Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide [Paperback]

Eric Keller (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 047011133X | ISBN-13: 978-0470111338 | Publication Date: March 19, 2007

Create positively dazzling effects with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Create Dazzling Maya Visual Effects Out of Thin Air

If you need to create stunning effects on a tight deadline for finicky clients and demanding art directors, this book is for you. Go from Post-it Notes to positively dazzling with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

• Animate a zombie hand transformation, UFO glow, and streaking energy with textures
• Make a tentacle shake and slither using expressions and joints
• Use Paint Effects to create twitching nerves and bacterial hair
• Split crystals with Rigid Body Dynamics
• Animate a collapsing rope bridge using Maya Hair
• Master particle instancing and collision effects
• Get a handle on scripting with MEL

About the Author

Eric Keller has been using Autodesk's Maya to create professional animations since version 1 was released and has been an enthusiast ever since. He is currently a high-end animator for film, television, and scientific visualization. His clients include Disney, ESPN, Hewlett-Packard, CBS, and ABC. Prior to that, he created animations for some of the world's top researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was a contributing author to Mastering Maya 7 and Mastering Maya 8.5 (Sybex).

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Sybex (March 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047011133X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470111338
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

When I was a little kid my parents would buy huge rolls of newsprint for me and my brothers to draw on. When I was in high school my friends and I would make comic books on index cards; the bloodier, the better. In college I switched to music, specifically the classical guitar. I reasoned that it would be somehow useful in my future career as a rock star. It wasn't. But it did teach me a lot about learning, discipline, and the discipline of learning.

In 1997 I returned to the visual arts when I started to study computer animation. A year later I created my first professional animation for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Holiday Lectures on Science series. It was a transparent beating heart with visible blobs of blood. I created it in Maya 1.0 on a little blue SGI O2.

From 1998-2005 I was a full time scientific animator for HHMI. I have been lucky enough to create animations for some of the worlds leading scientists including Stuart Schreiber, Huda Zoghbi, Eric Lander, and Nobel Laurate Tom Cech. Most of these animations are available on-line at a web site we created called BioInteractive.

In 2004 I published my first magazine tutorial in Highend Magazine Magazine on how to import and render macromolecular data in Maya. Since then I have published several more less scientific, but no less nerdy, tutorials in HDRI 3D Magazine.

At the end of February, 2005, my wife Zoe and I packed up the dogs and all our stuff and moved from Washington, DC to West Hollywood, CA.

I have contributed several chapters to Mastering Maya 7 (and subsequently Mastering maya 8.5 which is mostly an updtae to the book.) I have just completed my first solo bok Maya Visual Effects: The Innovators Guide which will be released in March 2007. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or concerns about this book.

Vists my website at www.bloopatone.com to see my current work. I have several tutorials on my website as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thinking about old tools in new ways... Highly recommended, April 5, 2007

By 

Gael McGill (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide (Paperback)

It's rare to find a book that challenges you to think creatively about Maya's incredible toolset - this was definitely a pleasant surprise in that regard! "Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide" does not aim to replace the "Maya 101" books out there, but instead tackles something infinitely more interesting: how to adapt and use Maya's expansive toolset to create novel effects. As the author says in the intro: "Every tool in Maya has three or four common uses, and about a billion possibilities for uncommon solutions" - this pretty much sums up the premise of the whole book. Particle collisions grow Paint Effects strokes - particles are used to control cameras. A skeleton controls a lattice that controls a blendshape sequence... you get the idea: not your typical, vanilla-flavor "let's make a walk-cycle" or "model a race car." Not saying those aren't important, but it's refreshing to pick up a book that doesn't rehash those same topics. Instead it does a masterful job at suggesting novel ways to put these common tools to work.

The "Innovator's Guide" also happens to be written in a very approachable, friendly and enjoyable tone - the author had a good time coming up with the concepts and writing about them, and it shows. You won't be bored as you work through this material. You also won't be frustrated: the tutorials are cleanly laid out and, as a non-programmer, I also thought the MEL examples were excellent - thorough and well explained (clearly some thought went into the technical editing). Every tutorial is also presented in the context of a production environment - every project starts with an imaginary "art-director" who challenges us to create a specific visual. Even if you are NOT actually part of such a team-oriented work environment, it's fun and useful to be thinking in those terms. Many of the book's tutorials have an emphasis on building flexibility into your workflow and the final implemented project... indeed, the art director often changes his/her mind (in the book, but also in the real world)!

In the end, having been through much of the Gnomon & Digital Tutors DVD collections (which are excellent), it's pretty safe to say that this book covers different ground. It leaves you with more of a 'philosophy' to approaching problem-solving in Maya... something I hadn't encountered anywhere else. In short, I highly recommend it to anyone who not only wants to take their Maya skills to "the next level" but, more importantly, who is interested in thinking about old tools in new ways. A guaranteed great buy.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for taking your next steps in Maya, March 27, 2007

By 

Kamal Hatami (Westwood, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide (Paperback)

I consider this book to be a rare find. An instructional Maya book that knows exactly who it's for, and the writing reflects that. By this I mean, that certain things the book assumes the reader understands and knows about, and it does not bog itself down with explaining all of that vocabulary. However, every time a tutorial asked me to do something I wasn't quite sure why I was doing (often to do with MEL), the very next paragraph would explain what I had just done, and how to manipulate it for purposes other then just that of the tutorials.
I'm a professional working in the field of motion graphics, and it is nice to see a book dealing with cool effects that can be achieved through Maya, instead of another book on character modeling / rigging/ texturing / animation. The approach is quite innovative as well, as all of the projects are presented as problems in a production environment. Some you get to start from scratch, some you have to jump into an already created scene, and most have serious time constraint. There is also an emphasis on flexibility, this is really important, as in Maya there is more often then not many ways to achieve an effect, but this book offers many short cuts to get effects done fast, and in a way that would be easy to implement changes.
I would recommend this book to most Maya users, if you are truly a beginner, get up to speed else where and then get this book. Besides broadening ones understating of what all these Maya nodes can be used for (I myself am looking at the hypershade in a whole new light), the tutorial are really cool, and fun. The book itself is written in a pretty funny tone.
Lastly, though I'm not sure it is this books intention, it is a good introduction to MEL. I use to be quite scared of it, and would end up doing tidious busy work as a result, but this book is helping me get over this phobia.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique find, April 1, 2007

By 

Zach Paul (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide (Paperback)

I just got this book and couldn't be happier. Not only does it cover the topics and concepts that nothing else does, but it does so in an entertaining manner. The author does a great job of explaining the why behind the what, something that many books don't cover, leaving the reader guessing why they just set this paramater to 30 and checked that box.
This is definately not a book for beginners, though. Without a firm grasp on Maya's fundamentals and core concepts, this book will probably sit on a shelf collecting dust. I would strongly reccommend going through "The Special Effects Handbook" cover to cover to get a good handle on those concepts, expecially Maya's dynamics.
Also, many of the tutorials in this book rely heavily on expressions and/or mel scripting, and this book is not a great intro to that. But if you are looking for something to guide your mind into developing good problem solving skills, this book is an essential.