How to Cheat in Maya 2012: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation [Paperback]

Eric Luhta (Author), Kenny Roy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0240816986 | ISBN-13: 978-0240816982 | Edition: 1

The Maya guide for animators, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 presents everything you need to know about character animation in Maya. Fully updated for the latest revision of Maya, this book provides you with complete, step-by-step walkthroughs of essential animation techniques to increase your efficiency and speed. This is an animator's workflow in book form, written by professional animators-not a software book with a few animation pointers thrown in.

In addition to all the gold-mine coverage and interviews with expert animators from the previous edition, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 also features a new in-depth chapter on the principles of animation, updated information on camera settings and animation using Maya's new Camera Sequencer tool, the ins and outs of the brand new Editable Motion Trails tool, new techniques for working with characters in multi-shot animation tests and short films, a new cycles chapter covering actions like flying and walks, time-saving scripts, and advanced tricks with the new Graph Editor. The proven "How to Cheat" series gets you up to speed quickly, and in a way that's fun.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Maya guide for animators, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 presents everything you need to know about character animation in Maya. Fully updated for the latest revision of Maya, this book provides you with complete, step-by-step walkthroughs of essential animation techniques to increase your efficiency and speed. This is an animator's workflow in book form, written by professional animators-not a software book with a few animation pointers thrown in.

In addition to all the gold-mine coverage and interviews with expert animators from the previous edition, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 also features a new in-depth chapter on the principles of animation, updated information on camera settings and animation using Maya's new Camera Sequencer tool, the ins and outs of the brand new Editable Motion Trails tool, new techniques for working with characters in multi-shot animation tests and short films, a new cycles chapter covering actions like flying and walks, time-saving scripts, and advanced tricks with the new Graph Editor. The proven "How to Cheat" series gets you up to speed quickly, and in a way that's fun.

How to Cheat in Maya 2012 gives you access to a powerful website (http://www.howtocheatinmaya.com) that includes:

• All exercise/example scene files
• Video tutorials to help you apply cutting-edge, professional techniques to your own animations
• Animation files with new cheats
• All materials from the previous edition of the book

About the Author

Eric Luhta is a professional animator whose recent credits include "Bioshock 2", "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs", "Horton Hears A Who!", and numerous television commercials. Eric has extensive experience with Autodesk's Maya, including teaching it, as an instructor for the Maya Training Program at AnimationMentor.com. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife and 3 computers.
Kenny Roy entered the animation industry in 1998 and has animated on feature films, television, commercials and rides, and started his very own animation studio in Los Angeles, CA. Now in its 6th year of operation, Arconyx Animation Studios has worked with clients Nickelodeon to Cartoon Network, Fox to Mattel. Kenny has mentored full time at AnimationMentor.com for 6 years, and also offers in-depth animation video training on his personal website, www.kennyroy.com. He lives in LA with his wife and son.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (July 20, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240816986
• ISBN-13: 978-0240816982
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.8 x 9.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #511,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A good choice for learning more about animation techniques September 13, 2011

By Timothy Lovett VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

First, I need to make a confession: I own the how to cheat in maya 2010 book. I bought it a year or so ago and used it to learn about the different animation techniques the author used to speed up their production life-cycle.

That said, I was impressed that the newer edition actually had significant changes compared to the last edition and all of the material was up to date. One of the notorious things you'll find with these maya books is that authors often just repackage their old works from an older version of maya and publish it as is with a new section not updating it to reflect deprecated features and changed UI. It was fairly clear going through that it was updated fully, however. For example, aside from the new cleaner looking page layout all of the images were redone with the latest version of Maya so it was evident the author went through and completely went through each step by step (I only briefly looked over some of the older tricks but they looked like they were updated text wise to reflect it as well).

Anyhow, I'll let the other reviewers specifically speak to the content but wanted to point out that the book is a fully color wonderful learning tool for maya animators who really want to improve their work and their flow.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Learn Animation techniques with Maya October 17, 2011

By Dr. Bojan Tunguz HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Maya is 3D computer graphics software, used widely for a variety of special effects, ranging from video games to full-blown feature films. It is developed and marketed by Autodesk, and it has become one of the standard tools in the professional animation and graphics circles. Maya 2012 is, as of this writing, the latest iteration of this software package.

Maya is tremendously powerful software, and its user-interface dwarfs most other similar ones for the lower-level graphical applications. If you are new to Maya, your first encounter with it can be extremely intimidating. It takes a while to get the feel for your way around, but fortunately there are many good books and online resources that will help you with this.

"Cheating in Maya 2012" is a book of tips and tricks that can help you become a better animator with Maya 2012. It is not a book that will teach you how to use Maya, so you should find another resource for this basic information. However, if you have already mastered the use of Maya, then this book is an excellent resource for learning the fundamentals of 3D animation.

The book comes with an accompanying website, where you can find and download many of the files and examples that are used throughout. Some of the files used in the examples are actually named differently than the ones in the book. For the most part it is easy to figure out which file the authors had in mind, but being a bit more careful about this point would have helped.

The chapters and examples are arranged sequentially in terms of their complexity. Some of the material in the more advanced chapters depends on what was covered earlier, but for the most part you can jump around the book and learn those tricks that are particularly interesting to you. Each example covers one particular animation concept or trick. These are gone through in some detail, but I found that certain key steps were brushed over. This is certainly not a book for someone who is still new to Maya. It is written from a very animation-centric viewpoint, and most of the tricks and animation concepts that are introduced here can be applied in all sorts of animation environments.

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who has ever wanted to create complex 3D computer animation from scratch. To get the most out of it you should already be fairly familiar with Maya, but otherwise no prior animation knowledge is assumed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars For People New To "Animating in Maya", Not New To Maya. January 27, 2012

By $ko7 VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Maybe my expectations for this book were a bit lofty after reading some of the other reviews... for some odd reason I expected this book to cover some of the very basics for rigging, which it doesn't. As others have said, this book "is" for beginning animators, maybe not for people touching Maya for the first time... and there is a difference.

The assumption the authors have pretty much made is that you will be working with a model that was already rigged. Now I realize that most people are not trying to animate a character they have modeled as most people using Maya specialize and ether model, texture, animate, rig, light, etc. depending on their pipeline... still, it might have been nice to touch on that a little, like they do with other aspects of animating.

I will say that the I've found allot of information here and there in the first seven or so chapters that is very helpful with an intro class in basic animation I'm taking. The sections on Spline, Tangent Handles and the Graph Editor have been very helpful. I'm just starting out learning the animation tool set of Maya even though I've taken classes in Modeling and Texture... long and short, I didn't find the book to be a total lose... my hope is that i'll continue to it when I'm having trouble with the class I'm taking... but I'm still going to have to find a book focusing on rigging.