Terrific fundamental text

Many CG books contain nothing more than a series of tutorials that may teach a student how to achieve a particular effect with a particular software package, but do little to teach fundamental skills that can be used in any piece of software, or with physical media. Others are inaccessible due to needless technical detail. Still more are so general as to be worthless for the serious student. Demers manages to avoid all of these traps. Digital Texturing and Painting provides a solid foundation for the artist, starting with training of the eye to really see texture, carrying that forward with advice about preproduction, and finishing it off with 9 chapters of texturing exercises drawn from a real production.

The exercises are not step-by-step tutorials, but a description of the creative process that goes into creating texture. The student is expected to already be familiar with the 3d software of their choice, and while the exercises are based on Maya, the principles can easily be applied to 3ds Max, Lightwave, or even Blender. This is not a book about how to use Maya; it is a book about how to be a texture artist, regardless of the tool you use. As such, I anticipate that it will remain relevant long after most of the CG books on my shelf are obsolete.

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