Shake 4

by Marco Paolini

Talk about making an impact: Apple's Shake compositing and visual effects software has been used in every Academy Award-winning film for visual effects since its debut. It's no wonder that trained Shake artists are in high demand, and there's nowhere better to begin getting that training than with this fully updated (for Shake 4) and comprehensive Apple-approved guide (which includes a free 30-day trial version of this multi-thousand dollar software) Using step-by-step, hands-on instruction, Hollywood effects wizard Marco Paolini takes you through Shake's interface and features, including its color correction tools, tracking and stabilization capabilities, integrated procedural paint, powerful new floating point technology, advanced keyframing, blue and green screen techniques, rotoscoping tools, and more. As with the other titles in the Apple Pro Training series each chapter in this guide represents a complete lesson, with a project to complete, a review section, and bonus exercises to help test what you've learned. The accompanying DVD includes the lesson files needed to complete the book's projects. You can work through the book from cover to cover to get an entire course or you can go straight to the lessons that interest you most. Either way, you'll find the coverage you need to confront even the most daunting compositing and effects tasks with Shake.

468 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2005

Reviews

[Scott Hammack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good set of tutorials instructing you how to do certain specific things with Shake, but most of the time it doesn't really get into the meat and potatoes of how the program works and what exactly you're doing as you go through each tutorial. I didn't end up knowing as much as I would have liked, but it's a pretty good introduction to the program if you don't want to do anything too complicated, and it does give you a good set of example pieces of footage that you can then experiment with as you see fit if you want to teach yourself more where the book leaves off. However, it's definitely not a reference guide, and if you're trying to look up some specific detail about how something works, this book is pretty much useless for that.

[Alex Boerger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is shake still alive?