"Umm, advising people not to buy the book IS in essence a boycott." Shadowcat, I didn't say we should advise people not to buy, what I said was to let newbies know that it's not a very good book. That way they can make their own decision whether or not to buy it. In the dictionary I have, Boycotting is defined as refusing to do something, such as buying the book or whatever. It doesn't say anything about advising people not to do something. It's up to each individual to decide for him or herself whether or not to buy it or just ignore it. That was all I meant. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. Melanie

I hate to admit it but I got duped TWICE... got both Poser 3 and Bryce 3 by shamms. (ordered at the same time) When I thumbed through Poser 3 .. I was like "WTF, this guy isn't teaching anything, just showing how much you can distort a Poser figure .. something I can do on my own ... for free" and the Bryce 3 book wasn't any better. To equate his ability in writing/graphics creation .... think Pauly Shore doing Shakespeare and trying to be serious ... its just completely out there. bob

Just to clarify a little: Counter-advertising is more commonly known as a 'mud-slinging' campaign. Is is considered against advertising protocols (and may indeed be illegal under restriction or hampering of fair trade practices). For example, it would be bad form (and as I said, possibly illegal), for Coca-Cola to pursue an advertising campaign saying: "How can you drink Pepsi? It tastes like twice filtered horse-whiz. Drink Coke instead!". This is why they use 'taste-test' campaigns for a great deal of advertising. Then it's not THEM saying it, it's the PEOPLE...and the PEOPLE have a right to be heard. (And if you believe that, I should be in advertising). In any case, we're not on a smear campaign against this author to promote another book for our own benefit...at least not our financial benefit. We just don't want to see a bad author getting more money for doing an inferior job. Just my two pixels worth, CT

A few years ago, there was an ad campaign by Burger King that was more or less "mud slinging" McDonalds. For a long time, I refused to eat at Burger King because of their snotty remarks on the commercials. I now eat in both places (when I'm not dieting :) I don't know that mud slinging is illegal, but I sure know that it's unethical and unfair. Maybe some of the wording here in this thread has been a bit harsh against Mortier, but everyone has his or her right to an opinion, too. The fact is, his books are inferior. There's no reason why we shouldn't warn people that they could spend their money better elsewhere. I don't consider that either a boycott or mud slinging. I consider it good advice for people about to put out a good deal of money on something they will come to discover was a bad decision. You see bad book reviews in the newspaper and on TV and at Amazon.com all the time, some of them even by big-time critics, slamming various books for their poor quality. It's the same way that you see bad movie reviews that advise you not to go see a certain film because it's a piece of junk and only gets one star or whatever and it's a wast of your time. This is no different. Melanie

From Websters: Main Entry: [sham] Function: adjective Date: 1681 1 : not genuine : FALSE, FEIGNED 2 : having such poor quality as to seem false Anyone else find this extremely ironic? ;-) ScottA

charles river site?

musicat - where did you see that? I looked on the site and didn't see that piece of good news.

only thing i saw is that you cant return or order the bryce 3d book anymore because they are publishing his bryce 5 book now. Thats hardly good news.

Just have to put in my 2 12 cents here. Shamm's Mortiers Poser book is deeply flawed, I was willing to give him the benifit of the doubt since there simply was no other Poser book out at the time. I saw he had a Bryce 5 book, I never even picked it up off the shelf, why oh why does this man continue to be published? BTW I disagreee about the Cinema 4D handbook, I liked it and so did many others. Susan Kitchens is incredible and everyone should have her Bryce book, too cool. It is deeply disturbing that the man who gave the world the sharks head on a skeletan and the dog's head totem pole, no I'm not kidding, would be allowed to put his crayon to paper again, I hope at least this time he does not give advice on how to work with animals not in the program, how to used orphaned 3rd party software or, for the love of God, to make someones neck really really long, yeeesh!

In defence of the Charles River Media Graphics series, I do have one of their series (Lightwave 6.5/7.0 project handbook) that I actually have gotten alot out of and has really done a good job of introducing me to the program. However, it is by Patrick Beck, not Mr. Mortier. In the back of the book is an offer to join a graphics resource club which includes 39 online pdf tutorials anually for LW, Poser, Bryce, Carrara, Illustrator, plus one free book a year and was considering it until I read that it was affiliated with Mr. Mortier. He apparantly does a monthly newsletter and I was fearful that the tutorials also may have been done by him so I am steering clear. (already was burned by one of his awful "works".) So as Charles River Media may be making money from uninformed victims purchasing Mortiers books, it is also costing them money through "guilt by association".

Krimpr Patrick Beck's Lightwave book IS quite good- John Shredd's old Ray dream book was pretty good- I spoke with him awhile back-he was in process on writing a Carrara book-but got caught up in the "Metamess". I got Shamms "Modelling in Lightwave"-since as far as modeling goes I am a newbie- unfortunately-I am a pro compared to Smort-the book actually suggests Modeling in Amapi-THEN importing for rendering! I unfortunately did not open it until it was too late for a return. Rating? 0.5 Stars

Eric... If I knew that I could give .5 stars I would have; I unwittingly overrated him at 1 star. I am also a LW Newbie (v. 6.5) but if you would like to buy books that ARE good, Dan Ablan's "Inside Lightwave" would be my #1, followed closely by "Lightwave Applied" 6.5/7.0 By Dave Jerrard, Joe Tracy and Jennifer Hachigan. I haven't gotten through them all yet, (poor self discipline) but you can't go wrong with them. "Inside Lightwave" gets into subpatch modeling and such, as well as extensive texturing, etc. I like Patrick's book because it gives you a bit of a "tour" of the different functions, which is fun and gives you ideas, I agree with you.

Using Amapi does have it's virtues; just check out some of Brycetech's modeling. It seems to me that Amapi is the silent, gifted orphan somehow. If buying Shamm's book has any redeeming element, it is that it includes an older version of Amapi on the CD. (4.15 or something). I upgraded to V. 6 because it is kinda neat. In LW you can't select an edge of an object and radius it, for example, so I often export .obj into Amapi, radius, and then reimport into LW. I find they interface really goofy, but it certainly is surprising how well it works. Brycetech has a tutorial CD on Renderosity for $10.00 or $12.00 and I'm going to pick it up soon. If only the interface didn't bug me so much....

krimpr I have those books and largely rate them in the same order-I am also using 6.5b with LW. I love the program! I just finished a two day class in San Fran taught by Larry Shulz "Splinegod"-whose name you likely recognize from other Lightwave forums. He focused on modeling techniques and using skelegons and bones-(since thats what we asked for) very cool and informative. I recommend it "The Lightwave World Tour"if it comes anywhere near you. It may be that you could achieve the same result with LWave-by taking a diffferent approach-of course the trick is to find that approach! He showed us two different ways to model a character-with splines and from a sphere primitive. He is currently responsible for creating characters-and animating for an English animated sci-fi show called Max Steele? Not sure if I have the name right. No actually-he is done with Msteele-it is a different name for the British show. Now that I have gained some familiarity with the process of character rigging- it will make animating PoserCharacters-or anything else- easy directly within Lwave. In fact I cant decide whether I want to tonight-model or use skelegons! Actually, I did not find any documentation with the Amapi 4 I got from a British mag-and grew frustrated with the interface- I had an email discussion with Brycetech after buying some of his animal characters- pretty cool actually! Thanks for the tip on the CD. Eric

Eric it's called Max Steel over here too & it's a great show, I sit & watch it with my kids when it comes on. Rob

Hey C1rcle, Cool. Then it is the show and he is still involved. He made the Max Steel character-and among others a giant green hulkish looking guy that hangs out with Max. It was interesting to see the characters and how he made them Eric

that's one of the villains I think, he has a green glowing arm, haven't seen it for a few weeks, they changed all the programming on tv cause of the school holidays, but I'd love to know how he made those characters :) Rob