If you get one book on Maya, this is it. | Understanding 3D Animation Using Maya (Book with CD)

Great. | Understanding 3D Animation Using Maya (Book with CD) | John Edgar Park

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	• Understanding 3D Animation Using Maya (Book with CD) John Edgar Park Springer, 2004 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Finally a book with real instructional focus!

A clear and concise exercise to understanding basic animation. As anyone who has ever used Maya can tell you, it's a HUGE program and can be overwhelming in its complexity. So many instructional books throw as much functionality of the program at you as possible, and as a result you end up walking away with only a few tricks that are often unrelated to each other in the context of seeing a project through from beginning to end. This book avoids the clutter and distractions of many of the flashier aspects of Maya and instead focuses on the information required to familiarize the reader with the basics of animation. Each chapter builds upon the knowledge acquired in the previous chapter and is reinforced by well thought out and pertinent tutorial projects.

By the end of the book you will feel ready to take on your own animation projects with confidence.

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If you get one book on Maya, this is it.

Park's book is exceptional because it has a simple, easy to follow tutorial format that has you modeling, shading, animating and rendering all in the first chapter. Each chapter builds on the last expanding the skills together as an integrated group. Maya is an awsome program that is fun work with, but its shear size can make it overwhelming for a beginner. Because of this most books either specialize in only one aspect of it, or serve as a general pictorial menu of what you can do but don't adequately tell you how. Park's book stays at just the right level so you feel excited rather than overwhelmed, and by the end you have developed a working knowledge of all the major menu sets, and you have completed a rather sophisticated animation. You can then move on to any other Maya book with confidence, or just continue working with the knowledge you've gained. You don't even have to buy Maya. It comes with a copy of Maya Personal Learning Edition on the tutorial CD.

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Great.

This is a great book to learn to understand and use Maya. It's well organized and makes you understand not only how to do it, but also why to do it. Recommended.

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Real World Instructions for Maya Users

I had long wanted to begin the process of learning Maya, but was intimidated every time I opened the damned program. John Park's book allowed me to grow past that fear and build a strong foundation in understanding the program. His instructions are easy to follow and his exercises (included on an accompanying CD) provide real world experiences for learning Maya's basics. Additionally, it is a well-rounded instruction manual that teaches about many aspects of the program (instead of a few particulars). Please buy this book, so Mr. Park is encouraged to release additional manuals!

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minimises maths underlying the graphics

Park does a skilful job of minimising the amount of maths that a newcomer to Maya needs. Or, perhaps, it is Maya that does that. Anyhow, traditional texts on graphics (think Foley and van Dam) are replete with maths. Usually matrix algebra. But also for the physics of ray tracing etc. What this book demonstrates is showing how to use Maya for many 3D graphics tasks, often without having to explicitly deal with the underlying maths. Like manipulating NURBs or single or multiple light sources. Or dealing with shading issues.

As is common nowadays in graphics texts, there are several colour plates, with cartoon characters made with Maya. Impressive functionality.

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Here is both a general guide for understanding 3-D computer graphics as well as a specific guide for learning the fundamentals of Maya: workspace, modeling, animation, shading, lighting, and rendering. Each chapter first presents an initial concept, which details a proven method, before providing hands-on tutorials and projects. This approach details how and why animation techniques work and explains how to use Maya for creating sophisticated, state-of-the-art animations. The author distills real-world experience into helpful hints and step-by-step guides for common tasks. An accompanying CD-ROM includes practice animations, case studies and additional methods.

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