Covers all 3ds max 5s new features, including streamlined interface and expanded scripting options.

Popular format functions as a tool for learning 3D modeling, animation, and rendering, and as a handy reference.

The most affordable guide to 3ds max 5 on the market. With 3ds max 5, illustrators, animators, game designers, and special effects designers can create and animate dazzling, highly realistic 3-D graphics such as those seen in summer blockbusters like "Minority Report" and "Spider-Man" and in scientific and medical publications such as the New England Journal of Medicine. Thats one reason so many art schools offer 3ds max training to aspiring professionals. The complex interface and powerful technology underlying 3-D animation and modeling software can be intimidating to newcomers, but the 3ds max 5 for Windows- Visual QuickStart Guide breaks the process down into manageable tasks to remove the fear factor. The amply illustrated, task-based format also makes the book an invaluable reference for experienced users upgrading to the new version. This is an efficient but authoritative guide. After a thorough introduction to the programs interface, navigation, and display tools, the book gets to the heart of modeling and transforming objects, surface mapping, 3-D rendering and animations. All of the programs new features, including enhanced character animation, the Active Shade interactive renderer, improved UV mapping tools, advanced lighting and shadows, are covered and presented in the straightforward, well-paced style that characterizes the Visual QuickStart Guide series. This book is essential for anybody wanting to gain or enhance professional skills in 3ds max 5.