Actually that chapter is not as useful as it could be either, three plug-ins certainly doesn't cover the plug-in market. You could probably write a book just covering that! Two of the tutorials I wrote new got cut because of space constraints and I think a couple of the ones that used to be there got cut too, and this is perhaps more of the problem.

Having written a couple of other books, often the biggest challenge is figuring out what content to keep because of the publisher's page count mandates. I won't defend they way Charles River worded the promotional stuff on the back, but once you've taken care of the things you have to (basic 3D, animation, modeling spline and vertex modeler, shading, bones, morph targets, displacement, sub-surface scattering, rendering, vectorstyle, working with 3rd party programs like Hexagon, Poser, After Affects, and plug-ins) there's not much space left. Looking at the book, I'm betting CRM put a hard cap at 500 pages.

Here's where everyone here can help out the community. Write some tutorials covering the new features. It looks like 3DXtract has sort of wound down, but there are other sites that can host them if you can't. I've got bandwidth to spare, I can host. Get them added to eovia's tutorial list. I found that one of the best ways to force yourself to learn about something is to experiment with it enough that you can teach it to someone else.

The page limits on the web are much higher!

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara plug-ins

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins