"The best character animation book available."
--Ian Cairns, Editor, MAYA Association

This second edition of the popular Maya Character Animation is an in-depth, step-by-step guide to perfecting your modeling and animation skills. Abundantly illustrated tutorials teach you how to build life-like characters from the ground up, with detailed coverage of effective subdivision surface and polygon modeling techniques. You’ll master the intricacies of rigid and smooth character binding, discover the art of convincing facial expressions, and conquer post-modeling challenges ranging from character setup to non-linear animation editing to mapping and rendering. Benefit from this edition’s coverage of inverse and forward kinematics, 3D character animation for character modeling and character setup, and valuable info on rigging your characters.

Put your new skills to the test by completing a realistic project in which you plan, create, and refine your own short-piece animation. Throughout, you’ll find hundreds of full-color images that demonstrate what you can--and will--accomplish. You also get bonus coverage of Deep Paint 3D, the premier texture-painting program.

"The best character animation book available."
––Ian Cairns, Editor, MAYA Association

This second edition of the popular Maya Character Animation is an in–depth, step–by–step guide to perfecting your modeling and animation skills. Abundantly illustrated tutorials teach you how to build life–like characters from the ground up, with detailed coverage of effective subdivision surface and polygon modeling techniques. You′ll master the intricacies of rigid and smooth character binding, discover the art of convincing facial expressions, and conquer post–modeling challenges ranging from character setup to non–linear animation editing to mapping and rendering. Benefit from this edition′s coverage of inverse and forward kinematics, 3D character animation for character modeling and character setup, and valuable info on rigging your characters.

Put your new skills to the test by completing a realistic project in which you plan, create, and refine your own short–piece animation. Throughout, you′ll find hundreds of full–color images that demonstrate what you can––and will––accomplish. You also get bonus coverage of Deep Paint 3D, the premier texture–painting program.

 "The best character animation book available."
—Ian Cairns, Editor, MAYA Association

This second edition of the popular Maya Character Animation is an in-depth, step-by-step guide to perfecting your modeling and animation skills. Abundantly illustrated tutorials teach you how to build life-like characters from the ground up, with detailed coverage of effective subdivision surface and polygon modeling techniques. You’ll master the intricacies of rigid and smooth character binding, discover the art of convincing facial expressions, and conquer post-modeling challenges ranging from character setup to non-linear animation editing to mapping and rendering. Benefit from this edition’s coverage of inverse and forward kinematics, 3D character animation for character modeling and character setup, and valuable info on rigging your characters.

Put your new skills to the test by completing a realistic project in which you plan, create, and refine your own short-piece animation. Throughout, you’ll find hundreds of full-color images that demonstrate what you can—and will—accomplish. You also get bonus coverage of Deep Paint 3D, the premier texture-painting program.

"The best character animation book available."
--Ian Cairns, Editor, MAYA Association

This second edition of the popular Maya Character Animation is an in-depth, step-by-step guide to perfecting your modeling and animation skills. Abundantly illustrated tutorials teach you how to build life-like characters from the ground up, with detailed coverage of effective subdivision surface and polygon modeling techniques. You’ll master the intricacies of rigid and smooth character binding, discover the art of convincing facial expressions, and conquer post-modeling challenges ranging from character setup to non-linear animation editing to mapping and rendering. Benefit from this edition’s coverage of inverse and forward kinematics, 3D character animation for character modeling and character setup, and valuable info on rigging your characters.

Put your new skills to the test by completing a realistic project in which you plan, create, and refine your own short-piece animation. Throughout, you’ll find hundreds of full-color images that demonstrate what you can--and will--accomplish. You also get bonus coverage of Deep Paint 3D, the premier texture-painting program.

Crappy book

This was book had boring tutorials and confusing wording. I learned more thru CG talk or Highend 3d sites. not worth it.

Does not cover character animation to any significant degree

I bought this book because I wanted to learn how to animate a character, as the title suggests. However, the book is more of a general reference of how to model, rig, skin, and create a character rather than animate a character.

For example, it covers nothing about making a character move in a believable way, how to use the character controls effectively, or any suggestions on a good animation workflow (such as blocking in, then converting to spline keys).

At the end of reading it you will have a fully created and rigged character but still not know how to animate it. The book should have been entitled Maya Character Creation and Rigging instead.

That said, the material is very in-depth and nicely presented for what it does cover. The title’s a bit misleading, that’s all.

This is about reference more then techniques...

Although a certain ammount of techniques are involved throughout this book, this book is one of the more complete overall references of the software. I teach various Maya courses and I recommend this book to the beginner as a solid encyclopedia type reference to use as an alternative to the sometime annoying Help which contains very good but confusing and unclear definitions and explanations. As always you will get more out of the book the more you practice with the software. I DO recommend this for beginners as there are no topics in my opinion which require more than a beginner level of skill. I think saying this book is not for beginners is total crap! If you were to sit and read an encyclopedia from cover to cover ofcourse you would be confused if you just rely on it and not practical practice with the knowledge within. I do agree that the wording gets confusing but for some of the techniques I use other ways not how he does it, because technique is 10% reason for this book I think.

Excellent, but not for beginners

I have found this to be a remarkable book which has helped me take my skills to another level. That said, if you’re starting out, you will probably be overwhelmed and frustrated for awhile. It’s less of a how-to book and more of a "looking over the shoulder of an expert" book. He illustrates how he does things and it’s pretty much up to you to experiment with the concepts/techniques and adopt them as you see fit. Thousands of pictures and full color - very beautiful book. It also extensively covers areas like rigging and deep paint, which are difficult subjects to find books about, as well as modeling and animation. But, if you’re just starting out in 3D, hold off until you have a solid foundation and good basic skills.

Full of Must Know Techniques

Though this book is quite thick it doesnt have a lot of jargon. It is easy to go through and everything it tells you is of use. Its a very good choice for anyone who is interested in the 3D animation field.

Ok. but non-native english a real minus

Look, I’m a fair-handed guy, so let me give this book an honest review.

The good to excellent:
First, the presentation is top notch. Over 850 pages of beautiful full color pages makes this book very easy on the eyes.
It comes with a CD that contains most tutorial items, which is also a plus.

And with that, the not so good.
I’m one of those aspiring MAYA guys who sits around all weekend learning this great program--I love it. So when I first tore into this book I was rife with hope. Honestly though, it’s sort of a let down. For one, this book was authored by an incredibly talented person who simply doesn’t speak English as a first language. The result is many passages that are just plain confusing.

Let me give an example. In one section Mr. Chio explains how to make a Reverse Foot. He adequately describes how to make the IK handles, but then this wonderfully confusing passages drops:
"Now make a new support joint and parent it to the support joints with the IK Handles. First of all, make the support joint in Side View as shown in Figure 7-6"

Huh? Anyone who has done this before knows this statement is like saying: "Lets make a peanut butter sandwich by getting some bread. Now lets make a peanut butter sandwich".

Examples of that caliber abound. There are also tons of spelling and usage errors, and coming from me, that’s really saying something.

Hey, it’s ok to be rough with your English, but when it comes in the form of an instructional book for one of the toughest programs around...well, you get the idea.

I also have a problem with the tutorial materials. For a book about character animation this book covers it all, but one problem is the supplied models seem to be way more complex than they have to be. For example, one model is of a man warning clothes. Not a huge deal, but when you see his mesh patterns because of the clothes and how you have to edit them to do things like painting weights and binding, it seems like overkill. Why not just a simple smooth mesh?

Lastly, I find some of the topics are covered too quickly. For example, creating and using an IK Spline Handle is covered in less than 3 pages-and that’s including 4 huge illustrations (and the fact that most of the text is just step-by-step instruction stuff). As mentioned in another review, this makes understanding this books target audience really tough. If you already know how to make IK Spline’s the section won’t do you any good. If, however, your like me and never have, your left wondering what the heck you just did.


Perhaps the best way to say it is this book is like a professor who talks really fast and covers lots of stuff, but always leaves before you get to ask any questions. In the end I feel like a `knower of lots and a master of nothing’.

No matter, one cannot deny this books ambition or scope. Yet in the end it just seems that instead of learning anything, you simply see how to do stuff, leaving you to fill in the gaps.

Ok. but non-native english a real minus

Look, I’m a fair-handed guy, so let me give this book an honest review.



The good to excellent:

First, the presentation is top notch. Over 850 pages of beautiful full color pages makes this book very easy on the eyes.

It comes with a CD that contains most tutorial items, which is also a plus.



And with that, the not so good.

I’m one of those aspiring MAYA guys who sits around all weekend learning this great program--I love it. So when I first tore into this book I was rife with hope. Honestly though, it’s sort of a let down. For one, this book was authored by an incredibly talented person who simply doesn’t speak English as a first language. The result is many passages that are just plain confusing.



Let me give an example. In one section Mr. Chio explains how to make a Reverse Foot. He adequately describes how to make the IK handles, but then this wonderfully confusing passages drops:

"Now make a new support joint and parent it to the support joints with the IK Handles. First of all, make the support joint in Side View as shown in Figure 7-6"



Huh? Anyone who has done this before knows this statement is like saying: "Lets make a peanut butter sandwich by getting some bread. Now lets make a peanut butter sandwich".



Examples of that caliber abound. There are also tons of spelling and usage errors, and coming from me, that’s really saying something.



Hey, it’s ok to be rough with your English, but when it comes in the form of an instructional book for one of the toughest programs around...well, you get the idea.



I also have a problem with the tutorial materials. For a book about character animation this book covers it all, but one problem is the supplied models seem to be way more complex than they have to be. For example, one model is of a man warning clothes. Not a huge deal, but when you see his mesh patterns because of the clothes and how you have to edit them to do things like painting weights and binding, it seems like overkill. Why not just a simple smooth mesh?



Lastly, I find some of the topics are covered too quickly. For example, creating and using an IK Spline Handle is covered in less than 3 pages-and that’s including 4 huge illustrations (and the fact that most of the text is just step-by-step instruction stuff). As mentioned in another review, this makes understanding this books target audience really tough. If you already know how to make IK Spline’s the section won’t do you any good. If, however, your like me and never have, your left wondering what the heck you just did.





Perhaps the best way to say it is this book is like a professor who talks really fast and covers lots of stuff, but always leaves before you get to ask any questions. In the end I feel like a `knower of lots and a master of nothing’.



No matter, one cannot deny this books ambition or scope. Yet in the end it just seems that instead of learning anything, you simply see how to do stuff, leaving you to fill in the gaps.

Not for the Newbie

If you’re looking for something to introduce you Maya... this ain’t it. It is however one of the most informative books I’ve found on building characters using NURBS and Subdiv modelling along with excellent sections on rigging and binding. The texturing section could use a little extra work, but for what this book does that’s just niggling. Readers should be warned that the author’s native tongue is probably not english, so there will be occasional phrasing that may read oddly. Great book for intermediate and advanced Maya users. Definitely not for the newbie.