Maya is a tool for 3-d modelling, animation and a wide range of special effects. This book is a guide, step-by-step, to realizing concepts in models, characters and settings. Beyond the basics, this book shows how to create and animate complex models, use dynamics effects like particles and soft and rigid bodies, and programme Maya's interface with MEL scripting. This book gives coverage of Maya's features to: create photorealistic character animations (for games, movies and broadcast); harness the power of Paint Effects to create and animate painterly effects; model in NURBS and polygons; animate using keyframing, expressions and MEL; expand Maya's innate capabilities with MEL scripting; bind geometry to joints using rigid and smooth skinning; sculpt and weight objects with Artisan; create and use particles; and create and use soft bodies to produce complex behavior in Maya objects. In a section of interviews, industry developers talk about working with Maya. Alias|Wavefront insiders discuss the next frontier for Maya, explain how Paint Effects was developed and discuss the evolution of the Maya GUI. Habib Zargarpour, an artist at Industrial Light and Magic, describes the integration of Maya into ILM's work on "Star Wars: Episode One, The Phantom Menace".
|
There is a newer edition of this item:
|
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Learning to use every aspect of Alias Wavefront's Maya can be challenging. Maya is a powerful, complex tool, but some artists devote themselves to using only one or two features, like modeling, particle animation, lighting, or animation. The authors of Mastering Maya Complete 2 have tried to cover every aspect of the program within this book, and the result is a balanced overview of the entire program that lays a solid foundation for anyone climbing the Maya learning curve.
The book contains six major sections: fundamentals, modeling, animation, Maya's scripting language, rendering, and advanced Maya effects. Individual chapters delve into the details of Maya's feature set, mostly with tutorials demonstrating their use. Sidebar tips appear on almost every page, and the authors have made liberal use of screen shots.
The opening chapter sets the tone for this voluminous book as an introductory tutorial to building a complete scene. A simple model is created and textured, lights are added, and the model becomes animated and rendered. While this section isn't heavy on detail, the project is complete and offers a whole overview of the Maya project cycle. The rest of the book covers features like the modeling tools, animation tools, and advanced effects in greater depth.
Although the application and subject are technical by nature, Mastering Maya Complete 2 is clear and concise. Each chapter is a set of tutorials that demonstrate specific features, and new users of Maya should have no trouble following the book while working with the program. --Mike Caputo
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forget the official MAYA manuals - this is the boy!,
By
This review is from: Mastering Maya Complete 2 (Paperback)
With such a complex program as Maya, you really need all the help you can get right at the beginning. Unfortunately the official set of manuals, though very good, are not really the best way to learn this fantastic 3D package and tend to be better purely as reference. Even the Learning Maya book that comes with the package can be misleading and overly complex for the beginner. Ideally you'd have a tutor sat next to you - or the next best thing, a copy of Mastering Maya Complete. I learnt more in one hour reading this book, going through the tutorials than I did in several days struggling through the official manuals. Within minutes you can be creating models and getting to grips with the wonderful interface - all explained in easy to understand terms, with very useful tips and notes as you go along. Even though my copy of Maya is 2.5, the book serves extremely well and is a damn-sight more intuitive than the other manuals. Very highly recommended - put your official manuals on the shelf (where they look very nice Indeed) and get this book - it's all you'll need if you're a beginner - it's probably all you'll need for most things ... Great!
36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The biggest and the most comprehensive Maya book,
By Perry Harovas, Co-Author (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mastering Maya Complete 2 (Paperback)
Our book is 880 pages with numerous tutorials PER chapter. We have included everything from making your character walk, run, grab objects, throw objects; to in-depth physics of setting up particle simulations, soft bodies, MEL scripting; to modeling, lighting, texturing, rendering; to PaintEffects (which no other book covers).We also have interviews: ILM's Habib Zargarpour, who created the crashing pods for Star Wars: Episode One Duncan Brinsmead of Alias|Wavefront, who wrote 95 percent of PaintEffects Mark Sylvester, also of Alias|Wavefront Who founded Wavefront, and who now spends his time educating customers about how the software has been developed, and where they are going in the future. We have tried our best to provide you with the tools, information and examples (on the CD) that will get you using and understanding Maya as fast as possible. Maya is incredibly complex, and therefore our book had to be twice as long as the others out there in order to cover it all! We welcome contact with all who read the book who have questions, and have provided 2 support websites for the book. If anyone has any other questions, I'll be happy to get back to you ASAP, and to answer any and all questions. We hope you enjoy this book, it was our dream to make it the standard text on Maya. We think we've succeeded!
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Recommended!,
By Carl Edwards (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mastering Maya Complete 2 (Paperback)
This is an excellent book. I have already recommended it to my character animation class at the School Of Visual Arts.Mastering Maya Complete 2 is a well rounded, well written presentation of maya that goes far beyond simple instruction. The authors offer that (unfortunately) rare commodity in books of this type: insight. It is obvious that the authors have sorted through maya's extensive tool set and found what works ELEGANTLY. We are the beneficiaries.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
