Customer Reviews

The Maya 6 Handbook (Charles River Media Graphics)

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

 

 

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars because I thought the first 3/5 of the book dedicated to modeling and texturing were, for the most part, succinctly written and very informative. However, once the lighting chapter began, I spent much of my study time thinking that beating my head against a brick wall would train me in Maya faster.

The entire book is one long project which I was looking for and I found myself having to rebuild models in order to light them properly, i.e., redesigning my lamp so that the point light inside shown through the bottom of the shade. The worst of the lighting problems were the lights in the fixtures above the room's 'paintings' (photos of the authors family which was a cute idea); where I'd previously speed through a dozen pages in an evening, here I'd have to spend two nights tweaking the settings of the lights, the bulbs, and the painting textures utterly differently than instructed in order to achieve that nice glow the author had. True, I believe there's a finished project in the CD, but I wanted to do it right myself and finally I gave up on lighting the wall hangings.

Then the bird... don't get me started. The final part of the project was to rig, skin and animate a hummingbird. The instructions were clear enough, but after again giving myself two nights for each section, I had to give up and move on to the next section where we were given new, completed models from each previous section to work with.

Anyhoo, I'm feeling good I completed my first Maya book (I'd been spending my time reading the online manual and getting free tutes from Alias). Again, the modeling chapters gave me very few problems, although the lofting section was often painful; for some odd reason even though I believe I followed the book word-for-word, it wook way too long a time to solve a mysterious problem whereby the end of the loft would shoot off disastrously into space like the Apollo 13.

I got this book from county library.

Maya Free tutorial is better than this book.

This book only makes sense for the ABSOLUTE BEGINNER. Its fairly well organized and displays limited technical merit explaining interface and concepts. However, it dwells far too long on step by step directions for operations anyone who isnt lobotomized could figure out with minimal instruction. The illustrations and cd-rom are a joke. Family reunion textures? Most of the pages are filled with unnecessarily oversized images. The cover image is completely unrelated to the content. I would be ASHAMED to waste paper and ink publishing this book at its retail price. If I had paid anywhere near retail I'd be demanding a refund. Its not worth the cost of shipping unless you are an ABSOLUTE BEGINNER. It serves its purpose as a simple introduction/review of concepts nothing more. I skimmed through it in an hour and tossed it aside as a library donation.