First let me say that I had previously written a more positive review of this book; however, I may have been a little over zealous. I asked Amazon.com to remove my review as I no longer felt the way I did about the book. Many months later I see my review still on the board, so I have taken the time to write a more accurate review of this book.
Now to the review:
The book has a good section on the Fit Deformation command of the lofting component. The model that you make (a womans high heeled shoe) is a good practical model for learning the Fit Deformation command and the other features that go along with the lofting component. A pretty good section on animating a hopping kangaroo, however...
In the tutorial that shows you how to model and animate a kangaroo, the author clearly states that the boolean function may not work when modeling the kangaroo. Shes right! I never got it to work. Boolean functions are indeed tricky, but to put a tutorial that is clearly going to have a difficult time performing a boolean function shows extreme short sightedness. As a seasoned 3DSR4 user, I had the patience to try this boolean over a dozen times before I gave up. I cannot imagine new users truly understanding the usefulness of the boolean function if it doesnt work in a tutorial.
Half the book is made up of one tutorial in which half of that tutorial is composed of programming. Most 3D artists are artists, not programers. I dont mind learning some scripting but the tutorial they provide (which is pretty neat, by the way) is way too long and complicated.
In sum, they should get rid of the kangaroo tutorial and the space buggy tutorial.
I would hardly call these people masters
I learned a little, but the books out of date.
Best starter book on the market