Customer Reviews

Mastering Maya 7

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been using Maya for a few years now, and this is one of the best and most comprehensive Maya books that I've come across. It covers almost every aspect of Maya 7, and is a useful reference for both beginner and advanced users. The book begins with basic techniques, and moves into more advanced topics such as cloth, hair, and toon shading. Most chapters have tutorials - I haven't had a chance to complete them all yet, but they look pretty detailed.

It looks like this book is a new edition to the Maya Savvy series, but most of it has been updated or re-written. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning how to use Maya 7, or simply interested in learning some great new techniques.

The content of the book is generally quite good, methodically going through how to create a model, animate it, and use most of the major functions of Maya. However, sometimes certain steps are omitted, which the writers may think are understood, but as other instructions are very detailed and step by step it can be confusing.
I find two major flaws, however. One is that the writers must have been using an earlier version of 7.0, as menu items described are different than the way Maya actually presents them.
Also, many files are missing from the CD. The Chapter Files will not decompress on a Macintosh computer at all, and when transferred from a PC certain image files are missing. Whether this is a platform issue or a faulty CD I can't say, but it is frustrating to have to work around this.

This book is great for those just starting with Maya as well as those who have a little more experience in it. This book covers all aspects of 3D graphics, from modeling to rendering. I bet you will learn almost everything you need to know about Maya in this book. If you have some understanding of 3D and Maya, you are going to have quick results. 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.

As an educator, developer and 3D enthusiast I can most highly recommend Mastering Maya 7. It is completely true to its title, and given enough time and patience can lead even a novice 3D user to advanced modeling and and well beyond. I was particularly drawn to this book because I'm interested in character modeling, and this was the only treatment I could find that leads you through the process of character creation from the blank page, step-by-step. The book provides everything you need to know, from low-poly modeling techniques, to character rigging for animation, texture mapping your character and much more. The book is definitely intermediate to advanced ~~ novices be warned you are not going to become a 3D artist overnight. But for those who want to bring their work up to production quality levels, this volume has most, if not all of what you need.

As a professional instructor, I found the crispness of the presentation particularly appealing. The steps in each exercise are presented in a thorough manner with just enough but not too much detail. And I particularly like the way the book starts with a thorough introduction to the tool and its myriad features in the context of a simple exercise but then jumps right in to professional quality modeling, artistry and development. It's not easy to come up with just the right level of description in a how-to manual that deals with as horribly complex a beast as Maya. Most approaches I've read to teaching the modeling packages (3DSMax, Maya etc) just present a mish-mash of examples for the hundreds of features in these complex tools but don't really show you how to do anything. But in adopting a hands-on, teach-by-way-of-example approach, these authors have found a sweet spot. I am very happy to have found this book and will be digging through and mining it for many months, if not years, to come. Well done folks!

I bought this book in hope of that it was as good as all the reviews said. The first 2 chapters of the book was really good, but when I got to the 3rd chapter the book became a hell. You were supposed to create a templete for a polygonal model, and at the part where you were supposed to finnish it, the author turned mad and though that you were a Maya Expert or something like that, cause the instructions were impossible to understand and you couldent do as they said either.

As if this wasnt enough, I keep finding missing files from the CD-rom too. At this time I have found 2 missing files.

If I could have rated this book 0 I would have done that. Just a total waste of money and time.

As a beginner in Maya, this book seems to cover the basics of this immense program thoroughly in a straight-forward and user-friendly way.

Maya is indeed an ever changing beast; folks who use it daily for their livelihood are almost certainly in a love/hate relationship with it. But books like this are invaluable in keeping up to date with this kind of moving target. What I've read of the book so far looks great!! The insights of these authors, who use it regularly "in battle", make it all the more invaluable.

Sybex has had a long tradition of publishing critical books for the visual effects industry. The Maya Savvy/Mastering Maya books pull from a strong knowledge base of writers from top Maya users from both acedemia and the professional world. It has been a great resource in my time as a student and as a professional Maya user.

I am new to Maya and currently the version available for free download is version 8.5. Since I have dial-up internet access at home, I decided to buy this book as it was rather cheap and it provides a cd with the older free version. The book is very informative. Clear images and instructions make it a plus.

For those of you who buy this book and would like to install the Maya 7.0 Personal Learning Edition from the included cd, the software key number is: 20617691.

I am a fairly computer savvy person working at one of the world's largest software companies, and as a published author myself I can say that this book absolutely blows (for beginners).

I bought it last year sometime (2006?) and I was oh so excited to learn Maya. I got through the first 2 chapters and suddenly the author is using slang, abbreviations and skipping steps. As other comments state, the book references incorrect, hard-to-read diagrams and doesn't give you any of the information you'd expect.

Admittedly I didn't read the entire first chapter, because it detailed every bit of the user interface and I was already overwhelmed and confused by page 20 by menu items, terminology and options that would most likely apply to an expert.

It seems to have a lot of useful information in it - I regularly shelve and unearth this book hoping that I got smarter - but I don't, and neither do the author's methods of guidance. This is a great book to add to your bathroom collection, though.

I hope the 8.5 book is better.