Customer Reviews

Learning Maya 7: The Modeling and Animation Handbook

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

These books are a spectacular edition. Alias has been good about teaching in their books, but these books actually have FUN projects! I have enough books that will tell me how to do something (and these are VERY easy to understand) but the only ones that I can actually have fun working with are the ones contained in this new series. Not for the advanced user though. If you want advanced, go for the Maya Tecniques series, not the Learning Maya series. Great books!

horrible. as some have said, names are misused, images are confusing,
greatly lacking in explanation. i've been banging my head against this thing for two and a half weeks and i give up. clunky workflow examples and frankly outdated pipeline. anyone interested in a book like this would do themselves a favor by checking out Gnomon Studios or Digital Tutors. they present more sophisticated and intuitive workflows. save your money and use the manual that came with your software as reference with the video guides available from the above mentioned companies. it'll save you from the inevitable ulcers Learning Maya 7 will cause. p.s. been using EIAS since '95. Not new to this game. hope the review helps.

This book is quite dense, for absolute beginners it may be overwhelming. If it weren't a required text for one of my classes I'm not sure if I would've chosen it. To be honest, we are doing different projects than are in the book, so this is more as a reference tool than anything. You'll want to at least be familiar with the menus and some functions before delving into this book. However if you've used Maya or Max before and want to learn more and polish your modeling techniques, this is a good one to start with.

Some pictures are used to show examples (end results) but screenshots of the progress and exactly what menus are being accessed and where they're located would've been very helpful rather than listing out the instructions and showing end results.

However it does provide a lot of information and who better to learn from than the source, Alias.

This book was used in my Intermediate 3d Animation course and it's pretty good for the basics of rigging a bipedal character. However, the book tends to be inconsistent with some of its naming conventions for certain bones while rigging, which could confuse a beginner. For example, when they go through and tell you to name all your bones, they tell you to name the "knee" joint "up leg", then a few chapters later, they refer to it as the "knee joint" instead of "up leg."

This book is really awesome. It goes deep in character modeling, with polys and nurbs.

You learn how to rig and animate your character, and you'll create a walkcycle with your character and learn all about blend shapes.

I'm new to Maya, but I'm quite experienced in 3D (using Max). With this book and the others from the Learning Maya 7 series I'm learning way much faster.

I bought this for my 13-year-old daughter as she wishes to be an animator. It is a little advanced for her, but she will pick it up pretty quickly.

This book was a great way to learn the concepts of Maya. It is colorful and engaging. The book uses fun examples to teach the reader about creating animations.

This book starts out with basic concepts and runs up all the way into complicated animation details. It would be a great book for any level - but absolutely perfect for someone starting out, and looking to become a Maya pro.

My title is not a idictment of the book, but an appreciation for its clarity. I believe the authors were conscious of the need to appeal to a broad audience, and as a modeler with about four months of experience before purchasing this book, I found it slightly lofty, but useable. It simply requires a bit of commitment. The author's are careful to highlight some of the pitfalls that can trip up the novice during the workflow. Alias has always been good about using real life projects as examples and teaching tools, and this book benefits from that philosophy.

after using this book for a while I find it needs to go into more detail on how tools work and common errors. For example the birail and curve editing tool are give about 4 sentencs but are used alot.

good examples of work flow but don't feel like I'm mastering the program like an intermediate tutorial should give.

This is exactly what i was looking for, i think this is an amazing book if you want to learn....you have to get it.