Product Description

Form Z is a general purpose, three-dimensional modelling system that puts form-manipulating capabilities into the hands of the personal computer user. This text takes the reader through the full range of system capabilities from 2D through to 3D and into light effects, modelling and rendering.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1317682 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From the Back Cover
Get up to speed on form.Z the 3D modeling program of choice for architects and designers with this first-of-its-kind, task simplifying guide. Drawing on her several years of experience teaching form.Z workshops, author Lachmi Khemlani lets you bypass classroom instruction and lengthy software manuals, taking you step-by-step through the building blocks of form.Z.


With an easy-to-follow workshop format that's tailor-made for both engineers and intermediate users, this all-in-one resource shows you how to: create a variety of 2D and 3D objects, ranging from the primitive to the extremely sophisticated; transform objects by various means to achieve desired configurations, ranging from elementary moves to powerful operations such as booleans, insertions, attachments, and extensions; derive 3D objects from 2D shapes in a number of ways: simple extrusions, revolution, sweeping, skinning, projection, terrain modeling, and more; conceptualize dimension and scale, and work at multiple topological levels; personalize the form.Z work environment by creating customized colors, layers, reference planes, views, and symbol libraries; achieve realistic lighting and rendering effects with multiple light types, radiosity-based rendering, texture mapping, and decals; model organic forms with a wide range of mesh-related tools, including metaforms and image-based displacements; generate QuickTime VR movies of the form.Z modeling world.


3D Modeling using form.Z includes a detailed appendix that introduces users to the drafting module, which helps in converting 3D models to 2D prints. There are also 400 how-to graphics, 32 pages of full-color illustrations, and a companion CD-ROM packed with full form.Z files for study and practice, plus a working demo of form.Z. It all adds up to the clearest, most complete look at form.Z you can get.

About the Author
Khemlani is a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a PhD from Berkeley, a Masters from Cambridge (UK) and a BA from the Indian Institute of Technology, all in architecture. She has written a number of papers on computer-aided design.

Customer Reviews

Quite an amazing book for quite an amazing software!
This book was outstanding! It was structured in a clever way, taking the reader step by step into ALL the 3D aspects and functions of Form-Z. It is quite intimate and extremely friendly. It is like having your own private tutor, and I enjoyed every minute of the 6 days that it took me to learn Form-Z from skratch. All I can really say is - thank you, Mrs. Khemlani for the time and effort you put into this book. It was worth it! It's a must! you all should try it and see for yourselves!

Brilliant piece of work!
As a total newcomer to form.Z, I found this to be a great book. Very detailed and descriptive and nicely illustrated, it led me step-by-step through the program. The sequence in which each tool was introduced was well thought out and really helped to master it. Going through the modeling assignments given at the end of every chapter has jump-started my modeling capabilities. I have, in a very short span of time, gained in a lot of confidence in doing 3D design with form.Z, thanks to this book.

Software features are bound to change from time to time, but the real challenge for an author is to present the material so the program can be well understood. Once you know the basics, new versions of any tool are easy to learn. This book does a terrific job! Its obvious that the author has a lot of experience teaching the program. I strongly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn form.Z.

A good starting point to the program, covers basics well.
This book could be compared to an overview of the comprehensive form•z manuals . However, there are several mistakes within the tutorials (confusing measurements ie; figure for x axis places where the z axis should be), and the demo on my cd seems to have expired last year, which could have serious implications if you're don't have a demo on an external cd somewhere .

All in all though, this is the book to buy if you're new to form•z, and need to know the basics, quickly . Compared to David Rinders book, i would strongly advice you purchase Lachmi Khemlani's book.