Shade 7 LE Designer book

[Thomas]

For all of you who are interested in Shade, I just finish reading the english book of Shade 7 LE Designer... It's a very good book, which helps a lot understanding the application and how it works.
IMHO, it's a best have. Now, I only hope that the same will be available one day for Shade 8.5. All the samples are available in the CD as scene files, a big help!

[JakalDesign]

Do you have a link for the book?

[jubjub64]

Here is an amazon link:
Shade 7 designer LE: Model, Animate, Render (Paperback)

[mykyl1966]

Yes a link would be good. Never heard of this book. I have Shade 7 but its sat there doing nothing as I find it a bit weird. ;)

Cheers

Mike R

[gred]

Hello,

Here is the link.

[jubjub64]

I too must recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn Shade. And the information is very compatible with the latest versions of Shade 8.5 if you plan on taking the next step.

[GChaloupka]

The reviews on the book in Amazon are not very complimentary. Does anyone else have a good experience with this book as a learning tool?

George

[Thomas]

I thnk the second review on Amazon is from someone who is looking for something that he won't never find in a book.
perhaps it have some translation mistakes. i'm french, then, I may have miss these mistakes. But the content helped me a lot to learn and understand better the software!

[GChaloupka]

Thank you.

George

[treeman68]

I had looked at this book after trying (and failing) to understand the very poorly translated manual. I've never been able to find hard copy of it to flick through though and that kinda put me off. Sadly, it's not one of those pieces of software I can just play with until it works. Some of the renders coming out of Japan seem very good though, we just need a better manual.

[Altered_Ego]

Thomas, I very much respect your opinion.

I am, however, suspicious that there are only 2 reviews of the book at Amazon, and one is bad. That doesn't seem to be a great endorsement.

I recall all the excitement and anticipation when people were waiting for Shade to hit the United States.

I was excited to get this version free with Poser 6.

It appears there isn't a lot of general coverage for Shade. There is only one Shade forum, and they have precious little in the way of tutorials or info.

I put Shade aside, out of frustration.

Then Hexagon arrived at DAZ. DAZ has yet to release an updated manual for Hexagon 2.1, or any significant tutorial coverage.

So I've reluctantly added one more program to the pile of Discarded Software.

[treeman68]

When Shade first appeared in the Western world, E-Frontier went out of their way to promote this book and even went as far as giving it away free with the standard and pro versions of the program. Once I'd downloaded the demo version of Shade LE it becaome obvious why they were doing that. The software uses very non-standard ways of doing things. If E-Frontier truly want to make this program a success, then they really need to employ some good technical writers and create a proper English manual. I work in the consumer electronic industry and this is a lesson learned by Japanese electronics manufacturers a long time ago now.

Third party tutorial books shouldn't be a replacement for the reference manual. Once users understand the interface, internet support and tutorial websites will follow, as will good third party tutorial books.

[Altered_Ego]

I have to say the majority of software manuals are pretty useless. This has been the case for the 20+ years I've been computing. That's why there are so many third party books.

Unfortunately too many of the third party books are found to be lacking.

I have to learn a certain way. I need to see plenty of screenshots to illustrate the steps of the tutorial. Too many tutes fail to describe or illustrate every step of the way. They seem to be written for people who already know the programs.

I can't follow video tutorials.

I've been a bit distressed to see the abundance of video tutes for Hexagon. They're useless to me.

[Thomas]

Altered Ego: it's not because -you- don't like manuals or 3rd party ones that everything is always like that ;)
I think this book is a very good introduction to Shade and it's my opinion. But it's only an introduction.

And I agree on the manual part, from most software. The documentation is not always perfect, but it's very hard to make a good manual for 3D software.. too many way to have the same result. And each user have it's own "philosophy" to model it's stuff.

[simpo]

Originally Posted by gred

Hello,

Here is the link.

wow... looks good to me...

[Likos]

I have the book. 2 to be exact. I lost one along the way and ordered another one. Before you buy go to ShadersCafe.com to the forum and read the sticky about the book. You can save some more. I ended up paying about 25 -28 USD for it.

It's a good book though some parts should be re-written to make a bit more sense. All in all its several orders of magnitude better than the supplied manuals. In a very short time I was up an running. I agree that Shade needs a good manual. And the excuse that many of the other CG programs don't have good manuals is foolish on eF's part. Shade does not have the third party support from publishing manufactures to take such a caviler stance with the supplied manual. I am stunned that they don't offer anything better. They have an above average program with an interface that can be learned in a very short time but the reference materials don't help you with many of the advanced features. I believe that this alone is keeping the software from a larger mainstream adoption. And its unfortunate.

(Yes it's Monday and I'm a bit crabby )

[mayito7777]

Well I went to e-frontier to try to buy Shade 8 and guess what is out of stock and the book, the one you are talking on this thread is also out of stock, and don't try to contact customer service in USA you get redirected to a DELL page because the link ain't working. That leaves a bad taste on your mouth