Ted Boardman is a well-known 3ds Max trainer, writer, and columnist, and is one of a dozen Authorized Discreet (now Autodesk) Training Specialists for Multimedia. Ted is an award-winning speaker at the annual Autodesk University symposium covering CAD and visualization topics and is the founder of the Boston 3D Studio User Group. He is also the author of the previous editions of this book.

What’s new in 3ds Max 8? Should I upgrade? How can 3ds Max 8 help me become more productive? Author and master trainer Ted Boardman answers all those questions and many more in the latest edition of his expert guide, 3ds Max 8 Fundamentals. You’ll not only learn the process of modeling and animating objects in 3ds Max 8, but also gain an appreciation for its underlying rationale. As you complete the exercises and tutorials in this book, you’ll discover features new in max 8 that make it an even more powerful program than before. Whether you are new to Max 8 or an old pro looking to increase your productivity, you’ll benefit from the detailed explanations of such topics as:

•    Sharing, controlling, and managing your work-in-progress assets using Asset Tracker, 3ds max 8’s new source control solution

•    Selecting, viewing, manipulating, and working with curves more easily with the improved Track View

•    Developing photorealistic characters with 3ds’s improved character development features, cloth and hair simulation tools, award-winning Reactor® physics system, and particle flow

•    Using the fast, unique Edit Poly approach to create everything from simple to complex models

•    How to best light your scenes and use materials for maximum compatibility with other applications such as Discreet Combustion in collaborative work environments

What's new in 3ds Max 8? Should I upgrade? How can 3ds Max 8 help me become more productive? Author and master trainer Ted Boardman answers all those questions and many more in the latest edition of his expert guide, 3ds Max 8 Fundamentals. You’ll not only learn the process of modeling and animating objects in 3ds Max 8, but also gain an appreciation for its underlying rationale. As you complete the exercises and tutorials in this book, you’ll discover features new in max 8 that make it an even more powerful program than before. Whether you are new to Max 8 or an old pro looking to increase your productivity, you’ll benefit from the detailed explanations of such topics as:

•    Sharing, controlling, and managing your work-in-progress assets using Asset Tracker, 3ds max 8’s new source control solution

•    Selecting, viewing, manipulating, and working with curves more easily with the improved Track View

•    Developing photorealistic characters with 3ds’s improved character development features, cloth and hair simulation tools, award-winning Reactor® physics system, and particle flow

•    Using the fast, unique Edit Poly approach to create everything from simple to complex models

•    How to best light your scenes and use materials for maximum compatibility with other applications such as Discreet Combustion in collaborative work environments

An excellent introduction

As a novice user of 3ds Max, I have been very frustrated by a lot of books which claim to be for beginners, but have tutorials that are difficult to impossible for the beginning user to follow. This book, however, seems to go the extra mile when it comes to guiding the reader through the tutorials, which incidentally relate to some quite interesting compositions, such as a waterfront scene of a pier with some buildings, which hold the reader’s interest because of their artistic beauty.

I am not sure whether an edition of this book for Version 9 is available yet, but from what I have seen so far, the differences are minimal and so this book is still an excellent beginner’s reference even if you are using Version 9.

Not that great...

Cover all basics, but in tutorial rather than reference form. Not all tutorials work due to ttypos and poor editing. Oh, and it is all Max 8.

Dont Get The Ebook Version

I ordered the downloadable version hoping I could immediately get my copy, print off and start reading. It so happens that the pdf format doesn’t allow printing more than 30 pages, doesn’t allow cut and paste beyond 30 selections, and there’s no copy of what’s in the accompanying cd. I really felt deceived since for a few more bucks I could have gotten the whole thing, though I had to wait a few weeks. One thing’s for sure - Im never downloading any ebooks again.