I thought I would start a thread that would help newbies to 3D as well as more seasoned folks. Every little bit helps when learning this wonderful outlet for our creativity and even the most experienced might learn a trick or two from someone else.
What I would like to do is have this thread review books on 3D graphics that you have read and liked or not. But tell us why! Tell us what it’s about, what it concentrates on, what you found useful and informative …or not…even what you felt it was lacking. Considering the price of these books these days, it would be a great help maybe to know that what is promised and what actually is…isn’t. Etc etc.
I’d like to start it off with a book called:
Building a Digital Human by our one and only Ken Brilliant
published by…Charles River Media, Inc. with a list price of $49.95 us
Yeah I am gonna claim him for Zbrush. He actually even gives zbrush a nice plug in the book.
This book does what it advertises!! It teaches you how to build a digital human from the ground up. Ken first has you build a human from boxes to get the rough form. As most modellers will tell you this is kind of essential building step.
He then takes you from there in sections on how to, what to look out for, and why…to model the head, torso, arms, legs. And yes…even how to model hands and feet. He then takes you thru some tips on texturing.
This book is written for generic modelling…what I mean is you can apply 99% of these techniques in any modeller from maya to wings3d. As no book can be…it doesn’t delve deeply into anyone area but quickly takes you thru all pointing out things to look for and keep an eye on.
If you want to learn or get a better handle on how to layout edgeloops…this book is for you! If you want to learn how to model a human and keep your polys down check it out.
Once you get thru the book…you’ll have a model you can use over and over and could be taken into any animator and animated with very little troubles.
Overall I would give this book 
. It’s one book in my opinion of course that should be in every beginner’s library!
Oh yeah if ya got this far…try to leave a link to the book so people can see it…Which of course I forgot to get and will have to do a little bit later.