Customer Reviews

Maya Character Animation

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is great for intermediate users of Maya, but if you're a beginner I suggest picking up Maya Fundamentals. This book does not cover learning the interface, but focuses on polygon, sub-division, nurbs modeling, character rigging, and animation. It is filled with full color images to help you along with the tutorials and explanations of the author. It even has a section on learning whats new with version 4.5 and takes you through the basics of creating your own animation. While it does have nice color pictures, I found some of them to be too small to clearly see what was going on. For example, in an earlier chapter focusing on sub-d modeling with edge extrusions, I found it hard to see what edges were supposed to be selected because of the small picture. Aside from that its a great book and well worth purchasing.

I thought this book was helpful. It is not for beginners, however. Not all of the tutorials give step by step instructions, instead, the book just tells you to make the model like the picture shown, you're on your own as to how to get the model to look like it.

This book has fully colored pages throughout but some of the images are a little hard to read. One thing I found really useful was it's relatively detailed coverage of the various shader utilities (sampler info, set range, clamp... etc)

The CD-Rom accompanying this book as some scene files, but the author does not provide a sample scene for every tutorial. Coverage of the Deep Paint 3D isn't all that detailed, but does give you an idea of how to use it in conjunction with Maya.

Character animation coverage is very detailed, and on some levels, pretty steep. Overall a very good book, worth buying.

This book is in dire need of an editor, preferably one with Maya experience. While it is obvious that Mr. Choi posesses a vast knowledge of Maya, his skills at communicating this knowledge are severly lacking. Grammatical errors abound, and his prose is often repetitive and confusing, if not downright incomprehensible. Many of the images are utterly superfluous, and sometimes they even contradict the text. Also, on a number of occasions, the information given is just plain wrong. Going through the 800+ pages of this book was an utterly frustrating exercise, and as such, I have already advised several friends to stay away from this book.

THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!!!

When I got this book, I spent the next two weeks almost all the time in front of my computer, creasing my Maya skills some big levels higher.
You learn about everything important about Subdivision Surface modeling and texturing and get to know how to create some awesome character setup for high quality animations.
The little Frog-Project part givesyou a good look at how to plan a short animation piece and how to get it completed in your computer.

This is definitely the best Maya character animation book I have ever read. Even though its a bit advanced, you can manage your way through and learn from your mistakes. the way every thing is illustrated makes the workflow a lot easier and faster. Another amazing feature in the book is the way the author arranged the subjects, it just makes you understand a lot better and you don't feel lost .I believe that any intermediate Maya user who is interested in character animation must get this book. Its worth it. because you learn many different techniques and achieve what beyond your imaginations.

Maya Character animation is probably one of the best books I have seen so far dealing with character construction. While it is not for beginners, if you have a solid knowledge of Maya, the Maya tools and a general understanding of how it all works, this will take you to the next step in building your animations in a professional manner.

I am an animation student at the Columbus College of Art and Design and this book has been a great help in reducing my character modeling time as well as showing me different ways to assign control surfaces so that my characters movements are easier to direct and look much more natural.

Another good thing about this book is that it does deal with issues such as assigning textures to your characters and shows you multiple ways to reach the same goal so that you are able to work with the style that suits you the best.

All in all, a definite must have in any serious animators' library and it should be put right next to the Maya 4.5 Bible

This book is definetely the best maya book i have seen for people who already know the interface.
You could not be wrong in calling it the maya bible
Definetely worth purchasing and always having it near you
Hope they keep doing books like this one
it covers everything from modeling to shading networks to inside the networks -utility nodes :) -to fluid dynamics, very cool details
and also beautiful color pages :)

This is an excellent book in terms of content, but it is definitely not for beginners. It is not a step-by-step, click-this-button guide book. You really have to work your mind to follow the directions of the tutorials. However, it is still a good buy. It has great character modeling concepts, provided you know the basics of how to use Maya. I highly recommend this to intermediate users of Maya who wants to do character animation.

This book is a great book to have. It's wonderfully illustrated with glossy pages and color pictures and has tons of information for anyone wanting master Maya. The amount of detail in this book is daunting and it covers everything from different modeling techniques to character binding to materials and lighting and rendering. This is a definite must for anyone wanting to get into character animation. This is a must have.

I am relatively new to Maya, but i have been doing 3d modelling for quite some time using both 3dsmax and lightwave. I bought this as well as Maya 4.5 Fundamentals, and i found this to be a very nice combination for moving into maya territory. Choi's book is, if anything, a very thorough and in depth look at the uses of tools that arent given the time of day in other books, and the animation essays and tutorials are truly helpful, which is quite rare. However, as it has been said by others, the color illustrations, while nice, don't really serve their purpose in the modelling tutorials. For one they are extremely small. Selected edges and faces are almost impossible to see. What puzzles me a bit is that this book is made for intermediate users of Maya, and intermediate users should have their own methods firmly in place. I have to say that personally i find choi's modelling methods (making a profile outline polygon and extruding edges, working out-and-in using edge merging) rather unwieldy, and by far not the easiest way to do things. Also, he has rickety terminology, and it's sometimes hard to figure out what he means when he says "polygon". Regardless, the animation related information is *very* interesting and thorough. I recommend it to users comfortable with modelling but unfamiliar with character animation