Digital Texturing and Painting
If you are involved in the world of 3D in any way—or even if you're simply a student of art and design theory—please take a look at this book. It's an amazing piece of work, exploring the theory and practice of applying texturing maps and paint effects to models and scenes. Yet somehow that doesn't do the book justice, possibly because author Owen Demers grounds his discussion in such solid fundamental ground that the book comes off as equal parts museum catalog, art school text, and industry profile. Face it, most 3D students and professionals have limited skill sets in art theory; yet these people are expected to turn out ever-higher quality work to keep up with audience expectations. We're beyond the days of dancing gasoline pumps... the release of Final Fantasy signals a new benchmark for mass-audience expectations of realistic quality in 3D. Want to know how to do this stuff right? Check out [digital] Texturing & Painting. Each edition of the New Riders [digital] series addresses a distinct discipline: Character Animation; Lighting & Rendering; and now Texturing & Painting (editions on modeling, compositing, and more are in development). What makes Owen Demers such an expert? He's the guy behind the incredible surface texturing in Bingo, the proof-of-concept digital short made with Alias|Wavefront's Maya when it first released. I still remember people walking out of the theatre at SIGGRAPH shaking their heads in disbelief after seeing the hair, the pores on the skin of the characters... "How did they DO that?" Owen teaches you what you need to know before you fire up your software.