Customer Reviews

Learning Maya 5: Foundation

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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 ;)

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."

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.

I agree with the first review, this book gets frustrating. I am a student and am still learning how to use Maya and I find in this book that it sort of tells you what to do rather than tell you what your doing. Also, lose the pronouns; every now and then the book starts explaining something and it can be hard to know what it's talking about because it expects you to know certain things you have already done. It does teach you the basic principles and techniques though, but you will probably have to read through a few times to fully understand it. I haven't read any of the other books, but i suggest to keep looking before deciding on this one.

I'm guessing this book is what a quite a few Maya teachers use. It's easy to follow. Each and every step of the different lessons in the book is explained very explicit detail. I would recommend that if you're thinking of taking a Maya class you either get this book and go through it first. Or, compare its table of contents to the syllabus of any class you might be considering enrolling in. I think this book is probably a better deal than the cost of any Maya intro class a person might enroll in.

I'm not sure I understand some reviews I've read here. Maya is not wordpad and yes you will be searching for menu buttons sometimes, yes sometimes you'll have to go back and search but the step-by-step approach works great to get your hands on the software and actually create something that works. If someone had told me i'd one day be for instance creating spaceships, animating them, creating special effects i'd have never believed them! The fact that you are working on projects and not examples makes the difference : you have the final animation rendered on the DVD so you know where you're heading...even if you only get there by the end of the day...or the week! I learnt so much doing all the tutorials and I can assure you this is money well invested. Of course it's better to do a week training (why not a personal instructor 12 hours a day?), but if you can't afford it this book is like a personal teacher at home almost for free. I would recommend trying to go as far as you can with books and then get training, you need time alone doing the research by yourself anyway. Yes you might get stuck, yes you're gonna scream sometimes wondering where you went wrong, but using Maya does not come for free. Nevertheless, I can tell you that when things start coming together, when you do the final render of one of the projects you will be rejoiced. A must buy for starting learning Maya in my opinion.

This book just goes through a series of steps, with no explanations of the concepts being used. Is there a book out there that explains things at a high level, then at a more detailed level with tutorials and explanations? In the first lesson you start adding particle effects and start fine tuning attributes without ever having a good explanation of what particle effects are or what they should be used for and what they shouldn't be used for. If there is a good high level, then detailed explanations with relevant tutorials please let me know, because this is not that book. This book should be titled: Random Intermediate Tutorials In Maya 5.

If anyone has seen the book I am looking for, please send me an e-mail at trz66@hotmail.com. Once again I'm looking for a book with a solid chapter of at least 50 pages on each of the following topics at a high-level: Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rigging, Animating. Then a follow-up chapter with in-depth explanation of the tools in Maya used for each topic including a series of tutorials (at least one basic, one intermediate, and one advanced). Is this book out there?

This book is a perfect manual for everyone who want learn maya... projects are detailed and let you learn the most important things to start with 3d world

I really looked forward to this book because of the reviews I read on it. I originally purchased the Maya 5 Fundamentals and to be honest, beside the boring DVD that accompanies the book, I like the Maya 5 Fundamentals book better. Admittedly the Maya 5 Foundation book got me a little further but the tutorial lessons have no personality. Just follow these steps to achieve this. No real explaination on why.

it is the kind of books that gives you the in-depth practice you are looking for,really it is wonderful