Customer Reviews

Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C++ API (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You can indeed learn more by pressing F1 on Maya itself. The C++ API part (the one I was interested in) is really short and the examples rather simple (you can read it all in few hours).

The book is ok, but should be called "Very Basic Introduction to MEL and C++ API" and not "An extensive guide to MEL and C++ API" at all.

I learned more from the first chapter of this book than from all of 'Maya Fundamentals' or 'Maya Character Animation'. If your a begginer planning on getting serious with Maya I'd recommend going through the 10 or so tutorials that come with Maya and THEN pick this book up (don't waste money on begginer's books). It elegantly expounds the real fundamentals of Maya - the fundamentals that you must know in order to really uderstand the program. Don't expect to be dazzled with the examples. This book will provide essential understanding of the most important principles of Maya - not tell you how to model or animate. After reading this small book you should be able to pick up any book that assumes technical knowledge and focuses on artistic methods of modeling, animation, texturing etc. to learn how to be a true Maya artist.

Finally a decent documentation for Maya MEL/API programmers. Maya's own manuals are comparably lousy and the meager information available to newbies has to be verified and expanded during years of tedious trial and error programming. Most people simply follow in the footsteps of senior programmer colleagues who had to figure everything out for themselves and thus help propagate a culture of continuously reinforced bad code writing habits that do not make effective use of the full range of available tools. Especially the chapters on MEL and Expression writing are simple, clearly structured and easy to understand. The same can be said for the chapters on the Maya API, however, while the MEL and Expression sections do indeed warrant the use of the word Complete in the book's title the API section does not. I would have hoped for more information about some of the more exotic node types such as Shaders or Tool Contexts etc... This is where the Maya manuals fall short and where the book could have jumped in. However, with the book clarifying most fundamental aspects and structures of the API that missing information can be worked out by a skilled programmer. I'm glad I purchased this book and it will serve me well as a reference manual for both MEL and the API. Note to beginners: this book is not a fullblown tutorial but seems to be halfway between a tutorial and a reference manual. However, I've barely received my copy and I'm already considering it indispensible. My thanks to Mr. Gould!

Good book. The only book I know of that explains everything in a way that's easily understood, especially if you don't have any programming experience. This book isn't the only book you'd need to get proficient at programming, but it definately is the first one you should buy to get yourself started.

Its a bit thick at points, so I recommend not sitting down to read a large chunk at once, cause it'll likely not stick with you that way. Take your time, and have your computer nearby so that you can type in his examples and see how they work. Kinda wish it came with a CD but he gives you a website to download his examples.

In short, buy this book if MEL scripting intimidates you like it did me. It'll make the whole process less daunting, and you'll be scripting before you know it.

If your just starting out with Maya, this book is essential reading. Chapter 2 (which describes how Maya actually works) is worth the price of the whole book. The only reason I think Maya is the best choice for an animation package is its scriptability and extensibility via MEL. If you paid hard earned money to buy Maya, you need MEL to get your moneys worth. This book has already paid for itself multiple times, and Im only half way through it.

The documentation that comes with the Maya SDK is a great reference for individual parts of the API, but comes up short on covering the big picture of how and why everything fits together. This book fills that hole perfectly. Even though I've successfully written several Maya plugins by banging around with the examples and the API reference, in just a few hours with this book I gained a much deeper level of understanding about how Maya's internal framework is really constructed.

If you're a professional programmer who's even thinking about working with Maya, buy and read this book before writing a single line of code. It will pay for itself in time saved.

Hi..The content on Mel is very basic and does not relly cover much except the basic syntax.The API part is better and the explanation of the underlying architecture is awesome, somethin which is very essential when tryin the API.
If you are looking only for Mel then Marks book seems slightly better. But if you want a complete Maya programming(Mel and API) book as the title suggests this is the one. But dont expect anything really advanced .This one is for the beginners and thank god finally there is a book that can get people started into the API. It does assume understanding of the c++ language but the programs are explained and literally spoonfed. David is a pioneer in the field of Maya development and he has so much wealth of information. I hope he shares more of that in his second book.
Nice book...fills a void 4 stars.

Covers very basic material- most of which could be read from the Maya API help anyway. What I was expecting was a book written in the "Game programming GEMS" style, where multiple case studies are taken up and solved using MEL (as in Stripnis's book) or MAYA API. What we get is some simple examples, better resources can be found on the web. The API section is written better than the MEL section. This opinion is from a programmers standpoint,artists impression may differ.

This is book is far more better than I expected, just like the previous guy said I can't put it down, its got stuff that explained extremely well, and damn fun to read.
If you are an artist this book is easy to understand.
If you are a C/java programmer this book is very easy to understand
if you are some sort of computer science or related student, this is damn easy and very fun to read.

I have loads of text books some I read few pages and now is in the dust, but this one is one of a kind that you can't get anywhere else.

I bought to learn the maya api--I did not use the mel section.
While this title may be one of the best maya programming books, it has
some problems, foremost of which is typos in the code sections. Note that
Code Examples are availible on the website, and there is an errata section.
Mostly--you can work around the shortcomings. Read it with the autodesk
docs--they supplement each other well--