Learning Maya 5: Foundation [Paperback]

Alias Wavefront (Author), Alias|Wavefront (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1894893344 | ISBN-13: 978-1894893343 | Publication Date: June 2, 2003 | Edition: 1

Maya is the first choice of digital content creators producing award-winning games, 3D animation and visual effects. Built on a procedural architecture called the Dependency Graph, Maya offers incredible power and flexibility for generating digital images of animated characters and scenes.

Learning Maya 5: Foundation takes you through over twenty project-focused lessons that offer hands-on experience with key tools and techniques.

This book introduces you to the following topics:
* The Maya User Interface
* Working in 3D space
* NURBS (spline) Modeling
* Polygonal Modeling
* Keyframes and Motion Paths
* Trax(TM) Non-linear animation
* Forward and Inverse Kinematics
* Surface Deformations
* Cameras and Lights
* Shaders and Techniques
* Particles and Dynamics
* MEL (Maya Embedded Language)
What you need to use this book:
* Maya Complete(TM), Maya Unlimited(TM), or Maya Personal Learning Edition(TM) version 5 software
* A DVD-ROM or set-top player

Project One: Bouncing Ball
Quickly get your feet wet by animating a basic bouncing ball. Add a squash and stretch, create a ring of fire using a particle clip effect, then add sparks as the ball hits the flames.

Project Two: Jack-in-the-box
Learn the basics of modeling, animating, and rendering a scene. Use Maya Artisan(TM) tools to sculpt Jack's face and to paint a color texture in 3D. Refine the scene's rendering using IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering).

Project Three: Space Battle
Starting with a more in-depth look at polygonal and NURBS modeling, this project sets up a motion path animation, complete with Opti-FX explosions. Use Maya Paint Effects(TM) to create a realistic starfield.

Project Four: Primitive Man
Using Maya's Trax non-linear animation, you cycle for a bi-ped Inverse Kinematic skeleton. This lesson will also explore basic character skinning and deformation.

Project Five: Salty the Seal
This project brings together the skills developed in earlier lessons into a more complex scene where you learn how Maya lets you fully integrate modeling, rendering, and animation tasks.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...offers you hands-on experience with key tools and techniques found in MAYA." -- Ian Cairns, Editor, MAYA Association

From the Back Cover

Maya is the first choice of digital content creators producing award-winning games, 3D animation and visual effects. Built on a procedural architecture called the Dependency Graph, Maya offers incredible power and flexibility for generating digital images of animated characters and scenes.

Learning Maya 5: Foundation takes you through over twenty project-focused lessons that offer hands-on experience with key tools and techniques.

This book introduces you to the following topics:

• The Maya User Interface
• Working in 3D space
• NURBS (spline) Modeling
• Polygonal Modeling
• Keyframes and Motion Paths
• Trax™ Non-linear animation
• Forward and Inverse Kinematics
• Surface Deformations
• Cameras and Lights
• Shaders and Techniques
• Particles and Dynamics
• MEL (Maya Embedded Language)

What you need to use this book:

• Maya Complete™, Maya Unlimited™, or Maya Personal Learning Edition™ version 5 software
• A DVD-ROM or set-top player

Project One: Bouncing Ball
Quickly get your feet wet by animating a basic bouncing ball. Add a squash and stretch, create a ring of fire using a particle clip effect, then add sparks as the ball hits the flames.

Project Two: Jack-in-the-box
Learn the basics of modeling, animating, and rendering a scene. Use Maya Artisan™ tools to sculpt Jack's face and to paint a color texture in 3D. Refine the scene's rendering using IPR (Interactive Photorealistic Rendering).

Project Three: Space Battle
Starting with a more in-depth look at polygonal and NURBS modeling, this project sets up a motion path animation, complete with Opti-FX explosions. Use Maya Paint Effects™ to create a realistic starfield.

Project Four: Primitive Man
Using Maya's Trax non-linear animation, you cycle for a bi-ped Inverse Kinematic skeleton. This lesson will also explore basic character skinning and deformation.

Project Five: Salty the Seal
This project brings together the skills developed in earlier lessons into a more complex scene where you learn how Maya lets you fully integrate modeling, rendering, and animation tasks.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; 1 edition (June 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894893344
• ISBN-13: 978-1894893343
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,577,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, March 19, 2004

By 

IsildursBane (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning Maya 5: Foundation (Paperback)

This is a great book for people who have a lot of time and patience, and can stand to go methodically through a lesson. For the rest of us, this is a good (but not great) primer to learning the basics of Maya.

While the book is not without its problems, I think I would disagree with some of the harsh criticisms of other reviewers. This book really does deliver on its title, it gives you the proper "Foundations" to start doing more serious work in Maya. To anyone who's read it thoroughly, it does give you a very good insight into Maya theory, it discusses the "node system" and dependency graphs, which allow you to create procedural animations very easily, and are the basis for how everything is done in Maya.

I think the real point of this book is to get the user comfortable with all of the features capabilities (and quirks) of the program. If you've ever tried to learn Maya just by clicking on the menus and trying to figure it out intuitively, you'll soon realize that it's not effective at all. Maya is such a complex piece of software that all user intuition goes out the window. This book walks you through step by step in modeling, animation, and rendering examples. It's often easy to want to skip parts that look obvious, but 90% of the time you end up having to go back to it later. The best way to read this book is to go through it, actually following every step, and reading every instruction or note. If you do, you will know the basics of Maya in and out. I think that it's a good philosophy for starting to learn such a complex piece of software, because you'll have people who learn just enough to get by, and try to move on to more advanced topics and either hit a wall because they encounter a situation they don't know how to deal with, or end up with sloppy and inefficient results.

There are some things about the book that I dislike. The detail of this book is very uniform. Pretty much all topics are covered in the same depth. Some of the trickier elements I found in the early lessons were doing NURBS surface attachments, which were covered somewhat cursorily in the book, and the Joints and Skinning sections were covered in thorough but uneccessary detail. The trick is that the way Maya is designed, it makes some things that seem simple (like joining two surfaces) very very hard and error prone, while some things while even complicated conceptually, like adding bones to a mesh and making it move around, are really pretty straightforward and intuitive. The book goes through everything at pretty much the same level of detail, and doesn't take the nature of Maya's design into account . Of course everyone is going to run into their own specific problems, but I think they should have made more of an attempt at finding the "tough spots", or common mistakes and focusing on them in more detail, and explaining exactly what to do to remedy them and why.

Also, it is not a book on graphics/animation/modeling *theory*, it is a book on Maya, and Maya alone. You may get some basics of general computer graphics concepts, but only because they coincide with learning Maya ;)

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Obviously written by eleven people, October 21, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Learning Maya 5: Foundation (Paperback)

Learning Maya 5 is an excellent, frustrating, confusing, and somewhat productive book all wrapped up and bound together. The whole book is mixed up and ill-prepared with pictures that have no figure association (i.e. a paragraph would refer to figure 1.a). The lessons tend to be vague on certain steps that are critical for moving forward, not to mention the frustration on missing steps or improper English (the authors tend to say, "this" a alot without specifically saying what "this" is). And finally, the most bizarre part - if you start at page 1 and go blindly though 85 pages of some rather complex particle and dynamic lessons, you finally get to the basics and explanation of interfaces. Not a well organized book that is meant to discuss foundation to beginners.

That being said, once you do skip to page 85, read the basics, then go on to the lessons, there is some very complex rigging and animation. While I'm impressed with some of the creations I made and lessons that I have learned, I wish that the authors would get off cloud nine and EXPLAIN what I did. More than half of the procedures confused the daylights out of the reader because it was a hand-holding walkthrough. Sure I can repeat the steps and have some idea, but without a concrete explanation on many of the steps, how can this truly be called a "Foundation?" More like, "Kind of Learning Maya 5: Expect Confusion."

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very informative book, August 3, 2003

By 

Karabo Legwaila (Oneida, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Learning Maya 5: Foundation (Paperback)

This book is great for those just starting with Maya as well as those who have a little more experience in it. The book is broken down into projects that use the different components of Maya. Advanced users might not find this book too useful but beginners to intermediate users will find that this book is a real asset. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get into Maya.