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There was a time when 3D design was beyond the means of most digital artists, the software too costly to buy and too demanding of the kind of hardware it needed to run on, too steep a learning curve as many programs were built with interfaces too far from the norm, too much drudgery expended in making the simplest of objects and animations.
All that has changed radically in recent years, and in the past few months even the most expensive of high end 3D programs has undergone huge drops in price. The lower-priced 3D products are capable of making still images comparable in quality to that from the expensive ones, and are often more than adequate for most purposes.
If you are planning on making feature films in 3D, however, go for the best—Maya, Electric Image Universe, LightWave. But if you are going to be using 3D for elements you’ll be further processing in Photoshop, or Flash, then choose among lower end products as the artists in this book have—Strata 3D, Carrara, 3D Studio Max. Incidentally, Strata 3DBase is available for free for both Macintosh and Windows and is a great product to begin on.
None of the authors of this book would describe themselves as hardcore 3D artists. They are more in the way of designers or communicators who make use of 3D when needed. Their approach to 3D image-making could be best described as experimental. Brian Taylor of Rustboy fame is probably the most accomplished of them as a 3D artist though. His project in Photoshop and 3D: Geometry and Chaos is hard-edged, bright and sharp, more like the work of Me Company.
Tom Muller and Nathan Flood both work in a darker, grungier manner, something closer to Attik’s approach to 3D as seen in Noise 3. If that style, very northern European and not particularly Australian in outlook, is more your thing than this book is a terrific introduction in how to build 3D images with your choice of 3D program to be composited in Photoshop. Photoshop’s layers and blending modes really come to the fore.
The Book:
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