room. A basic understanding of zbrush is recommended before reading this book, but overall a good asset to have for reference and inspiration. |
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| 5 Stars??? Yep. |
(4/23/2009)
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I have already learned about 70% of ZBrush 3, but having said that, I felt I still wanted a fresh perspective, even after looking at the vids online and surfing the forums. In short, you will need no other book on the subject. It touches on every aspect of ZB. Wayne has always tried to put himself out front with his knowledge and help toward other's. Here he does what he does best, and that is, to help this 3d community of ours grow through guiding us with a vast amount of documentation. Great job Wayne...Want to see more? Here's his site.
http://www.dashdotslash.net/ |
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