What Maya book to buy?

[MasonDoran]

i was disappointed with Maya Illuminated.....its a cheap printed book....and they hardly cover rigging or animation.

They show u how to do low poly modelling and UVs....and thats about it. Go for sybex series (Peter Lee) or the fundamentals books....i have the Maya 3 book and i still use it for referance....there is more information in that book that i can use at the moment.


havent seen the the AW series yet....although i have seen Secrets of the pros and Character Rigging which are both of good quality for people beyond novic even.

[modeling-man]

COOL! thanks for the advice!
B

[lwbob]

This is from a co worker.

Stay away from "Inspired Character setup" The book is cheap. The spine will crack when you open it if you even find one that isn't cracked on the shelf. They talk about how good an idea some feature is and then don't really tell you about the feature....

[modeling-man]

Awesome. I'll be sure to steer clear of that one.
thanks!
B

[rob-beddall]

Hey!!

"Maya: character animation" is a good one. i think that is what it's called. it has a picture of a cg dude with a saxophone i think.
i do own the book i just have a very bad memory.

it only really covers high poly stuff tho. (but to get high poly animations you use low poly proxy models, so it sort of has both) but i think you can probably get it really cheap from amazon. ( i got that and Maya 4.5 savvy for £55, dunno what that would be in dollars tho.) it's worth a look for the rigging and animation. it just doesn't ever cover games stuff.

cheers!!

in fact i just noticed that you can buy maya: illuminated and maya: character animation for $80.45 from the page that you gave us a link to.

cheers!!

[MasonDoran]

I recommend "Maya 5" by New Riders....its for advanced users...they dont waste pages on getting to know the UI and go extensively(for a book that wants to do everything) into things like character setup, pipeline, Mental ray......etc etc. Heck....Mel is the first chapter.

[Fixed]

I've always been very impressed with any New Riders book I've purchased. I've found the books to be well written and straight forward enough for someone new to a particular package to get to grips with while at the same time having enough information to still be a useful reference point for the more advanced user.

No one book is going to tell you everything about every aspect of an application. However in my experience the information covers enough ground and introduces enough workflow and concepts for you to start finding your feet pretty quickly beyond the scope of the book.

Maya was a pretty big leap from Lightwave for me and I would have had a much harder time learning the basics without my well thumbed copy of "Maya 4.5 Fundamentals" to hold my hand at the beginning.

"What? I set my scene up, animate and render in the same workspace that I model in? Are you insane?" "NURBS? Thay're like metaNURBS, right?"

[anakinskywalker]

I would second the Inspired Series review. Its practically useless. The Fundamentals by new riders is excellent as is Maya 4.5 Bible - Joe Spadaro and Don Kim by Wiley

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