A tutorial written by Marco Paolini, the Shake 4 Training book is a must-have for every Shake user. It covers all the nodes and interface elements available in Shake. Paolini goes about creating a simple compositing tree and then gradually makes things more complicated. Literally everything is covered: from masking over key framing to simulating film grain within masks.

Paolini’s Shake book makes it clear: he is an expert in this field. On occasion, the book is humorous. Although Paolini does cover the capabilities of Shake as a compositing program to create special effects, he especially concentrates on productivity features like rotoshaping, colour correction, wire and rig removal, etc.

Furthermore, Shake 4 features like QuickPaint, camera tracking and film compositing with proxies, are all extensively covered in the book. Even multi plane compositing is discussed as well as creating a macro in Shake’s proprietary scripting language.

In short, Paolini’s approach is based on what the motion picture industry requires. That seems like a good approach for a program like Shake 4.