AxeSwipe

There are a lot of books out there that describe how to use specific applications like photoshop, Maya and 3DS Max. But what if those aren’t the apps on your computer?

One book I found at my local library that is an excellent resource for any digital artist, whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist and whether it be 3D or 2D is Jeremy Birn’s “Digital Lighting & Rendering”.

This book describes almost all aspects of creating 3D art without being platform or application specific. It covers some basics of modeling, uvmapping, texturing, rendering layers and masks while focusing primarily on lighting, which is often an overlooked component which can make or break an image.

The author also describes the correlations between digital/3D lights and real-world lights and how to make 3D lights create the same effects in a scene that real light would, which makes this an excellent resource for traditional artists and photographers who are breaking into 3D.

More details of the book can be seen at http://www.3drender.com/light/index.html
There are also a collection of tutorials and “Lighting Challenge Scenes” available for download to help you experiment with lighting and rendering at the web site.