Trying to learn Maya programming from the documentation can be daunting whether or not you are a programmer. The first edition of MEL Scripting for Maya Animators earned the reputation as the best introductory book on MEL, Mayas scripting language. Now fully revised and updated, the second edition also includes new features, such as a discussion of global procedures, new chapters on fixing programming bottlenecks, advanced user interface techniques, and optimizing character rigs. New chapters on utility nodes and Maya’s Web Panel feature provide new ideas on how to use MEL in applications. This new edition has kept the popular style of the first edition that offered very clear explanations of programming concepts to those without programming experience. A generous collection of code examples and Maya scene files is included on the companion Web site. This is a book for animators, artists, game developers, visual effects developers, and technical directors who want to learn the fundamentals of Maya, how to automate tasks, personalize user interfaces, build custom tools, and solve problems with MEL.

* Fully updated with several new chapters.
* Profusely illustrated and includes a companion Web site with numerous code examples and scene files.
* The authors bring their extensive experience in professional production studios to provide expert guidance.

Great book for starters to MEL

Actually, this is the second time I buy this book, I bought it for one of my friend who has just started to learn MEL.

The book will bring you to mid level very soon. I liked the examples at the end, where you learn how to code a simple crowd simulation system with obstacle avoidance.

It is a good book, I absolutely offer this book to everybody just started to learn MEL (not just for animators).

Pretty Darn Good

I am still reading the book, but in terms of whether it is what it is advertised, yes it is very informative on the subject of MEL Scripting.

the chapters are in a very logical sequence, and each chapter leaves you satisfied that you wont have to go somewhere else to learn more.

i am also confident that the book will suppliment my 3d rigging and animation ability and allow me to do much more with much less..

my desk-side reference

I have both the first and second editions. Very helpful for reference for the more seasoned user, and a great cover-to-cover for the beginner. Well written and easy to follow. Now, can we get one for Python?

Where are the scripts???

If you release a second edition you need to support a second edition, that includes the publisher’s website and the downloadable scripts that go with the book....this book is okay, but who has time to type in all of the sample scripts to learn. For not including the scripts I give it a 2.

All in all good book,BUT

Reading the book cover to cover, I found myself obligated to write a review here about it .

I will divide my review to Good and Bad



The bad:

This book is DEFINTLY not for animators, means, it’s for programmers, if you are an art person and never seen or heard about programming, this book will be very difficult to learn.



Second. a LOT OF errors!! And I don’t mean errors on the text, if you download the files in the site(which should be updated) they contain a lot of bugs!! some times while reading it, I found myself debugging the author CODE!! Outrages!



Third, some of the chapters are not in place!, for example the author start in chapter one using all sorts of parameters and varibale,but only in chapter six he bothers to explain about them



Forth, as mentioned earlier there are chapters on vectors, recursive functions and more, this is for sure not for beginners, and for sure not for persons with out some math background or programming background

.

Fifth, there is to much examples on the GUI and less examples on practical things, like moving particles and stuff( there is some of it , but few..)This is sad because some of the examples the author does write are very good.



The good

This is basically the only book on MEL, and if you are joining a big team and you have some background in programming and some mat skills, you will find it very interesting because not only the author explain code, his examples are interesting, cover most of the basics in the studio needs, and some of the tips he is giving during the book worth gold, he explain many times how to work in group, how to program to someone else and what to think about before you even start to program, it can easily be seen that the person who wrote it work in the subj .

All in all a good book to start , but in some point t it missing the point

lengthy chapters with no actual code or explaining any useful things

It seems as if the author try to catch it all...

To explain things to beginners while giving advice for novice programmers...

All in all good book,BUT

Reading the book cover to cover, I found myself obligated to write a review here about it .
I will divide my review to Good and Bad

The bad:
This book is DEFINTLY not for animators, means, it’s for programmers, if you are an art person and never seen or heard about programming, this book will be very difficult to learn.

Second. a LOT OF errors!! And I don’t mean errors on the text, if you download the files in the site(which should be updated) they contain a lot of bugs!! some times while reading it, I found myself debugging the author CODE!! Outrages!

Third, some of the chapters are not in place!, for example the author start in chapter one using all sorts of parameters and varibale,but only in chapter six he bothers to explain about them

Forth, as mentioned earlier there are chapters on vectors, recursive functions and more, this is for sure not for beginners, and for sure not for persons with out some math background or programming background
.
Fifth, there is to much examples on the GUI and less examples on practical things, like moving particles and stuff( there is some of it , but few..)This is sad because some of the examples the author does write are very good.

The good
This is basically the only book on MEL, and if you are joining a big team and you have some background in programming and some mat skills, you will find it very interesting because not only the author explain code, his examples are interesting, cover most of the basics in the studio needs, and some of the tips he is giving during the book worth gold, he explain many times how to work in group, how to program to someone else and what to think about before you even start to program, it can easily be seen that the person who wrote it work in the subj .
All in all a good book to start , but in some point t it missing the point
lengthy chapters with no actual code or explaining any useful things
It seems as if the author try to catch it all...
To explain things to beginners while giving advice for novice programmers...

Great Book!

Not only is this giving you a look at MEL scripting but it is also giving you a course in programming itself. I feel so much more comfortable with Maya now because of the fact I am learning the inner workings of the application. It’s almost like learning Flash Actionscripting, you are only scratching the surface if you are just doing basic tweening and moving objects around the screen. Once you learn the scripting side of things, that’s when your ability grows beyond basic use of the application.

You want to learn MEL, this is your book

Well, I had little experience using MEL scripting for Maya, so picking up this book was what I figured, an excellent way to learn. From the first few chapters, I was already starting to create experimental scripts. This is an excellent book for anyone looking to learn the down and dirty with Maya. Lots of detail and examples to help get you creating your own tools and scripts.

Great for getting going

This book did a lot for getting me rolling on Mel. I found though, that even still, I had to do a lot of question asking of people I knew that know MEL. As is the case with most books on topics so complicated, it has a little trouble in the "why" and "would be applied to..." areas, but overall, it is a great buy, and the best resource available for those mentioned in the title. Do you animate? Want to learn about MEL? Pick it up.

Excellent Tutorial and Reference

This book is a very clear introduction to the mel scripting language. Often a user will need or want to explore mel to get the most out of Maya, to speed up workflow, repeat tasks more quickly, or achieve complex actions difficult to do in the GUI alone. Those users with programming experience will have little difficulty understanding mel fundamentals from the documentation included with Maya, but those with little or no previous programming experience will have a tough time learning from the documentation alone. Now Maya users of all levels of experience can gain the benefits of mel through the concepts presented in this book, in the form of detailed explanations and dozens of example scipts.
Mark Wilkins and Chris Kazmier have writen an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn mel and get the most out of Maya. I highly recommend it.