Suggestions for C3D Book

Yeah, I learn first by trying to do something, stumbling, then going to the forum for any tips. If I don't find an answer for the moment, I go back and by process of elimination, dissect the problem one step at a time, trying to figure out if it's a bug in the program, or if there's a new setting or skill I need to figure out. Very time consuming, but most of the time I find some kind of solution or work around as most here probably do as well.

Pod Person, that book looks overhwhelmingly giant in its content. Do you imagine there's a chance it'll be ready in 2012 or 2013? It's great to see you're setting time aside to work on a user guide book.

Although I have a handle on Cheetah 3D for what I use it for, it would be nice to have a giant reference book offline to polish up or improve my skills, and find functions that I may have overlooked.
 
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DarthSidious05 said:
Yeah, I learn first by trying to do something, stumbling, then going to the forum for any tips. If I don't find an answer for the moment, I go back and by process of elimination, dissect the problem one step at a time, trying to figure out if it's a bug in the program, or if there's a new setting or skill I need to figure out. Very time consuming, but most of the time I find some kind of solution or work around as most here probably do as well.

Pod Person, that book looks overhwhelmingly giant in its content. Do you imagine there's a chance it'll be ready in 2012 or 2013? It's great to see you're setting time aside to work on a user guide book.

Although I have a handle on Cheetah 3D for what I use it for, it would be nice to have a giant reference book offline to polish up or improve my skills, and find functions that I may have overlooked.
Click to expand...

It's not going to be a giant reference book — and yes I plan to release it simultaneously with v6, which Martin says will come out this year (I'm guessing it will be a bit late — software is always late).
 
Will this be a physical book, or as a PDF/ ebook format? Sounds promising either way.

I'd like to see some real basics on good topology. Plus for animation, maybe some more general points on the basics of timing, which wouldn't be limited to purely working in C3D.
 
My plan is to offer it as an iBook, and via kindle and lulu (print on demand). It will be released shortly after Martin releases v6 (unless he surprises me and releases it ahead of schedule ;)).

The iBook version will incorporate a lot of video. I will try to make the video available via my website as well.

I can definitely have it ready for initial release by the last week of March.

Note: the core text — explaining the basics of 3d and cheetah 3d is complete. But some of the more advanced or abstruse topics aren't written. Furthermore I expect there are many errors and omissions. My plan is to release what I've got and then fix issues as they arise. As such, I will not offer a printed option until I am pretty confident the content is in excellent shape. I don't want anyone paying for an expensive book and then announce ten pages of errata a month later.
 
podperson said:
My plan is to offer it as an iBook, and via kindle and lulu (print on demand). It will be released shortly after Martin releases v6 (unless he surprises me and releases it ahead of schedule ;)).

The iBook version will incorporate a lot of video. I will try to make the video available via my website as well.

I can definitely have it ready for initial release by the last week of March.

As such, I will not offer a printed option until I am pretty confident the content is in excellent shape. I don't want anyone paying for an expensive book and then announce ten pages of errata a month later.
Click to expand...

Pod Person,

Late March sounds good.

You mention ibook, kindle and lulu. If someone doesn't have access to or want those tools to read, will you also hopefully offer it in pdf format or something accessible for everyone as suggested above?
I would like to have it in Acrobat format or something simple, so I could easily access it on the same computer while working in Cheetah 3D at the same time. Thanks.
 
Kindle software is available for free for any platform you can think of (including your Mac). For reading books it's actually better than PDF (e.g. Nice bookmark support, sync across devices, etc.)
 
It's done, waiting for cheetah 3d 6 to be released ;)

I know it's imperfect, so I hope to improve it based on reader feedback.
 
Any news on the iBooks version? I have a sample of the Kindle version, and its a pain to view,very expensive and seems to have layout issues.

A few times in the sample, it says to load things (such as the texture for the cup) but can't see anywhere how you would get those images. Is this only mentioned in the full version?

Seems great so far. I guess the names have been changed for things mentioned in the book, such as "Transform Tool" being "Move, Scale and Rotate Objects".

When adding the Sky Light it says to pick it from the Render Menu, which doesn't seem to be there. I am guessing it means from the Add Scene Object menu.

When we buy the eBook from any of the retailers, will we have to re-buy it when you make changes?
 
The lulu version works in iBooks. (Supposedly the iBookstore version is approved of at lulu's end but there's a voodoo period before it actually appears.)
 
Creating/Applying a material to the mug --where's the image...

It's step 2 of this section. The instructions say "... Click load and select mug-diffuse.png" Where is this file? I saved the tutorial file in an external hd, and that's where the file dialog box defaults to and that folder has nothing other than the current cheetah3D file I'm working on. Wearing my "noobie" hat, I just wonder where is this file? Did I miss a part of the download? Is a part of this chapter missing? If I do have to create a file, what size does it need to be? Do I have to be concerned with transparency?

All told, I wasted a good 20 minutes going back and carefully re-reading the chapter and going to your (Tonio Leowald) website to see if there's a download that I missed. And it seems that I didn't miss anything. Now I'm jolted out of a good tutorial, and my confidence in the tutorial has been shaken.

Now, with my noob hat removed, I know that stuff happens and I'm sure that this will be tended to, I'm just being a bit overly dramatic for illustrative purposes. However, I do feel like there is a step missing here, in any case.

So far, I am enjoying the book. Things are simply stated without being simplistic or insulting anybody's knowledge. No buyer's remorse from me, I am glad I got my copy. Does wash the total waste that was the video tuts for v.5 (that never, ever got around to covering particles. sheesh).

Is this a good place for comments about the book, or is there a thread buried somewhere that I missed?

Additional info: On the Lighting and Rendering the Mug section, second step -- my Render menu doesn't have a Sky Light menu item. Where is it? Cheetah3D's "help" has an entry on Sky Light where it says a lot about what it does and how to use it and the Radiosity tag; but not a single friggin' word on if the Sky light is something that the app creates or if the user has to create it by hand.

To me, this is one of the worst aspects of Cheetah3d, it's a great program and does lots but the learning curve is a straight vertical line at times. The online help is spotty and pretty much useless unless you know what you're looking for and you don't know what you're looking for because you don't know enough about the program...and so on. And I still hope that this book is a way to get up to speed, but for the past hour all I've done is look for stuff and not gotten anything out of it.

I'm just gonna move on, maybe things will be revealed in the next section. I hope. :/
 
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I've just pushed a second edition of the book out through Lulu. This version should have all the illustrations and many typos, grammatical errors, and flat out mistakes have been identified and fixed (thank you — you know who you are, and if you're not credited in the acknowledgements I apologize and let me know).

This means that you should be able to get a copy of second edition immediately through Lulu, but you'll have to wait some undetermined period for an update through iBooks or Barnes & Noble.

If you've got the Amazon version, contact me and I can send you a PDF of the new edition as a stop gap. I don't know how I'm going to deal with Amazon customers.

I've never revised a book this way before so let me know if there are problems. Also, I switched toolchains completely for the second edition (there was no good way of dealing with the problems Pages created) so I hope all is well in the new edition, but if not... let me know.
 
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