By gathering twenty of the top authors in the domain, Shamms Mortier was able to put together a good all-around collection of tutorials. Covering different aspects of design from head modeling to landscaping, the group did a good job of covering many useful topics. There was a particularly good chapter on 3D lighting, where they presented some excellent tips and tricks to create a realistic lighting environment.

The book is separated into four sections. They start by showing us tutorials concerning 2D graphics using Photoshop and Illustrator followed with an array of 3D tutorials using 3D Studio Max, Poser, Bryce, and Rhino just to name a few. The third section covers 3D lighting and script writing for games. The last section contains some fairly complex tutorials from Shamms Mortier.

The rating of intermediate to professional is due to the fact hat you have to know your software in and out. For the two tutorials that I did, they were well explained, easy to follow and not too difficult, not what I expected. Large parts of the collection of tutorials have a step-by-step stage or just a plain text. They've included plenty of black and white screenshots, hard to see sometime, to show the progress of the tutorial as you go along.

They've included a CD-ROM containing all the files needed for the tutorials and as bonus; they gave us a full version of Amapi 4.15 and a Demo of Amapi 5.0.

Bottom line is; it's a good choice for a person using a multitude of 3D applications but it doesn't go deep enough in to each for a graphic artist who is using mainly one or two 3D applications. Also, they could have added some tutorials to go with the full version of Amapi 4.15 but even with those little flaws, it's still worth it.