Director's Third Dimension: Fundamentals of 3D Programming in Director 8.5 [Paperback]

It provides hints on optimising and best practice, in a very easy to read and approachable way, although this is not for Director beginners - you do need intermediate knowledge of Lingo and constructing Director projects.

Most of the book concentrates on generating 3D environments and interfaces directly from Lingo, rather than imported models. It also covers lighting, particles, sound, imaging Lingo, and interaction with 3D environments.

The CD has lots of good examples, as well as tools for trying parameters such as lighting, particles, textures, etc, which can aid you in your own scripting.

There are some error in the scripting, and in the diagrams (some of the diagrams explaining vectors appear to be printed sideways!) which doesn't really help you to learn from them, but these problems are far outweighed by this book's good points.

The next move was 3D in Director MX and so far, any comprehensive, instructional resources seem non-existant. This book is centered around Director 8.5 rather than MX and one could expect a few differences here and there but, it was the only game in town.

Is it any good ? My reaction, with some qualifications below, is that it is an excellent piece of work, this guy really knows his stuff. The book provides on the CD, not just many demonstrations allied to the text but also, a very interesting range of software tools that you can capture and modify as you wish to meet your own needs, providing you have done some basic Lingo already. It is a book that I will keep by me for some time to come because he explains not just the principles but also, provides a lot of code that you can work with.

However there are two things that this is not. It is not for 'newbies' or for people who want a book that they can do a "quick dip" into to solve a problem on a current project. What it is, is the whole range of concepts concerning 3D on the web, primarily and, coding objects/models using Lingo rather than using pre-created 3D models from packages such as Studio Max. It does cover externally created 3D models and how to use them , very well but, that is not it's main focus and probably, it is only by reading it all, you may understand why.

If you want to understand what it is all about and are prepared to roll your sleeves up and experiment, you will have lots of fun, the concepts and examples here are much bigger than the 900+ pages of this book. But if all you are after is a "quick fix" or not that motivated to put the effort in, this is probably not the one for you, wait until someone does a "Learn it in X Hours/Days..." type book.

It assumes an Intermediate level of Director Knowledge,but treats the maths issues in easy stages.

A thoughtful and well written book. It may be a little too deep for the complete beginner, but it is a must for any professional lingo programmer,as it deals in depth with some of the issues the manuals only skim over.