If you thought Angelina Jolie was responsible for Lara Croft’s curves, think again! Long before the Hollywood actress brought the Tomb Raider heroine to life, Alias’ 3D modeling software Maya was used to create the lovely Lara; Ms. Jolie simply filled in her curves! When you’re ready to start creating equally compelling characters of your own, you need this comprehensive volume! In these pages, gaming-industry veteran Antony Ward uses a combination of informative narrative, hands-on tutorials, and a slew of illustrations and screen shots to show you how to use Maya to address the most complex element of game creation-developing great characters! As you follow along, Antony uses the development of two diverse characters-a female figure and a fantastical character with outrageous proportions, wings, and a demon-like face-to demonstrate the techniques involved in modeling detailing, optimizing, texturing, rigging, binding, and animating characters with Maya. The companion CD includes lesson files, scripts, an automatic rigging tool, demo software, and more!

If you thought Angelina Jolie was responsible for Lara Croft's curves, think again! Long before the Hollywood actress brought the Tomb Raider heroine to life, Alias' 3D modeling software Maya was used to create the lovely Lara; Ms. Jolie simply filled in her curves! When you're ready to start creating equally compelling characters of your own, you need this comprehensive volume! In these pages, gaming-industry veteran Antony Ward uses a combination of informative narrative, hands-on tutorials, and a slew of illustrations and screen shots to show you how to use Maya to address the most complex element of game creation-developing great characters! As you follow along, Antony uses the development of two diverse characters-a female figure and a fantastical character with outrageous proportions, wings, and a demon-like face-to demonstrate the techniques involved in modeling detailing, optimizing, texturing, rigging, binding, and animating characters with Maya. The companion CD includes lesson files, scripts, an automatic rigging tool, demo software, and more!

Very Good Job

I have to say, this book is awesome. It taught me how to build models and understand why I am doing what I am doing. I use it all the time and hopefully he will release a new version for us folks who will outgrow this one. Covers all bases and it’s worth 2x what I paid for it...

Great Book

The book is a very clear, step-by-step of all the processes involved in making a game character leading up to the animation. The animation is covered but not in as much detail. Everything else is though, including the awesome rigging machine which comes with the book.

Its refreshing to see that someone wasnt limited by a publisher to keep the book size down, and he obviously was able to take his time really illusrating every step.

Its a great book.

very good

this is very good because it teaches step by step and it makes sense too.

I love this book.

This is my first time to write this kind of review, therefore, I don’t know how to do a good one. But what I can say for this book is it is easy to follow and the method of modeling that I have learned from it is very useful. If you can follow the tutorials patiently, you can gradually build a very good foundation of your modeling skill. ^-^.. I am looking forward for the next edition.

One of the best books for character modeling, rigging and animation

1)This book highlights some important issues in modeling & rigging that no other books bother to emphasis.

2)The accompanying CD contains very insightful scripts (that acutally works) - goodies other books only PRETEND to give.

3)It guides beginners and ease them through relatively advanced topics in character animation.

4)If you really need to achieve something in a hurry in Maya. Yes, this is the book to get.

Not just for games, but aimed at beginners

This is a good book. I was hoping for some much more indepth technical information. This is a great book for starting into maya, and character creation.

Magnificant Book!

I’ve not owned a lot of books on 3d design. This is because they are usually filled with information I can easily find online and are too expensive to justify the cost of convienience. Not the case with this book! I really felt like I was getting what I paid for and more!

Designing game characters has always been a weak point of mine. I have always wanted to learn how to create organic models that look good, and still manage to keep the geometry to a minimum.

Although Mr. Ward covers modeling two characters in this book, you’ll find that the principles you learn here can be applied to a number of different projects. I enjoyed the book and doing the projects, and managed to produce several models that I was quite pleased with afterwards.

The book shed light on many tools I was familiar with but had always been using inefficiently. I was quite pleased with the workflow of the book, and have already recommended the book to others.

I would like to thank Mr. Ward for writing such an interesting book, and sharing his knowledge with the community. I’d recommend this book to anyone who is comfortable working in Maya, and is ready to learn how to improve their modeling skills.

Learn to create characters fast and easily!

I’ve been using 3DSMAX as a hobbyist for about 5 years now and had gotten to the point where I had almost given up on trying to create a character. I had no previous experience with MAYA and from what I had heard it was complicated but after browing through the book and seeing how well Antony Ward laid things out I decided to buy it and give it a try, despite the then $70 price tag).

After spending half an hour or so on the sample character in the book I ditched the sample character and decided to follow the book’s instructions but apply them to building my own character that I’ve wanted to for some time now. By day two I had developed my OWN character following Ward’s detailed steps and never ran into a problem. Mind you I haven’t tackled texturing or rigging yet but the nodeling of the character was where I was having problems with Max.

Maya’s Vertex editing, face creation and polygon divide tools are a pleasure to work with. Not sure if I’ll ever go back to Max.

Good Book

This book is a good step-by-step process on how to create a game character model. You’ll learn a lot about 3D modeling in Maya, but for me it was too tedious, and the book doesn’t really tell you how to do it from scratch. Some times it shows you a picture and say get this. But overall it’s a really good book for intermediate users. This isn’t really a good book for beginners! The author assumes you know most of the UI for Maya 6+!

All meat, cuts out the fat.

Simply the best character book for Maya. Most character books are catered to the movie/tv production pipeline but this one really goes into detail on "game specific" aspects of Maya. Let’s face it, Maya is a daunting application. You cannot learn everything about it in one book, but what this book does so well is take a specific usage of Maya(for game character creation) and tells you everything you need to know to get a character from concept to final animation.

There’s meaty info on every page and no long-winded lectures or extranious information not relevent to gaming. I feel that this book can easily be used as a syllabus for game character creation classes.

I would never have been able to realize my models without the insight provided in this book.

-Rodney Brett
podman@rodbrett.com

great book

If you want to learn everything about game character development, buy the book!!

I’d like to say thank you to the author of this book, really you did a great job, you have also said this is your first book, and I think you are a nice man who are just opening doors for people all over the world.

Make sure this book is on your shelf!

If you have ever wanted to model a character for game design or add to a game..this book is it!
I have been modeling with Maya for a year but never really got the feel for modeling. I learned alot about the interface and the tools but never put 2 and 2 together. Ward makes this book very simple and thought out and helps you understand that things dont always have to be complicated.
Pros - If you have a decent grasp of Maya and its polygon tolls, then you can jump right in..everything from your first poly to an animated, fully rigged character with facial setup.
Cons - The only fault I saw was that it doesnt go much into a beginners stand point of Maya..you either have to know Maya or you can learn it from the Maya PLE on the provided disk.
Overall this book was a 10 outa 10 on my scale! Good stuff!