Each week, I share some of the books and other resources I have found inspiring in my investigation into 3D design for 3D printing. The full list lives here on the pinboard “3D Design to 3D Print Inspirations” and each #3DThursday I share about those that I most highly recommend.
The book I’d like to highlight this week is Vaughan’s Digital Modeling
William “Proton” Vaughan has been in the CG biz for over 20 years, and over that time has worked in many modes from children’s books to toys to games, to ads, to film — a hugely well-respected, energetic designer with scores of acclaim and tofu-zombie hoards of devoted former students. I wanted to highlight this book as one of the best that I have found from the piles and piles of professional development books for future CG artist for film and games that delivers on its promise to offer an exploration the process and thinking behind the counter-intuitive alchemy that is vendor/tool agnostic, rather than a primer for one particular package.
And while the book’s emphasis is on preparing students looking to develop professional skills for jobs in the mainstream animation/digital pipeline, his teaching objectives are much broader and grander than that: equipping anyone looking to get involved in 3D design with the skills to help them learn and execute better than before. He shares about his experiences preparing digital models for 3D printing in Chapter Fourteen from his experiences in the toy industry. And his chapters on digital modeling methods (Chapter Five, Chapter Seven, and Eight) are tremendously informative to the uninitiated.
From the publisher’s description of the book:
Professional modeling is the foundation of every aspect of the 3D production pipeline and is essential to the success of any 3D computer graphics project. [digital] Modeling is unlike any other modeling book you’ve seen—it gets to the core of what it takes to create efficient production-ready models and demystifies the process of producing realistic and jaw-dropping graphics. Taking a software-neutral approach, it teaches you the essential skills and concepts that you can apply to modeling in any industry 3D software, such as 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, Maya, Modo, Silo, XSI, ZBrush and other leading programs. Modelers, animators, texture artists, and technical directors can all benefit from the valuable information covered in this jam-packed guide containing years of industry knowledge. Simply put, if you work in 3D, you must have this book.
In this inspiring and informative guide to modeling, industry veteran William Vaughan teaches you how to:
- Master modeling techniques to produce professional results in any 3D application
- Use the tools of a professional digital modeler
- Control your models polygon-count as well as polygon-flow
- Create both organic and hard surface models
- Understand a modeler’s role in a production environment
- Gain the knowledge to land a job in the industry as a digital modeler
- Model using specific tools such as LightWave and 3ds Max in over 6 hours of video training on the accompanying DVD
- And much more!
