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Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C++ API (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)
 
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Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C++ API (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) (Paperback)

~ David Gould (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

List Price: $66.95
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Frequently Bought Together

Complete Maya Programming: An Extensive Guide to MEL and C++ API (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) + Complete Maya Programming Volume II, Volume 2: An In-depth Guide to 3D Fundamentals, Geometry, and Modeling (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) + MEL Scripting for Maya Animators, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)
Price For All Three: $99.52

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"David's book is an excellent learning tool for Maya developers."—Tracy Narine, Maya API Technical Lead, Alias -- Review


Review

"David's book is an excellent learning tool and reference for novice and veteran Maya developers alike. Maya developers can become more productive with MEL and the Maya API by applying what they learn from this book." -Tracy Narine, Maya API Technical Lead, Alias

"David Gould is an expert at using, programming, and teaching Maya, and it shows. People who need to program Maya will find this book essential. Even Maya users who don't intend to do extensive programming should read this book for a better understanding of what's going on under the hood. Compact yet thorough, it covers both MEL and the C++ API, and is written to be informative for both novice and expert programmers. Highly recommended!" -Larry Gritz, Exluna/NVIDIA, co-author of Advanced RenderMan

"This book should be required reading for all Maya programmers, novice and expert alike. For the novice, it provides a thorough and wonderfully well thought-out hands-on tutorial and introduction to Maya. The book's greatest contribution, however, is that in it David shares his deep understanding of Maya's fundamental concepts and architecture, so that even the expert can learn to more effectively exploit Maya's rich and powerful programming interfaces." -Philip J. Schneider, Disney Feature Animation, co-author of Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics

"Having provided a technical review of David Gould's Complete Maya Programming, I must say that this book is the definitive text for scripting and plug-in development for Maya. Never before has there been such a concise and clearly written guide to programming for Maya. Any user smart enough to pick up this book would be better off for it." -Chris Rock, technical director at "a Large Animation Studio in Northern California"

"If you ever wanted to open the Maya toolbox, this is your guide. With clear step-by-step instructions, you will soon be able to customize and improve the application, as well as create your own extensions, either through the MEL scripting language or the full C++ API." -Christophe Hery, Industrial Light & Magic

Product Details

  • Paperback: 528 pages
  • Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1 edition (January 2, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1558608354
  • ISBN-13: 978-1558608351
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #414,510 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

More About the Author

David A. D. Gould
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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Crisp, Clear and almost Complete, January 14, 2003
By Kolja Erman (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
Finally a decent documentation for Maya MEL/API programmers. Maya's own manuals are comparably lousy and the meager information available to newbies has to be verified and expanded during years of tedious trial and error programming. Most people simply follow in the footsteps of senior programmer colleagues who had to figure everything out for themselves and thus help propagate a culture of continuously reinforced bad code writing habits that do not make effective use of the full range of available tools. Especially the chapters on MEL and Expression writing are simple, clearly structured and easy to understand. The same can be said for the chapters on the Maya API, however, while the MEL and Expression sections do indeed warrant the use of the word Complete in the book's title the API section does not. I would have hoped for more information about some of the more exotic node types such as Shaders or Tool Contexts etc... This is where the Maya manuals fall short and where the book could have jumped in. However, with the book clarifying most fundamental aspects and structures of the API that missing information can be worked out by a skilled programmer. I'm glad I purchased this book and it will serve me well as a reference manual for both MEL and the API. Note to beginners: this book is not a fullblown tutorial but seems to be halfway between a tutorial and a reference manual. However, I've barely received my copy and I'm already considering it indispensible. My thanks to Mr. Gould!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Complete Maya Programming, December 2, 2006
You can indeed learn more by pressing F1 on Maya itself. The C++ API part (the one I was interested in) is really short and the examples rather simple (you can read it all in few hours).

The book is ok, but should be called "Very Basic Introduction to MEL and C++ API" and not "An extensive guide to MEL and C++ API" at all.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Magically morphs other begginer's Maya books into doorstops, August 3, 2003
By Baruch (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews
I learned more from the first chapter of this book than from all of 'Maya Fundamentals' or 'Maya Character Animation'. If your a begginer planning on getting serious with Maya I'd recommend going through the 10 or so tutorials that come with Maya and THEN pick this book up (don't waste money on begginer's books). It elegantly expounds the real fundamentals of Maya - the fundamentals that you must know in order to really uderstand the program. Don't expect to be dazzled with the examples. This book will provide essential understanding of the most important principles of Maya - not tell you how to model or animate. After reading this small book you should be able to pick up any book that assumes technical knowledge and focuses on artistic methods of modeling, animation, texturing etc. to learn how to be a true Maya artist.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars many typos in the api section
I bought to learn the maya api--I did not use the mel section.
While this title may be one of the best maya programming books, it has
some problems, foremost of which... Read more
Published 16 months ago by paul jordan

3.0 out of 5 stars Good mostly for MEL users
The book gives you a good insight into Maya programming. The MEL part seems to be quite good, but the C++ part is organized by a couple of examples. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Joao Pedro Jorge

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book and essential for all Maya programming
I search the information about programming in Maya for weeks. This book is essential for maya programming (MEL and C++ API) and I only find it about this theme. Read more
Published on October 2, 2007 by J. Torcelly

5.0 out of 5 stars awesome
I was looking for a book that starts from basic stuff and easy to understand.
this book is a big help
Published on February 1, 2007 by Shahab Pichaghian

4.0 out of 5 stars Great buy to get you started scripting
Good book. The only book I know of that explains everything in a way that's easily understood, especially if you don't have any programming experience. Read more
Published on September 6, 2005 by Terence Jacobson

3.0 out of 5 stars Average
Covers very basic material- most of which could be read from the Maya API help anyway. What I was expecting was a book written in the "Game programming GEMS" style, where multiple... Read more
Published on May 23, 2005 by redviolin

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading
If your just starting out with Maya, this book is essential reading. Chapter 2 (which describes how Maya actually works) is worth the price of the whole book. Read more
Published on February 12, 2005 by Avid Reader

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice, very nice
Hi..The content on Mel is very basic and does not relly cover much except the basic syntax.The API part is better and the explanation of the underlying architecture is awesome,... Read more
Published on September 26, 2004 by Vijay Nair

5.0 out of 5 stars what the Maya SDK documentation left out
The documentation that comes with the Maya SDK is a great reference for individual parts of the API, but comes up short on covering the big picture of how and why everything fits... Read more
Published on August 27, 2003 by Andrew Meggs

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have book for serious maya freaks
This is book is far more better than I expected, just like the previous guy said I can't put it down, its got stuff that explained extremely well, and damn fun to read. Read more
Published on May 21, 2003 by david ying

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