Maya is the most powerful artistic tool ever created to help bring to life anything you can imagine. One of the most eagerly anticipated and powerful pieces of software for high-end 3D animation. Maya offers an exceptionally vast feature set with real-time performance that pushes the edge of the industry. Creating 3D characters and sets in Maya is like having a cutting-edge film studio on your desktop and at your fingertips-yet all of this power to animate is wrapped in an intuitive interface that actually frees you to concentrate on the creative process. Maya 2 Character Animation covers Maya's advanced features and is a real-world tutorial for serious users. Learn step-by-step techniques for harnessing the awesome power of this tool while creating a variety of realistic talking characters and walking creatures.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In Maya Character Animation, the technical details of creating believable and engaging characters, from modeling and texturing to adding bone structure and keyframes, are thoroughly explored.
Although Maya can be used for many kinds of 3-D animation, the tutorials in Maya Character Animation are designed for character work that will make your creations walk the walk and talk the talk. The book covers character animation rather than mechanical or effects animation, and the chapters that focus on modeling (chapters 4 through 6) use Maya's NURBS modeling tools. Texture mapping in chapter 7 is also described from the point of view of texturing organic shapes.
Part III covers setting up the character for animation, including skeletal hierarchies, creating keyframes for movement, and facial animation. The character used for these examples is a simply designed cartoon man--but the principles used can be applied to almost any character--and the example face used for facial animation is complex enough to describe the nuances of animating expressions.
While the entire book is lavishly illustrated and written with great attention to detail, the most valuable chapters are the first three, a full third of the book, and they have nothing to do specifically with Maya. Covering such fundamental issues as choosing the right story for the medium, designing characters for 3-D, aspects of storyboarding, and other preproduction issues, this section is invaluable to any budding animator looking to make a film that's more than just eye candy.
The use of Alias Wavefront's Maya for character animation, whether the character is a photorealistic digital stuntman or a three-legged Martian, is growing exponentially. Maya Character Animation clearly explains how to bring your virtual self to life in vivid computer-generated detail. --Mike Caputo
From the Back Cover
Maya is the most powerful artistic tool ever created to help bring to life anything you can imagine. One of the most eagerly anticipated and powerful pieces of software for high-end 3D animation. Maya offers an exceptionally vast feature set with real-time performance that pushes the edge of the industry. Creating 3D characters and sets in Maya is like having a cutting-edge film studio on your desktop and at your fingertips-yet all of this power to animate is wrapped in an intuitive interface that actually frees you to concentrate on the creative process. Maya 2 Character Animation covers Maya's advanced features and is a real-world tutorial for serious users. Learn step-by-step techniques for harnessing the awesome power of this tool while creating a variety of realistic talking characters and walking creatures.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Good idea - poor execution,
By A Customer
This review is from: Maya 2 Character Animation (Inside) (Paperback)
Three weeks ago I purchased a copy of Maya 2 Character Animation and I have mixed feelings about this book. First, with the lack of Maya-related books it's good to see an effort to write a comprehensive work that goes beyond the Manuals and aims at the practical user. In this goal, the book succeeds and I am happy with my purchase. The publishers have designed a pleasant and appealing layout.As this book is meant for practical use (as opposed to general animation theory as is the case with some other books), the accuracy of the steps and illustrations is critical. Here is where the book falters and why I plan on returning the book. I am listing the errors I have found. But, as I have not completed all the chapters yet, I feel certain there are more. The chapter I started with was Chapter 7, on texturing. The scene files for the snake monster and the organic head are missing even though on page 253 the author says the scenes are on the CD "in each stage of completion from beginning to end". The head texturing tutorial is one of the primary reasons I bought this book. Be aware that there are no links to these missing files on NewRider's website so readers can download them. Additionally, most of the files on the CD are named in an unusual order - for example "Cutthroat5.mb" is further along in the steps than "Cutthroat12.mb". Much of the referencing to the files is incorrect or ambiguous. There are 2 large winzip files that are completely unexplained - and they take up 200MB of the CD! Here now are some of the errors I found. I e-mailed the publisher to find out what they might do to correct them (I still have received no reply). They are in page order. Page 113, incorrect sidebar and duplicated pictures. = Page 115, fig. 4.5, incorrect sidebar. = If I follow steps from 4.1.2.3 to 4.1.2.4 the model will not work, first I must unbind the skin. = Page 130, it is very unclear which "slave" is to be stitched. = Page 143, incorrect information about offset curves; there is no need for new cameras because offset curve placement (unlike projection curve) is not based on view angle. = Page 145, very confusing "stages"pictures. = The section on binding the hand to the skeleton (4.5.2) is so unclear and incomplete that many hours were wasted trying to follow it. I ended up making a couple pages of notes (through trial and error) that will make the process work. If I follow the one in the book, the fingers are completely left out. Anyone new to this software will be left confused and disappointed. = Page 232, section 7.3.1 paragraphs 1 and 4 are very unclear. Also page 235 para.1 and page 236 para. 5. I still don't know what the author is trying to say but I would like to. As I mentioned previously, this texturing chapter is one of my primary interests in this book. = On page 332 the author says to use specific names for the arm portions but then on page 334 he uses different names; poor proofreading. = Also on page 334, the steps for the shoulder geometry and joint have been completely left out. = Page 337 figure 9.20 is the wrong picture. = Page 344 exercise 9.13 step 2. He says to un-check the check boxes. If you do this it will have the opposite effect of the exercise. The boxes must ALL be checked and set to 0.00 to keep the joint from rotating. = Page 346 exercise 9.15, if I click the Add button I have one too many Attributes; instead I need to click the OK button. = Page 357, five additional steps are needed to complete exercise 9.26. = Page 360 step 4, Rigid Skin is called Rigid Bind. Page 361 step 4, there is no Set Editor, it has been replaced with the Component Editor. = Page 363 step 10 should read "Adjust the ... attributes in the Channel Box...." = Pages 424-429, shouldn't there be pictures with all these steps? = Today, after several days away from the book, I decided to try the ever important chapter on modeling a biped (the basis for the cover image). Guess what? By the fourth page the author has already skipped several steps ahead, then back again. He introduces using Artisan but doesn't use it in any steps. Somehow he goes from a low detail sphere to a fully-detailed face - but the steps involved only include adding a sphere for an eye! So much information has been glossed over. The first several chapters are especially funny in that the author recommends we carry video cameras, still cameras, sketch pads, stopwatches, etc. EVERYWHERE we go! I like her suggestion that a serious animator should have at least 2 video cameras. And, after stressing that EVERY animator MUST be a skilled illustrator, why is it that NONE of the images in these chapters are hers? Wow. Again, I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it covers many of the areas Maya users need to know more about (according to the topics on the Alias|Wavefront listserv anyway). It contains some workflow ideas that increased my proficiency. The writing team has awesome credentials. In some ways it's an improvement over the manuals. On the other hand many sections seem to have been rushed through. The number of errors I have found so far is unreasonable for a tutorial book. The naming conventions used for the scene files on the CD are confusing at best; is this a cross-platform issue? And for me personally, the organic head scene files and the biped modeling are key components to the book's value. And they are non-existant.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hold out for a more user-friendly Maya book,
This review is from: Maya 2 Character Animation (Inside) (Paperback)
I recently took a class that used the exercises in this book as a guideline. The book was basically the covered text. Not only am I not a fan of expensive training programs who use this method (if they're gonna do that, why don't I just buy the book instead?) of teaching, the book was just terrible. The text is very confusing -- the authors speak matter-of-factly about a lot of issues regarding Maya that to a novice or advanced beginner would get lost. The tutorials are not step-by-step -- the authors have a way of "skipping" steps in the process that, again, to a beginner would be very frustrating. Right down to not even getting the menu items/commands accurate. The authors kinda assume that everyone in this field is just immersed into Maya enough to put two-and-two together on these lessons. Besides the actual lesson, there are so many tips, quotes, FYI and general statements that you don't really know which advice you should be following (I know he's like a Maya-guru, but why do they keep quoting Alex Alvarez to make a point? Just show me what to do.). And many of the files in the accompanying CD did not work as promised without some minor tweaking. Some things were just missing. The class ended up being horrible, mainly because we couldn't thoroughly complete a lesson, due to the "glitches". I know that these authors have extensive experience and credentials, and that's why it would seem they should know better than to put out a book that they know people are eager to read without even testing the effectiveness of their instruction. Sincerely disappointed.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't judge this book by its cover! Not for Advanced users!,
This review is from: Maya 2 Character Animation (Inside) (Paperback)
This book was okay at best. It has a nice cover, but the content was disappointing. I thought this book was going to explain organic modeling correctly, but it doesn't. Instead, the book is filled with crude methods of 3D modeling that do not take full advantage of Maya. If you want to make deformed looking characters, like that ugly head on the cover and you are a novice then this book is for you. If you want to create more realistic characters that are similar to "Final Fantasy" or "Biohazard" characters, then save your money.
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