18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Second Edition is Average, May 11, 2005
This review is from: Maya Secrets of the Pros (Maya Masters) (Paperback)
I have the first edition also, and the content of this second edition is ALL NEW material.
Chapter 1 - Maya Cloth - The tutorials include a skirt, a curtain, and accessories (using cloth for animating jewelry and bracelets). Unfortunately, there are no fully clothed figures (no shirts, no pants, etc) so everything is very basic, but explained clearly.
Chapter 2 - Non-Photorealistic Rendering - First example has textures sketched in pen, scanned, and then mapped onto animated models. It creates a unique "hand-drawn" effect, and with some interesting rendering styles. Second example is how to create an impressionistic rendering style. Emit particles from object, make those particles strokes, and play with the render settings. I haven't seen a tutorial like this one before, and it does a lot for making very basic shaded object into a more intriguing render.
Chapter 3: Realistic Camera Movement - The basics of CG cinematography (if you want more on this, I recommend Digital Cinematography & Directing by Dan Ablan). Also goes briefly into camera lenses and focal lengths. The good parts are the long tutorials on Creating Camera Shake and Creating a Handheld Camera. At the end there is a brief tutorial on capturing motion with Maya Live.
Chapter 4: Radiosity, HDRI, LDRI - This is the best and most thorough tutorial on this subject that I've found in a Maya format. Rendering tutorials on a spaceship, a robot, and a katana sword. The chapter ends with a brief tutorial on how to render a detailed, complex scene.
Chapter 5: The Character Pipeline - The information is here is so basic, I think the only reason it would be included in an "of the pros" books is that it has a few MEL scripts. Naming conventions, character sets, and some rigging scripts by the author. Certainly one of the least interesting chapters.
Chapter 6: Hair Systems - This very unique chapter that talks about using Maya Hair for alternative purposes. Octopus tentacles, Rope/wire, Character's secondary motion, and shark animation. Great tutorials for all these examples, which can obviously be applied to nearly anything.
Chapter 7: Dynamics - This is all very basic stuff, with very basic examples (ie a torus lands on a plane, boxes interacting with eachother). Has a couple pages on using Maya Hair and dynamics to make car suspension.
Chapter 8: The Art of Maya Noises - Basic dynamics tutorials. I have no idea why this was in the book. You WILL find better online tutorials because most of the examples are clones of things you will find elsewhere. 1) A water fountain, 2) spinning particles to create a "vortex", 3) a "hermite electric arc" (two spheres with electricity flowing between them). MEL scripts are included for these examples.
Chapter 9: Polygon/Subdivision modeling a character head (cover of book) - Starts out talking about edgeloops -- which has an interesting twist because the character has a "third eye". Draws curves in the front and side viewports using the EP curve tool, thus creating a skeletal/basic cage that will be used as outlines for poly faces (so, it's like NURBS modeling, but poly). Has a few pages about filling in the curves-wireframe, pointing out problem areas (triangles, five sided polys, and "stars") and how to fix them. The tutorial stops at completing the trapezius and neck muscles. No texturing/lighting/rendering discussion is included.
Overall, I was slightly disappointed in this book. Sure a complete beginner would be lost, but for the average/intermediate Maya user many of the tutorials are not worth the pricetag. Before buying this, go to the bookstore and browse through the chapters that sound interesting and see if its worth your money.
Between this and the first edition, I think they should pick out a few chapters of each and make a "Best of" :-)
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT BOOK FOR INDUSTRY PROS, June 21, 2004
I am an industry pro animator who has been working with Maya software since 1999. I've read tons of books and on line tutorials and try to keep up with every aspect of the program to stay competetive. So with that in mind I rate this book 5 Stars! It's one of the best I've read.
This book is by pros for pros including an excellent chapter by Habib Zargarpour from ILM on "Complex Particle Systems" which uses a shot from "Perfect Storm" to demonstrate the water particles. Aspects of how they analyzed the wave and figured out how to emit particles at the right place are still evident in movies like "Day After Tomorrow".
There's also "Photo Real Facial Replacement" by John Kundert-Gibbs, Dariush Derakhshani and Rebecca Johnson which illustrates, step by step, how to create the mouth shapes, textures and comp onto a picture of a cat, thus creating a talking cat. This is an excellent work flow for getting very near to close results that have garnered success for studio's like Rhythm&Hues for films like "Cats & Dogs" and the upcoming "Narnia Chronicles".
I wasn't a big fan of mocap, however the company I'm working for is using it in a big way. I've read about it in previous articles and such, but haven't found much usful info for practically using it, except in this book on the chapter by Robin Akin and Remington Scott titled "Animation and Motion Capture -Working Together." After reading this chapter I have a new respect for the art and science of this technology. The results from films like "AniMatrix -Flight of the Osiris" and "Lord of the Rings" demonstrates that this is powerful new medium with characters like Gollum raising the bar. Working through the tutorials, I've gained a stronger command of the medium which has helped greatly at work.
I wouldn't have posted this except for a rebuttal to one of the reviews you have posted for this book by "Ilya from Israel" who has obviously not even read the book with comments like "The easiest go like: make a cylinder, shape up a horse out of it, now you'll do the lip-synching." -It's obvious that she didn't even read it. The chapter on "Modeling a SubDivision Horse" by Peter Lee goes into extreme modeling detail and tutorials where the modeling starts with nurbs, gets converted to polies, then details such as the mouth, eyes and ears and every aspect of creating a cg horse model is shown step by step. If you work through this chapter you will end up with an excellent subD horse model.
This book doesn't cover everything, with four parts, "Modeling", "Animation & Motion", "Complex Numbers", and "Surfacing and Rendering" with only 2 or 3 chapters in each section, it doesn't cover everything you need to know. Rather it's extremely focused on very specific aspects of 3D computer graphics in Maya and gets under the hood of the authors inventive methods of working in production.
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