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Added 24 Nov 04 Updated 07 Sep 08
Publisher McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Publication Date 2004-06-28
Paperback - 642 Pages
ISBN 0072227184
Learn From the Maya Experts Who Create Special Effects for Today?s Blockbuster Movies
Discover how to use Maya to produce brilliant, believable content for film and TV, video games, Web design, and print. Maya instructors and special effects gurus Meade and Arima will show you everything you need to know to master Maya. Learn the entire production pipeline from easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you master modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, post-production, and much more.
- Quickly understand core concepts of 3D production, and navigate the Maya interface
- Create movement with path, nonlinear, or procedural animation, and use dynamics to run simulations of natural phenomena to create animation
- Add realism with texturing, lighting, and rendering
- Build controls to help you easily maneuver skeletons
- Model hard surfaces and organic forms with NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces
- Apply post-production compositing applications such as After Effects, Combustion, and Shake
CD-ROM includes usable sample files that enhance the book?s tutorials
Tom Meade is a full-time Maya Instructor at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has created 3D illustrations for Wired magazine and worked on numerous interactive CD-ROM games. For the past three years Meade has worked at 3D/FX training firm dvGarage, building video-based training products for the 3D market.
Shinsaku Arima is a Maya instructor and Visual FX artist. As a Trainer and Technical Director with ESC Entertainment, he did FX work on The Matrix: Revolutions. As FX Technical Director at The Orphanage, he has worked on The Day After Tomorrow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Alex Lindsay has worked in computer graphics for nearly 20 years. He did FX work on Star Wars: Episode I (at JAK Films and Industrial Light and Magic). Currently he is the Chief Architect of the Pixel Corps, a guild of media artists.
Learn From the Maya Experts Who Create Special Effects for Today?s Blockbuster Movies
Discover how to use Maya to produce brilliant, believable content for film and TV, video games, Web design, and print. Maya instructors and special effects gurus Meade and Arima will show you everything you need to know to master Maya. Learn the entire production pipeline from easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you master modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, post-production, and much more.
- Quickly understand core concepts of 3D production, and navigate the Maya interface
- Create movement with path, nonlinear, or procedural animation, and use dynamics to run simulations of natural phenomena to create animation
- Add realism with texturing, lighting, and rendering
- Build controls to help you easily maneuver skeletons
- Model hard surfaces and organic forms with NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces
- Apply post-production compositing applications such as After Effects, Combustion, and Shake
CD-ROM includes usable sample files that enhance the book?s tutorials
Tom Meade is a full-time Maya Instructor at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has created 3D illustrations for Wired magazine and worked on numerous interactive CD-ROM games. For the past three years Meade has worked at 3D/FX training firm dvGarage, building video-based training products for the 3D market.
Shinsaku Arima is a Maya instructor and Visual FX artist. As a Trainer and Technical Director with ESC Entertainment, he did FX work on The Matrix: Revolutions. As FX Technical Director at The Orphanage, he has worked on The Day After Tomorrow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Alex Lindsay has worked in computer graphics for nearly 20 years. He did FX work on Star Wars: Episode I (at JAK Films and Industrial Light and Magic). Currently he is the Chief Architect of the Pixel Corps, a guild of media artists.
Learn From the Maya Experts Who Create Special Effects for Today’s Blockbuster Movies
Discover how to use Maya to produce brilliant, believable content for film and TV, video games, Web design, and print. Maya instructors and special effects gurus Meade and Arima will show you everything you need to know to master Maya. Learn the entire production pipeline from easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you master modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, post-production, and much more.
- Quickly understand core concepts of 3D production, and navigate the Maya interface
- Create movement with path, nonlinear, or procedural animation, and use dynamics to run simulations of natural phenomena to create animation
- Add realism with texturing, lighting, and rendering
- Build controls to help you easily maneuver skeletons
- Model hard surfaces and organic forms with NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces
- Apply post-production compositing applications such as After Effects, Combustion, and Shake
CD-ROM includes usable sample files that enhance the book’s tutorials
Tom Meade is a full-time Maya Instructor at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has created 3D illustrations for Wired magazine and worked on numerous interactive CD-ROM games. For the past three years Meade has worked at 3D/FX training firm dvGarage, building video-based training products for the 3D market.
Shinsaku Arima is a Maya instructor and Visual FX artist. As a Trainer and Technical Director with ESC Entertainment, he did FX work on The Matrix: Revolutions. As FX Technical Director at The Orphanage, he has worked on The Day After Tomorrow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Alex Lindsay has worked in computer graphics for nearly 20 years. He did FX work on Star Wars: Episode I (at JAK Films and Industrial Light and Magic). Currently he is the Chief Architect of the Pixel Corps, a guild of media artists.
Learn From the Maya Experts Who Create Special Effects for Today’s Blockbuster Movies
Discover how to use Maya to produce brilliant, believable content for film and TV, video games, Web design, and print. Maya instructors and special effects gurus Meade and Arima will show you everything you need to know to master Maya. Learn the entire production pipeline from easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you master modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, post-production, and much more.
- Quickly understand core concepts of 3D production, and navigate the Maya interface
- Create movement with path, nonlinear, or procedural animation, and use dynamics to run simulations of natural phenomena to create animation
- Add realism with texturing, lighting, and rendering
- Build controls to help you easily maneuver skeletons
- Model hard surfaces and organic forms with NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces
- Apply post-production compositing applications such as After Effects, Combustion, and Shake
CD-ROM includes usable sample files that enhance the book’s tutorials
Tom Meade is a full-time Maya Instructor at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has created 3D illustrations for Wired magazine and worked on numerous interactive CD-ROM games. For the past three years Meade has worked at 3D/FX training firm dvGarage, building video-based training products for the 3D market.
Shinsaku Arima is a Maya instructor and Visual FX artist. As a Trainer and Technical Director with ESC Entertainment, he did FX work on The Matrix: Revolutions. As FX Technical Director at The Orphanage, he has worked on The Day After Tomorrow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Alex Lindsay has worked in computer graphics for nearly 20 years. He did FX work on Star Wars: Episode I (at JAK Films and Industrial Light and Magic). Currently he is the Chief Architect of the Pixel Corps, a guild of media artists.
Learn From the Maya Experts Who Create Special Effects for Today’s Blockbuster Movies
Discover how to use Maya to produce brilliant, believable content for film and TV, video games, Web design, and print. Maya instructors and special effects gurus Meade and Arima will show you everything you need to know to master Maya. Learn the entire production pipeline from easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you master modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, post-production, and much more.
- Quickly understand core concepts of 3D production, and navigate the Maya interface
- Create movement with path, nonlinear, or procedural animation, and use dynamics to run simulations of natural phenomena to create animation
- Add realism with texturing, lighting, and rendering
- Build controls to help you easily maneuver skeletons
- Model hard surfaces and organic forms with NURBS, polygons, and subdivision surfaces
- Apply post-production compositing applications such as After Effects, Combustion, and Shake
CD-ROM includes usable sample files that enhance the book’s tutorials
Tom Meade is a full-time Maya Instructor at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He has created 3D illustrations for Wired magazine and worked on numerous interactive CD-ROM games. For the past three years Meade has worked at 3D/FX training firm dvGarage, building video-based training products for the 3D market.
Shinsaku Arima is a Maya instructor and Visual FX artist. As a Trainer and Technical Director with ESC Entertainment, he did FX work on The Matrix: Revolutions. As FX Technical Director at The Orphanage, he has worked on The Day After Tomorrow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Alex Lindsay has worked in computer graphics for nearly 20 years. He did FX work on Star Wars: Episode I (at JAK Films and Industrial Light and Magic). Currently he is the Chief Architect of the Pixel Corps, a guild of media artists.
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I’m an animation student and I first come across this book at my school’s library. As soon as I started to go through it, I decided to buy it. All the 3D software books I had seen before taught me nothing; either way too basic or way too advanced. This book covers most of the software, it explains things well and it’s organized. It’s definitely worth having.
My professor had us buy this book for class only to end up having to pass us alternate tutorial handouts and video trainers to learn the right way. This has got to be one of the most frustrating instructional handbooks I’ve had. I agree with others who have mentioned gaps and missing procedures in some of the projects as well as unclear instructions of how to use certain functions. Others may be too generous to give this book a higher rating but have agreed that this is not for beginners. Please do yourself a favor and get the Alias foundation books instead.
This book is an amazing book to get started with MAYA, even if you have quite a bit of experience, it’s still extensive. However, there are lots of mistakes about where to find the commands in the menus and it can be very frustrating to work through the tutorials and not find the commands.
I won’t mince words. If you are relatively new to Maya, do not buy this book! Even if you are an experienced user, I would imagine it would be a waste of money. Very early in the book, I found myself becoming quite frustrated while attempting the tutorials as steps are missing or are just flat out wrong! I’m relatively new to Maya, but even I can recognize mistakes in the text. I’m cutting my losses and not continuing with the book as see a losing battle ahead. If there are problems with the simple, introductory tutorials, I can only imagine the headaches involved with the more advanced tutorials. Given the glaring errors in the text, I seriously wonder whether or not anyone bothered to proofread it!
Save yourself some money and pass on this book. I would not buy newer versions either unless the authors take some time to do a major overhaul of the text.
Great book. It seems to answer all those little questions you have, when you’re in mid project, that you just couldn’t find. So far, and I am a novice, I am progressing nicely thanks to this book. I would recommend Maya 6 to anyone who is just starting out; obviously I can’t gage a higher skilled persons’ needs but I would imagine that it would be an invaluable resource to anyone.
I am somewhat disapointed in the reviews I read on this book. If theres one book to buy on Maya, this is it. I went through the tutorals in Maya foundation 6 when I took a class on maya in college. The foundation books by alias is great if you wanna know how a model was put together but it lacks the learning curve, The nuts & bolts. What you get in the foundation is a introduction to different types of geometry (b-slines, subs, polys).
"The complete reference maya 6" takes it a step further & really makes use of maya ability. Yes! I will say for a beginner this book will through you off. For example when the author gets into curves, you get your hands dirty patching/stitching the model where in the foundation book you stick to the basics. The aurthor shows you in the maya 6 reference book what to keep your eye on while building geometry which you will not find or at least I have not found in anyother book on maya. Modeling is easy, its modeling good that fits the bill & this book will show you the right way early on. You also get into HDR rendering, using reflections, production for those interested in taking there work into some video software. I would not suggest this book for the person who has never worked in maya even though you get the basics in the first few chapters. Once you get to the modeling part, it will throw you off without some know how of what is possible with modeling. For those that have the foundation book, this book maya 6 reference will fill in all those questions you had while working the tuoral book. I would also suggest "the art of maya" to add to your maya collection. For me I am waiting for the maya 7 update to this book, out of all my maya books I must say this book stands tall. Ohya, if you buy this book based on reviews, your selling yourself short. Buy it, if you dont like it by gosh you can always send it back for a refund. GOOD LUCK
Finally a reference for those of us who have come from another 3D application and/or have already filled the shelves with beginner MAYA books! I own nearly every Maya book and training DVD available and this text is one of the best. It DOES operate under a few assumptions, however, by doing so this allows the author to delve in deeper than if he had held your hand through pages of basic concepts. There is a plethera of newbie books out there that spoon feed the reader tons of features using the default settings. In this book Meade (the author) rolls up his sleeves and shows you the work habits used in todays industry which is very rare. There is a reason why alot of other books dont cover the material at this level:
A. They dont understand the package enough to go into detail.
B. They dont want you to know!
Grab this book and trust the information thats in there...its not student answers to industry questions but instead FOR ONCE its the other way around.
I use this book in my 3D Modeling classes. It presents the concepts of Maya very well, but the tutorials have many errors making the experience of learning Maya frustrating. In my classes, I’m now able to point out the errors ahead of time, but the firt time we used this book, working through the errors was very discouraging for the students. By contast, the Alias Learning Tools books have error-free tutorials - so writing good tutorials can be done. Maya is a complex program and any book written to teach such a program should have flawless tutorials - a problem I have find with many techncal books.
I was going nuts, losing hair, etc etc. Read on. I am a fairly bright guy, especially in the world of computer design, so I have decided to tackle the monster that is maya. Having done so, I poured through a couple of beginner books, and I could tell they just scratched the surface... so I purchased this book. At an extended glance in the book store, this book was promising. Nicely printed pages, good examples, good formatting, CD with tutorial files, etc.
But then I started working through it, systematically. Generally, the structure is: a chapter describing the theory, then a chapter with extensive tutorials.
the first type of chapter, the theoretical brand, is where this book lies on solid ground. This book goes into more depth than others on HOW things work, not just showing you why they work.
But then you get to the tutorials and new concepts are thrown at you, things are poorly described, sentences are literally cut off and half missing... and worse than anything, some of the tutorial steps are just flat out wrong. EVEN more than that, as mentioned above, the files referenced to on the tutorial CD are either missing or named differently. If you open one of THEIR projects from the tutorial CD, maya wont even find THEIR stuff.
The worst for me right now is chapter 14, texturing. I literally had to disect their tutorial file and my own file created based on their step by step description to see why my nice floor tile texture looked like a fuzzy mess. Well, it turned out that at least 7 steps that I have counted so far are don’t match up with THEIR OWN file. The instructions are just flat out wrong. The file names to the bitmap textures are all wrong. And sometimes they tell you to name a node something, and then two sentences later refer to that node with a different name then they TOLD you to name it.
It made me feel stupid, like I was doing something wrong, when all along I was fighting a losing battle.
This book has great potential to rock, sadly it doesn’t. Hopefully they’ll come out with a Maya 6.5 update... but I feel ripped, I want my money back.
This book is salvagable in a 2nd edition. Objectives and topics need to be consolidated and highlighted at the beginning of each chapter and not scattered throughout poorly reviewed tutorials. Many tutorials need rework (significant rework) before they can pass muster.
I have five years professional experience in 3D production and three plus years with Maya. I do not agree that this book succeeds in its mission, nor do I agree this book fails completely. Rather, I will say the book needs professional review and until that happens it should not be defended as a worthwhile text.
I lent this book to a co-worker and he complained that he could not get through the tutorials in several chapters. We sat down, discussed the authors’ probable intent, and then went to the steps in the tutorials that my co-worker highlighted. As we struggled with the tutorials it became clear to me that the authors were not connecting with their audience, that they had failed to preview their intentions in the tutorials, and that the tutiorals were significantly flawed. I told him to forget it and to stick with the videos we have in-house.
Perhaps the print format is the problem, but if you are going to do a book, then do it right. Wait for the 2nd edition.
First off, I haven’t heard this much complaining since Family Guy was taken off the air. The bottom line is that this book is solid. It offers more information on Maya cover to cover the any other book of its type that I’ve seen. I read all these complanits from what I can only assume to be first time Maya Users who are getting frustrated with Maya. Join the club. You need to understand the Maya is extremely comlex and difficult to learn, period. This difficulty is even clearly stated in this books introduction. Maya is not the type of thing that you can just play around on here and there and learn over a few hours or weeks. I’de compare it to learning foreign language.
As a student, i find this book to be extremely helpful because no matter what I am working on, it has a lot to offer on the topic. Additionally, this book hits on some power user functions of Maya that you don;t easily come across such as: Hard surface patch modeling techniques/ Character control rigs / Advanced connections in the hypershade to achieve realistic looking results/ image based modeling techniques / creating render batch scripts / and .. rendering and compositing multiple passes for fine control over image quality. Also, the Dynamics section is awesome, offering tips on explosions, particles/emitters, and a real cool way to do crowd simulations.
I have used other Maya books like Maya Foundations and Fundamentals which are great at showing you the basics. This book is the next step; it assumes you know some basics, and pushes you to think and stat to really understand how Maya works. It pushes you past those simple tutorials that only have you there to punch numbers in, it makes you think.
Yeah, the Spaceship tutorial is difficult, but, anyone who knows NURBS Patch Modeling, knows that it is very difficult and requires a lot of pre-planning, trial and error, and practice.
So, i highly recommend this book to anyone who is actually serious about learning maya, not just completely tutorials. Thats the simplest way I can desribe it, if you wanna rush through a tutorial and end up with a shady looking boat, buy Maya Foundations, if you want to start pushing yourself to actually learn something, like a technique, and are serious about 3D, then this book is a must in your collection.
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