LightWave is a versatile program that has been used for years in television, film, and games. It is also used to create graphics for print, web, industrial design, architecture, medical imaging, and a variety of other areas. The LightWave 7.5 Primer, is a complete, structured guide to the ins and outs of LightWave. Whether you are just getting started with LightWave, or are an intermediate user needing to hone your skills, this "course in a book" provides all the instruction you need to become proficient. You can work at your own pace through a variety of lessons, tasks, and self-tests that will improve your skills and help you master this powerful program.

The LightWave 7.5 Primer is a complete, structured guide to the ins and outs of LightWave. It is intended to help those just getting started in the field of 3D animation learn the dozens of details necessary to become comfortable and proficient with a 3D software program. While LightWave is fairly straightforward and intuitive in its construction, computer animation by itself can be a very involved process. The first part of this book covers many of the basics of 3D animation and explains how LightWave addresses them. It teaches which tools are used to create 3D animation, explains how they work, and when to use them. The remainder of the book focuses on developing 3D skills and provides a wide array of tutorials for hands-on practice.

The LightWave 7.5 Primer will give you the basic grounding in LightWave necessary to begin working effectively in 3D. You will learn how to construct basic objects and make them move. You will learn how to give them textures and render them as animations. And you will even be able to composite your LightWave renders into live footage. LightWave is a diverse tool used throughout the industry for print graphics, game development, architecture, visualization, broadcast film, and visual FX. If you are just starting in the 3D field or are new to LightWave, you’ll find all the guidance you need to hone your skills and master this powerful tool.

KEY FEATURES

* Provides a practical start-to-finish guide for learning LightWave

* Covers all key topics, including layout and modeler, objects, keyframes and animation, surfacing, 3D lighting, rendering, parenting and motion paths, text, particle animation, and deformation

* Explains the theory behind the tools and techniques, allowing users to adapt easily to other 3D programs

* Includes a wide variety of projects that integrate LW features and general techniques

On the CD!
The CD-ROM includes all the files necessary to complete the projects in the book.
--- Images
--- Objects
--- Scenes
--- Fully rendered animations in MPEG and QuickTime
--- Color versions of figures from within the book

Only useful for beginners

Being a fairly new Lightwave user, I pre-ordered this book. I also own all of the Desktop Images training DVDs for LW 7 as well as a few of Class on Demand’s training DVDs. By the time the book arrived I’d been using Lightwave for only about 3 months and it was already useless.

There is some good information in here, and the book is fairly light reading, but the book tries to be too general and doesn’t provide enough coverage of specific topics.

In all fairness, this book would be the perfect textbook for an Intro to Lightwave class. However, if you can model, texture, animate and render a simple object then this book probably won’t offer you much. You would be better off buying another book by the same author, "The LightWave 6.5/7.0 Project Handbook"

It Doesn’t Work

The book seems well writen and I was really enjoying it until page 120. That’s when the included CD is first called for use. I find that anything in LightWave format is not seen by my computer - a new Mac G4, duel processor with OSX 10.2.4. I was careful to read before ordering the book if Mac is supported. They say it is. I’ll try it tomorrow on my PC, but my graphics machine is the Mac. If I can straighten this out I think I will highly rate the book. If not, well then I’ll stick with no or one star!

This book doesn’t explain it all. That takes more than 350 pages. It seems to skim the surface, and there’s lots of surface to be skimmed! This is a four or five book program. The included program manual is very complete, but such a dry read you won’t believe. Kinda like the early Photoshop manuals.

A good start

The Lightwave 7.5 Primer is a good book to introduce you to the Lightwave program. The thing I most enjoyed about the book was the quality of the tutorials. All files were easily found, and all the examples worked! This doesn’t always happen with other books.
A 3D package is basically lots of programs rolled into one. Modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, rendering. All these could be there own area of study. Mr. Beck’s book does a fine job of introducing the basics of each of these to the reader.
Only a few noticible typos and errors are found through the whole book. The appendices of CD content and system requirements should definitly be at the beginning of the book. And although the book is chatty enough and very approachable I found that it ended a bit abruptly. But these are basically nits I’m picking. After completing this book I feel more ready to dive into some of the other Lightwave books out there.

Calling all Lightwave Newbies

For any Lightwave newbies, save yourself some angst and get The LightWave
7.5 Primer (Patrick Beck)

Mr. Beck makes everything seem so clear and easy. I wish I’d had this when I
set out to learn Lightwave. I think this should be included with every copy
of Lightwave, especially now that the unwashed masses (like myself) are getting into 3D.

A highly recommended instructional reference for the novice

The Lightwave 7.5 Primer by professional animator Patrik Beck (Founder of Electric Crayon Studio) clearly, carefully, and accessibly instructs the reader in the fundamentals of using the LightWave toolset to craft three-dimensional animation. Individual chapters adroitly address the basics of LightWave, techniques for crafting surfaces with texture and luminosity adjusted to the right degree, animating object deformation, particles, hypervoxels, and much, much more. Numerous samples and black-and-white photographs enhance out the thoroughly "reader friendly" text. An accompanying CD-ROM offers a small but utilitarian library of files useful for undertaking the instructional projects of the primer, including images, objects, scenes, color versions of the book’s figures, and rendered animations in MPEG and QuickTime. The LightWave 7.5 Primer is an essential and very highly recommended instructional reference for the novice, and has a great deal of informational value to offer even the more experienced LightWave user.