Customer Reviews

MEL Scripting a Character Rig in Maya

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

 

 

The author is good at explaining things and he covers a lot of stuff that most books on animation and even rigging really don't go into. For example, lots of books touch on joint orientation but they don't EXACTLY spell it out and most animators online seem sketchy on the concept. You can sort of partially ignore it but when you do certain things in script then it can come back to bite you if you are just letting maya do what it wants. There's a few other things like this that make it worth the price (which is pretty cheap compared to other maya books) for anyone who doesn't already know rigging in and out completely. Actually, I'd say that learning actual rigging is where the book does the best job.

What I did not like as much was that the rig is just very geared to a very heavyweight (very) high poly model. As such, the scripts are a lot more complicated than they maybe need to be for most people. If you are starting your own studio or something then they are perfect but if you are making games or animation that's not intended for a feature film it's really overkill. Actually maybe overkill even for a feature film if the character is a simple biped/human.

The scripts are still valuable, though, and overall the examples of maya are what make them useful. But, I was sort of disappointed because I hoped more for something where I click just a button after selecting a few options and get a rig for a biped that only needs to be bound to animate. But like I said, it's more complex than that.

For example there are scripts for making your bind weights off of a lower res version of the object. A great idea, but again really only if you are rigging the heck out of feature film level characters (and if that's the case you probably can't get away with a generalized rig setup anyway). It's a fair amount of work to make a lower res version of a character, and if you are just making a biped character you can just copy the weights from another character in the first place instead of first binding a lower res one from scratch and then copying the weights and then adjusting it minutely here and there.

Also, the skeleton is pretty heavyweight and so most people will have to pare this down a lot to really make use of the scripts. I guess there's no 'one size fits all' version of rigging scripts, but I was disappointed that (as far as I can tell) you can't just get your controls rigged off of them and then bind and animate. Instead they are good reference, but if you are new to rigging you are going to have to realize that this is sort of 'advanced' rig. The author points this out, but I think it should be emphasized. So, I guess the scripts are good teaching tools but I don't think most people are going to actually USE them directly because it's more of a multistep process that is a bit overkill for possibly anything short of making a feature film - which if I was making one I'd be more concerned about learning more nonstandard animation stuff.

So in short the book is good, even great for what it is (with some of the most clear and simple explanations of rigging and mel scripting out there) but I wish that the more advanced stuff had been more separated out with some option of some simple one click (or close to it) scripting of a basic skeleton without so much emphasis on the actual binding part and deformers. I guess basically an autorigger. For the amount it does, it seems almost odd it doesn't go to this extra step. there's even scripts for making skeleton itself, but the problem in general is that it's a process that takes many steps so if you are making a simpler character I think it would actually be more work than just adding it all in by hand. I'd normally not make skeleton with a script but if I did I'd want something like having it stop for each joint to have you place it (or a locator) in the correct location manually, and in general to make the scripts take more burden off of the rigger. Instead of making things simpler they seem more geared to making the most advanced rig possible, but again, I think it's almost TOO advanced, or at least for most people it will be.

But, unless you are an authority on both mel scripting and rigging you should probably pick this up. Just keep in mind if you are still more or less a beginner that for most projects this rig is going to be overkill and just pick out the parts you want and make them into a leaner process of rigging.

Unlike a lot of books that promise to cover advanced territory and end up glossing over it, this book really does the job. Yes, it is advanced but it needs to be. Very valuable guide indeed.

A short and sweet review from me.. .. excellent book. Easy to follow. Not only gave me a good understanding of rigging with MEL but clarified a lot of my understanding of how MAYA really works.

Good examples.. Needs several reads to let it all sink in.. but well worth the money and written by someone who obviously knows their stuff inside out, in a way you can understand.

There are a couple of small minor typos in some code.. but nothing that will stop the code running... eg. the example of page 298 has the X & Y back-to-front. The support website also is pretty lame.. and a bit disappointing. Having said all that, it's currently my MEL bible and constantly on hand for reference. Good job Chris

The book is not exactly what I expected but that being said I have the basic understanding of rigging. The chapter on mel is well written and takes time to explain everything you need. Even though I knew MEL already I found it worthwhile to read the chapter on MEL.

The book teaches you how to create a basic FK rig by hand and then introduces the idea of IK and how to add the IK functionality on top of the pre built rig. I have not gotten to the MEL created rig yet but from the 3-4 chapters I have read so far, I would recommend this book,

I've only read the Mel chapter of the book, but I can honestly say that this single chapter on Mel helped me to understand the subject better than any other Mel resource that I've ever looked at.

It astonishes me how I've spent well over $5,000 dollars thus far, in the hopes that purchasing the Maya software (as well as this book) would thrust me into the beginnings of my career in animation. Since this is mainly a review of the book, I'll stick to that and hopefully allow someone to see just WHAT they're getting with this book. Previous reviews (As you'd think you could go to them to find what you want prior to purchasing an item) seemed to beat around the bush with this book - much like EVERYTHING that I've put money into, and studied, hoping for a simple truth. I bought this one hoping that it would show me how to create my own characters, and build on them from there. This book focuses FAR TOO HEAVILY on MEL scripting (which isn't bad). But do not make the mistake that I've made. After looking at the reviews of this book, and even the description of what it is SUPPOSED to teach you, I am HIGHLY disappointed. I do not understand WHY this MAYA thing is such a BIG secret! You pay the price, should you NOT then have to endure the run around? This book beats around the bush of the simple question that I needed answered, "Show me how to create Characters in Maya!" It would have been WONDERFUL, to have someone simply be honest and say, this book WILL NOT show you that. It goes SERIOUSLY deep into the MEL scripting - which I will gladly sit down and learn. Yet it fails horribly at the one thing that I was certain I'd gotten from previous reviews as well as looking this book over online. More or less, I was swindled. It was no different from going to a place to make a purchase on something you have very little knowledge of, having EVERYONE tell you that the item will grant you what you're looking for. And then you get it home and find out you were sold a lemon. If MEL scripting is your goal - by all means, this book will teach you that until you're literally sick of it. Yet I wanted something simple and thus far - EVERYTHING about maya has been a let down. I think I saw someone on youtube make a VERY shocking point. "Why pay $3600 dollars for a piece of software that you're only gonna hop on youtube and make head molds out of?"