lighting

This book deserves a much higher ranking. It should be at the top of the list with Jeremy Birn's "Digital Lighting & Rendering". In fact, I now recommend this book over the former for my 3d students as it has more technical information. Good lighting techniques are paramount to good CG work - you can never know enough. This is a great book - don't think twice - buy it.

I have been searching for a book on real-world lighting solutions/techniques that can be applied to the CG world for quite some time. Other books have 'grazed' the subject but have never fully explored it. I fear that this book is no different.
Like many other books of the genre, it begins with the all too common basic introduction to the behaviour of light, including its characteristics and how the human eye percieves it. This is by no means a bad thing but I must stress that only a beginner will find value in this, as any seasoned 3D artist already knows this, and then some.
This book illustrates your basic 3 point lighting setup, a few mid-range techniques and only generalises and hints at the more advanced techniques such as setting up realistic dome lighting rigs, soft shadow/light rigs and simulating bounced light. Coupled with software specific tutorials on non-realistic glows and lastly, 60 pages on composition and camera techniques that has no business, given the subject, being in this kind of book.
Lastly, the front cover of the book is misleading in that similar pictures in the book do exist, but no explanation is given as to how they were created. Much more advanced information on lighting can be found on the internet for free.

This is an outstanding book, possibly the best on a specialised 3D discipline yet written. ...It is far more useful than the previous classic in this field... If you like me expected lighting in 3D to be a minor event and are annoyed by the effort and skill required to obtain realistic lighting in your scenes, this is the book for you. It will equip you to speed through the process and get on to more interesting phases. It covers everything from basic 3 point lighting to lighting arrays for large subjects, dome arrays for realistic skylight and radiosity simulation, internal lighting for large and small spaces and a host of specialised problems like fire, moonlight, underwater scenes and the usual fog and light beams all with clear and succinct theoretical explanations backed up with step by step tutorials to help you make the knowledge your own. And, thankfully the book is illustrated with decent quality examples rather than the simplistic and crude models that stare from the pages of so many 3D books. After you have mastered the basic operation of your 3d program this should be the first book you buy on the art of 3D work. Well done Mr.Demers - what about a similar treatment for "Essential CG Materials" ?