Autodesk 3ds Max 2020: A Detailed Guide to Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering, 2nd Edition

I just received 3 books from PADEXI academy,Very bad quality printing, it's NOT colured book,They seems trying to SAVE ink during printing!! .I will never Ever buy again from PADEXI academy.

Review Quick Summary: With a few minor exceptions, an excellent book for beginners to mid-level, with enough breadth to allow progression to more advanced capabilities; excellent focus on modeling basics, as well as materials, lighting and rendering; too little focus on unwrapping processes; layout unnecessarily crowded.After an initially frustrating experience of dealing with the book's broken hyperlinks to the support files and technical help, I was eventually able to contact the author via his alternate Gmail account, which resolved the issue fully. With that problem out of the way, I was subsequently very pleasantly surprised with the excellent quality of this text. The author clearly is an object modeler at heart, and does an excellent job covering a wide gamut of methods and approaches. What truly distinguishes this author's method from others is that he actually teaches the mechanics of modeling, and his topology is good and efficient.Contrast that with the multitude of other 3ds-focused textbooks that include tutorial models that: have terrible edge-flow; show a naive understanding of form; have either too many or too few sub-divs; rely too heavily on adapting primitives (ie: take this cone primitive and modify it to make a biped). Because this author focuses on mechanics, accuracy and diversity or form, it is ideal for use in an intro 3D university course (or for self-teaching beginners) because it establishes a solid tool-box and conceptual understanding of sub-div modeling. Of similar quality is the focus on lighting and materials. Arnold is a challenging rendering engine to explain to any beginner, and yet my students were able to produce very sophisticated render by the end of term. Specifically, the tutorial that shows students how to set up a 3ds virtual photo studio scene was especially useful for allowing students to produce a perfect rendering vessel that they could drop in textured objects to see immediate results.There are weaknesses in the text, which must be noted: 1.) The sub-section that covers UVs is insufficient. The unwrapping process that 3ds max uses has always been convoluted and non-intuitive (not the author's fault, obviously), so any 3ds text that covers textures and material like this one does, should also pay special attention to explaining unwrapping; 2.) the layout of the pages is unnecessarily crowded for a digital text like this one (it may be a compromise because the book also appears in print. Maybe just bite the bullet and make it e-book only),There were challenges to using this text as an intro to 3D course, given that it does not cover animation, VFX, rigging, matchmoving, CAD, IBL, or workflow for DCC-to-game engine pipeline and character design, but the author can't be faulted for this, given that the text clearly states that its focus is modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering. However, I mention this as a nudge to the author that he might consider producing a more comprehensive text, or collaborating with other authors who could contribute complementary areas of expertise.As it stands, I am fine making this text the required complement to my coming 2020 Fall semester classes. I can teach the methods and concepts that this text does not cover.One last note: I am really impressed that this author can self-publish out of India, through Kindle and Amazon, and do a much better job than most of the current North American-based Autodesk-endorsed authors. Before author Pradeep Mamgain's text came along, I used to have to rely on the expensive 1000+ page tomes that stubbornly resist the e-book format and make minor iterative changes with each successive 3ds Max release.As one of my students complained years ago about those 1000+ page texts: "It's like reading a dictionary with busy-work sections". Luckily, Mamgain's text is well-thought out, affordable and digital.

Can be very useful to learn from it.

This textbook is confusing as it is poorly written. I found more success in learning by 3ds forums and watching tutorials online. I don't mean to be harsh but I genuinely wish I could get my money back for this book as it was a waste of my money.