The MEL Companion: Maya Scripting for 3D Artists (Charles River Media Graphics) [Paperback]

David Stripinis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1584502754 | ISBN-13: 978-1584502753 | Publication Date: April 30, 2003 | Edition: 1

The Maya Embedded Language, or MEL, is the very foundation of the Maya application: it's what makes it so powerful. And, if you know MEL, you can make Maya work more efficiently for your own projects. Whether customizing the workspace, modifying the tools that already exist, or creating new tools, an artist versed in MEL is ready to exploit the true power of Maya. The problem is that MEL can be very intimidating to artists and other non-programmers. To an artist, MEL represents a whole other world filled with words like variable, conditional statements, and vector cross-product. Like any other programming language, MEL has its own vocabulary and rules of grammar. To master it, you simply need to learn the rules: you don't have to become a programmer. The MEL Companion helps artists do this. In the first part of the book, you'll learn about the syntax, vocabulary, and structure of MEL - its grammar. You'll learn some basic math concepts, such as types of numbers and simple math equations, and at the end of part one you'll explore concepts for building and constructing programs. The second part covers the construction of scripts that detail some of the ways you can use MEL. You'll learn about expressions, primitive objects, lighting and rendering, tool creation, interface customization, and reading and writing files in and out of Maya. The MEL Companion was written by an artist for artists. To get the most out of this book, you should have a fundamental knowledge of working in 3D and the Maya program. In addition, although you might not have an extensive knowledge and understanding of mathematics, you should have some willingness to learn the basics of working with numbers. Other than that, everything else is explained in language that is hopefully as clear as it is entertaining

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Stripinis is currently a Technical Animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks, a division of Sony Pictures, in Culver City, CA. He spent the previous six years working on a variety of television, film, and video game projects including Star Wars: Rogue Leader and Indiana Jones. He has also been a Maya user since its inception, and is often called upon as a guest lecturer and teacher for such organizations as SIGGRAPH, the IDGA, and the Game Developerís Conference.

Product Details

• Paperback: 468 pages
• Publisher: Charles River Media; 1 edition (April 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584502754
• ISBN-13: 978-1584502753
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #818,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book on Advanced MEL, May 25, 2003

By 

Mark R Wilkins (Glendale, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The MEL Companion: Maya Scripting for 3D Artists (Charles River Media Graphics) (Paperback)

Having helped write "MEL Scripting for Maya Animators," I cracked open "The MEL Companion" wondering if I was going to have my lunch eaten.

What I found, to my pleasant surprise, was an interesting, well-written book that picks up with more advanced MEL examples at about the level that my book left off. "The MEL Companion" is heavy with examples... don't expect a lot of involved discussion of how MEL fits into Maya.

The examples, though, are substantial, production-quality code that implement reasonably advanced techniques with comprehensive explanations of how they work and where they could be pushed farther.

If you're a beginner, I suggest you get some experience with simple MEL before cracking this book open, but if you've done some scripting and want to become an expert, this is the book for you.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars How did the editor of this book keep his job?, February 8, 2005

By 

Brendon (Vancouver) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The MEL Companion: Maya Scripting for 3D Artists (Charles River Media Graphics) (Paperback)

While this book was VERY hard to follow ( I'm a pretty technical guy when it comes to 3D) i WAS able to follow it most of the time. What really pisses me off is that it is a programming book and just about every page has a syntax error of some kind or another. Really mad about the fact that just as you think you're getting it there's a not always so obvious syntax error that the author and the editor and the publisher all missed!I spent more time troubleshooting the authors oversights then i did learning anything - WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? nobody buy this book until they fix all their little screw ups.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Full of errors, April 28, 2007

By 

Robert Lewis (Marin County, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The MEL Companion: Maya Scripting for 3D Artists (Charles River Media Graphics) (Paperback)

It's ironic in a sad way that a programming book be filled with syntactical errors and painfully obvious the author didn't bother to proof read, let alone run, his code. I am a newcomer to MEL, but have been programming in other languages (C, C++, Python, Java) for ten years; I feel I've taken a step backwards insofar as my MEL progress is concerned. No one involved with this book has put forth the required effort and as such has done the MEL community a disservice

If the code weren't rampant with errors, this would be the best MEL book out there. As it stands, it's the worst. At the very least, the publisher could have released the errata on their website as others have done.

I recommend David Gould's "Complete Maya Programming" series as an excellent replacement. There's a reason this book is so inexpensive when purchased used. Don't waste your time.