Book: Learning Maya 6 | Modeling

[lumberyard]

dreamache, i was in the same spot not too long ago. i've bought a good many books on maya and found that all of them have their uses. as for video though, i've only tried a few. digital tutors has a good set of videos in which you can learn a lot. my favorite polygon modeling tutorial vid was found at www.lostpencil.com i had read how to do it a thousand times, but going through each step with the video and really seeing how things go was very helpful to me. they have a complete set of videos on the same project for like $100, but if you just want the modeling, its around 30 bucks, cant beat that with a stick, eh?
and as for the length of the poly vids, they sent me 3 cd's full of videos that play in order, and they are good quality, text readable vids. good luck!

[Dreamache]

dreamache, i was in the same spot not too long ago. i've bought a good many books on maya and found that all of them have their uses. as for video though, i've only tried a few. digital tutors has a good set of videos in which you can learn a lot. my favorite polygon modeling tutorial vid was found at www.lostpencil.com i had read how to do it a thousand times, but going through each step with the video and really seeing how things go was very helpful to me. they have a complete set of videos on the same project for like $100, but if you just want the modeling, its around 30 bucks, cant beat that with a stick, eh?
and as for the length of the poly vids, they sent me 3 cd's full of videos that play in order, and they are good quality, text readable vids. good luck!

Thanks for the response.

I just got back from Borders and I have to say, I checked out all of the Maya books and NONE of them look appealing. I even saw the Learning Maya 6 | Modeling book one there which looked blah.

Large majority were all black and white tutorials, cookie cutter tutorials. Ugh, I guess I'm being too picky ;)

However the lostpencil link you posted seems promising. The elephant looks really cool. I will do a bit more research with this and compare it against gnomon.

Thanks.

[lumberyard]

while i have not seen any gnoman vids on modeling, i have watched a few on rendering and texturing. they were very thorough and easy to understand (which doesnt account for why i cant texture map a damn thing). i would recommend gnoman dvd's if you had the wallet for them, but i can definately say that the lost pencil elephant dvd was key in my learning how to model. again though, the digital-tutors.com site has some good basic stuff, and i'm actually pretty interested in their new "humanoid android" modeling videos, so at least go over there and see what free vids you can find to get a feeling for their style.

cheers

[lumberyard]

by the way, i should say that the lostpencil project vids show you every single step taken to make the elephant, nothing is left out.

[solarflare]

I would definately recommend learning modeling from videos instead of books. Just use the Maya help and experiment a bit to figure out what each tool does, and thats about all a book can help you with. The training videos are much better since they actually show you what the person is doing.

I am a bit surprised that nothing at Gnomon or Digital-tutors would catch your eye. I guess you just don't like the end results of what they model? Because I think both sites would have some great material for learning how to model. And in the end, its not really that important what you model to learn, since once you learn it you can model whatever you want on your own =).

With that said, there are a couple more. www.3dbuzz.com (http://www.3dbuzz.com) is a great site (a must goto if you are a beginner, sign up, and they have many free videos). Most of their content is free, its very well done, and all you have to do is sign up (most of the restrictions such as actively posting on forums is no longer relevant). They have some intro material, but if you actually goto their download section, and then goto Unreal technologies, and look at Unreal Technology Issue 6, this entire issue is about modeling a low polygon character in Maya.

Also, there is a detailed modeling of a girl from reference photos in the video Advanced Maya: Character Modeling by Kenny Cooper, Jim Lammers. Look it up on Amazon.com. I have found it helpful (but have only gone through the first couple of hours).

[Remi]

Maya Character Animation Second Edition by Jae-jin Choi worked for me when I was learning maya. It's got it's cons but it also helped me to learn how to work through problems. I don't like it when everything is just laid out for you...it doesn't teach you to solve problems you may encounter when you start diving into making your own characters. It's a great book and covers everthing from Modeling, Rigging, and Animation Techs. Of course this is just my opinion....lost pencil does rock....no doubt about that.

[stewartjones]

I agree, learn your stuff from vidz! Makes life a lot easier!

As for the book Learning Maya 6: Modeling. I wouldn't advise it, I purchased it, and really didnt find it too useful at all!

[Nolan]

You can view the table of contents and a sample chapter from Learning Maya 6 | Modeling at the Alias web site.


Bottom left hand corner.
http://www.alias.com/eng/products-services/learningtools/details.jhtml?id=12

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