Learning Maya | Character Rigging and Animation

By Oriental Institute

Learning Maya | Character Rigging and Animation will teach you everything you need to achieve effective character set-up and animation in Maya. Developed by Alias|Wavefront Education Product... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0973005238
• ISBN13: 9780973005233
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Alias|Wavefront
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.

Customer Reviews

If you're ready for character animation, buy this book

The tutorials in this book will not only teach you everything you need to know to rig and animate characters in Maya, it can also serve as a model for a basic (if slightly heavy) rig that you can refine for your own needs as you get more experience. The Melvin character is easy to build and animate because the instructions are so clear. Also, with the included files on the CD, you can start any chapter independently of any other. If, for example, you want to skip rigging and go right to smooth skinning and weighting, you just open the chapter file and there is the character, ready to bind. I rated this book 5 stars because it's the best book out there for learning how to do Maya rigging and animation, not because it is perfect. There are some topics it does not address. There are some discussions in the Appendix on general issues such as the pros and cons of different IK setups in the legs and how to use Quaternion rotations instead of Euler space rotations, but to be fair, the in-depth discussion of options a rigger faces are somewhat out of the scope of a tutorial book. As noted by others, this is not a book for beginners. It assumes you know the Maya GUI, how to use the manipulation tools, navigate in the viewports, etc. I'd been working with Maya on my own for a year and a half before I bought this book, and I found it to be superb in addressing its subject.

good solid Book

Im sorry but you shouldn't be reading this book if you cant find the "all components off" toggle, this book is made for a user who is beyond a beginner lever and more familiar with Maya and how it works. It lays down a good foundation on how to rig a character properly, for more advanced rigging I suggest a lot of experimenting on your own, there is no sing resource that will give you everything on a silver platter

A lot of great tutorials and concepts.

I highly recommend this book.PROS:*It tries, through tutorials, to introduce you to the concepts, techniques and pipeline of animating a character from start to finish. *2 CDs included have some great support files and videos* The videos are very good for learning visually CONS:*You'll NOT find here advanced facial setups, or advanced rigging tips. It's not an bible.*It's expensive