Unlike many books trying to cover all things Max, 3DS Max 4 Media Animation focuses on a specific use of the popular animation system from Discreet: creating opening graphics and logo animation for video.

The book assumes the reader has some experience in using Max, and in creating animation for video. It focuses on the design and production of six different animated openings, and three of those are real-world on-the-air clips from networks such as MSNBC and NBC News.

Four main sections of the book cover the projects step by step. The user doesn’t get a tour of the interface, and there is no history of computer graphics. Instead, each chapter methodically describes only the steps involved in creating each particular project. If you’ve used Max and know the difference between a viewport and a roll-out, this book is for you.

There are plenty of details to absorb, since each project is fairly complex. The "Funhouse" tutorial is more about lighting and texturing, with some emphasis on modelling. The "Voting Machine" project is mostly about modelling, while the "News Open" project is a combination of lighting and effects. Each chapter is liberally illustrated and clearly written.

While many animators despise the idea of having to create yet another flying logo, many more have already embraced this genre and have realised that a comfortable living can be made as a talented motion graphics designer--as long as your work stands out from the crowd. It is far more difficult to design and execute an attractive motion graphics opening than you think, and if you haven’t yet done it, "3DS Max 4 Media Animation" is a good place to start. Mike Caputo

In 3ds max 4 Media Animation, John Chismar has done it again <196> only better! Following the lead of his highly acclaimed book 3D Studio Max 3 Media Animation, John uses three professionally designed projects to show readers the ins and outs of animation media for broadcast. The clarity of John¿s instructions, the efficiency of his processes, and the quality of his projects are sure to make this book a success with animators and educators alike. The book concludes with the deconstruction of three projects John created this year as the Senior 3D animator for MSNBC.

Still the Best 3ds Max tutorial on the market

This book is the best tutorial for learning 3ds Max that I’ve read. It is not for novices, in that it assumes you know the 3ds Max interface. However, it is a step-by-step guide for creating professional quality animations for broadcast media. The author works for MSNBC. He breaks down 3 real-world projects in an easy-to-understand way, from storyboards to final output. This single book jump-started my understanding of complex modeling and animation techniques using 3ds Max. Although this book was made for version 4 of the program (the program is currently in version 9), the interface has not changed significantly in that it would make this book obsolete. I used it using version 6 and returned to it in version 8 with no difficulties. Well worth your time.

best so far - waiting for any new Chismar release

I am a beginner user of Viz and Max and will be using it for architectural 3D rendering. What I look for in a text book are lengthy tutorial exercises. I want to know step by step everything that I have to do to reproduce what the author is showing. This book is great for that. There are three main excercises that go the full length of the 550 pages of this book. As an example the 2002 voting machine tutorial goes from pages 182 to 315, covering each step of the construction. Chismar even includes alternate means of construction to show why one method works better than other methods.

I am looking forward to an updated book by Chismar on the lastest release of Max. I have not heard if one is being made.

One slight drawback...Chismar does not deal with the possiblities of drawing and rendering for architecture. If the new release of Max does include the architectural functions of Viz, then there will be a need for tutorials on those items. None the less the command structure of the software for Viz and Max is virtually the same, so learning that part from Chismar’s book is still very important.

best so far - waiting for any new Chismar release

I am a beginner user of Viz and Max and will be using it for architectural 3D rendering. What I look for in a text book are lengthy tutorial exercises. I want to know step by step everything that I have to do to reproduce what the author is showing. This book is great for that. There are three main excercises that go the full length of the 550 pages of this book. As an example the 2002 voting machine tutorial goes from pages 182 to 315, covering each step of the construction. Chismar even includes alternate means of construction to show why one method works better than other methods.

I am looking forward to an updated book by Chismar on the lastest release of Max. I have not heard if one is being made.

One slight drawback...Chismar does not deal with the possiblities of drawing and rendering for architecture. If the new release of Max does include the architectural functions of Viz, then there will be a need for tutorials on those items. None the less the command structure of the software for Viz and Max is virtually the same, so learning that part from Chismar’s book is still very important.

Best I have seen

The most important feature of this book is the lengthy step by step tutorials. This is the first thing I look for in a computer book - to see that the tutorials are long. to me this indicates that the writer is very thorough with all steps in the project and does not leave out important steps along the way.

If you buy used make sure the disk is included.

Best I have seen

The most important feature of this book is the lengthy step by step tutorials. This is the first thing I look for in a computer book - to see that the tutorials are long. to me this indicates that the writer is very thorough with all steps in the project and does not leave out important steps along the way.

If you buy used make sure the disk is included.

Good book

Overall, it is a good book with clear instruction for intermediate user.

I give it 4 stars since it doesn’t tell you the detailed procedures to reproduce the cool special effect described in the Part 4 (Real World Case Stuides).

Good book

Overall, it is a good book with clear instruction for intermediate user.

I give it 4 stars since it doesn’t tell you the detailed procedures to reproduce the cool special effect described in the Part 4 (Real World Case Stuides).

The Benchmark for All Tutorial-Style Computer Text Books

This book is a fantastic example of how all computer text books should be structured - Step-by-step tutorials that demonstrate experienced solutions to real-world projects. I know I speak for many people when I say that I learn by DOING, not by reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text and lengthy descriptions of "what this app can do for you". No one likes to attempt to digest a "features description" manual and try to piece together the various complexities of a high-end application like 3DS MAX from various disjointed sources. I need a seasoned, talented professional, with years of industry experience, to step me through exactly how an application performs various industry tasks, e.g. how to make a 30-second TV spot from scratch, how to make a highly-professional News program opener, or how to make robotic-looking voting machines animated together in a 3-camera shoot. John Chrismar performs this tasks with a detail and finesse that is extremely hard to find in the computer textbook industry. I look for this style in every computer book I pick up, but don’t often find it, if at all. The industry giants on the programming side of the industry, like Wrox Press, should use John’s book as an example of how to write an effective computer textbook. Don’t waste my time with information overload, stuffed together losely by a quasi-team of 6 geeks. SHOW ME how you solved a problem with the application or programming language, from start to finish, while I follow along, bit by bit, line by line, click by click. Show me how to build a genuine and valuable creation using the tool you are teaching me to use. This is exactly what John does.

I started with the last of three tutorials and worked backward through the book, because the News Program Opener tutorial looked the most intriguing. I learned more about 3DS MAX after that one tutorial then I had by reading the documentation or from any of the other three 3DS MAX books I own. I saw someone else mention that there were some small mistakes and missed "figure" numbers on the screenshots here and there, but this did not detract from completing the tutorials in the slightest. Two extra seconds of thought got me passed these minor editing oversights very easily, and they were very minor in comparison to most computer textbooks.

It was beyond refreshing to witness and practice along with a professional at work from beginning to end: from importing your vectors from Illustrator, to cleaning up the splines, to extruding, modelling each piece, assembling, naming conventions, creating materials, shortcuts, to animating, adding a soundtrack, right down to post-production and final render. I absolutely can not stand books where Step 1 is "Import our half-finished Design #643.2 from our accompanying CD-ROM". Not the case with this book. You are stepped through the process, end to end. When you are done with each tutorial, you have a finished work of media art THAT YOU CREATED and a head full of usable, retainable 3DS MAX knowledge that can be carried into any job or hobby.

Excellent job, John. You have gained a new fan. I will purchase your other books, regardless of topic. :D

Thank you.

The Benchmark for All Tutorial-Style Computer Text Books

This book is a fantastic example of how all computer text books should be structured - Step-by-step tutorials that demonstrate experienced solutions to real-world projects. I know I speak for many people when I say that I learn by DOING, not by reading paragraphs upon paragraphs of text and lengthy descriptions of "what this app can do for you". No one likes to attempt to digest a "features description" manual and try to piece together the various complexities of a high-end application like 3DS MAX from various disjointed sources. I need a seasoned, talented professional, with years of industry experience, to step me through exactly how an application performs various industry tasks, e.g. how to make a 30-second TV spot from scratch, how to make a highly-professional News program opener, or how to make robotic-looking voting machines animated together in a 3-camera shoot. John Chrismar performs this tasks with a detail and finesse that is extremely hard to find in the computer textbook industry. I look for this style in every computer book I pick up, but don’t often find it, if at all. The industry giants on the programming side of the industry, like Wrox Press, should use John’s book as an example of how to write an effective computer textbook. Don’t waste my time with information overload, stuffed together losely by a quasi-team of 6 geeks. SHOW ME how you solved a problem with the application or programming language, from start to finish, while I follow along, bit by bit, line by line, click by click. Show me how to build a genuine and valuable creation using the tool you are teaching me to use. This is exactly what John does.

I started with the last of three tutorials and worked backward through the book, because the News Program Opener tutorial looked the most intriguing. I learned more about 3DS MAX after that one tutorial then I had by reading the documentation or from any of the other three 3DS MAX books I own. I saw someone else mention that there were some small mistakes and missed "figure" numbers on the screenshots here and there, but this did not detract from completing the tutorials in the slightest. Two extra seconds of thought got me passed these minor editing oversights very easily, and they were very minor in comparison to most computer textbooks.

It was beyond refreshing to witness and practice along with a professional at work from beginning to end: from importing your vectors from Illustrator, to cleaning up the splines, to extruding, modelling each piece, assembling, naming conventions, creating materials, shortcuts, to animating, adding a soundtrack, right down to post-production and final render. I absolutely can not stand books where Step 1 is "Import our half-finished Design #643.2 from our accompanying CD-ROM". Not the case with this book. You are stepped through the process, end to end. When you are done with each tutorial, you have a finished work of media art THAT YOU CREATED and a head full of usable, retainable 3DS MAX knowledge that can be carried into any job or hobby.

Excellent job, John. You have gained a new fan. I will purchase your other books, regardless of topic. :D

Thank you.

An Excellent Reference...

About two weeks ago I purchased John Chrismar’s "Media Animation" book, and I must say that I am very impressed with this book. Having completed the three projects, and am now reviewing the final real world case studies, I think I’ll toss in my two cents worth here. Maybe this will be useful for the next guy, maybe not.

This book appears to be geared for the beginner to intermediately skilled 3ds max user (perhaps with an emphasis towards intermediate). The first tutorial (Funhouse billboard) covers most of the basics. While I already new most of the stuff covered here, I did learn a few handy tips and tricks I hadn’t known before. You get exposed to just about all of the basics that become the foundation for the rest of the book in this tutorial. The final animation was pretty cool, although the sound track that went with it made me want to barf. Oh well, its the learning that matters.

The second tutorial (Vote:2000) was in some ways simpler than the first although it had some interesting material editor stuff that I found very handy. Learning the use of DOF was cool although it bogged down my machine rendering for quite awhile. The final product was a cool animation with a nice soundtrack (I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show this to my friends).

The third (and best IMO) tutorial was the TV3 News Open. Now here’s where the book really earned its price. An excellent walkthough on pro looking logo development. Excellent workflow with lots of good pointers on using the material editor and video post to pull off some very nice looking stuff. I learned alot in this one, stuff thats hard to pull out of your 3ds max manuals. I wish the whole book had more stuff like this one.

There are a few points which are not so great and deserve a small amount of attention.
1. Many of the illustrations are not correct in this book. The text will say something like "... as shown in figure x.xx". Then you look at figure x.xx and it has an image of something else altogether. Looks like some proofing problems here. If you’re the type who DEPENDS on illustrations, you might get a bit frustrated. This happens quite a bit in this book. If you’re already somewhat experienced with max then this probably won’t be a big problem, more of an annoyance since the text is very accurate.

2. I had some problems with the Funhouse video post glow. This however is not the authors fault. Once the glow is applied and you try to render the scene, max has a fatal error everytime. It appears to be a problem with max 4.2x. I had to re-install max 4.0 to get this tutorial done. The basic problem appears to be between the enviornment map and the video post glow effect. If you have a map in the enviornment map slot and then use the video post glow, the error occurs pretty reliably. Take out either the map or glow and everything works fine. So if you’re using max 4.2x then you’ll want to either downgrade or ditch one of the effects. Like I said tho, this isn’t Chrismar’s fault. Those guys at Discreet have to get this one handled.

3. Overall when I bought the book I thought I was getting tutorials more like the TV3 News Open. Being already somewhat experienced, I was a bit dissapointed with the first two tutorials. I think the Real World Case Studies could have been better explored. However I do also realize that what you learn in the first 3 tutorials gives you the basic tools to create something *like* the real world case studies. So this is more of a gripe than a fault of the book. I felt a little "deceived" by the pictures on the back of the book.

Overall Impressions:
This book rocks, gripes aside which is why I give it 5 stars. John’s approach is very direct and thorough. No missing steps that I could find which is why I think the illustrations being mixed up isn’t so bad. John accurately describes all of the steps and discusses the uses of various tools and also good workflow habits in a very useful way. I learned alot as a result of this book. Clearly, this guys is a top quality animator. This book is a must have for anyone’s reference and I have absolutely NO REGRETS about this purchase.

I hope that Chrismar finds the time to do another book for intermediate to advanced users. I will definitely be buying it. Thanks for the great book John!

An Excellent Reference...

About two weeks ago I purchased John Chrismar’s "Media Animation" book, and I must say that I am very impressed with this book. Having completed the three projects, and am now reviewing the final real world case studies, I think I’ll toss in my two cents worth here. Maybe this will be useful for the next guy, maybe not.

This book appears to be geared for the beginner to intermediately skilled 3ds max user (perhaps with an emphasis towards intermediate). The first tutorial (Funhouse billboard) covers most of the basics. While I already new most of the stuff covered here, I did learn a few handy tips and tricks I hadn’t known before. You get exposed to just about all of the basics that become the foundation for the rest of the book in this tutorial. The final animation was pretty cool, although the sound track that went with it made me want to barf. Oh well, its the learning that matters.

The second tutorial (Vote:2000) was in some ways simpler than the first although it had some interesting material editor stuff that I found very handy. Learning the use of DOF was cool although it bogged down my machine rendering for quite awhile. The final product was a cool animation with a nice soundtrack (I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show this to my friends).

The third (and best IMO) tutorial was the TV3 News Open. Now here’s where the book really earned its price. An excellent walkthough on pro looking logo development. Excellent workflow with lots of good pointers on using the material editor and video post to pull off some very nice looking stuff. I learned alot in this one, stuff thats hard to pull out of your 3ds max manuals. I wish the whole book had more stuff like this one.

There are a few points which are not so great and deserve a small amount of attention.
1. Many of the illustrations are not correct in this book. The text will say something like "... as shown in figure x.xx". Then you look at figure x.xx and it has an image of something else altogether. Looks like some proofing problems here. If you’re the type who DEPENDS on illustrations, you might get a bit frustrated. This happens quite a bit in this book. If you’re already somewhat experienced with max then this probably won’t be a big problem, more of an annoyance since the text is very accurate.

2. I had some problems with the Funhouse video post glow. This however is not the authors fault. Once the glow is applied and you try to render the scene, max has a fatal error everytime. It appears to be a problem with max 4.2x. I had to re-install max 4.0 to get this tutorial done. The basic problem appears to be between the enviornment map and the video post glow effect. If you have a map in the enviornment map slot and then use the video post glow, the error occurs pretty reliably. Take out either the map or glow and everything works fine. So if you’re using max 4.2x then you’ll want to either downgrade or ditch one of the effects. Like I said tho, this isn’t Chrismar’s fault. Those guys at Discreet have to get this one handled.

3. Overall when I bought the book I thought I was getting tutorials more like the TV3 News Open. Being already somewhat experienced, I was a bit dissapointed with the first two tutorials. I think the Real World Case Studies could have been better explored. However I do also realize that what you learn in the first 3 tutorials gives you the basic tools to create something *like* the real world case studies. So this is more of a gripe than a fault of the book. I felt a little "deceived" by the pictures on the back of the book.

Overall Impressions:
This book rocks, gripes aside which is why I give it 5 stars. John’s approach is very direct and thorough. No missing steps that I could find which is why I think the illustrations being mixed up isn’t so bad. John accurately describes all of the steps and discusses the uses of various tools and also good workflow habits in a very useful way. I learned alot as a result of this book. Clearly, this guys is a top quality animator. This book is a must have for anyone’s reference and I have absolutely NO REGRETS about this purchase.

I hope that Chrismar finds the time to do another book for intermediate to advanced users. I will definitely be buying it. Thanks for the great book John!