Mastering Maya Complete 2 [With CDROM]

by Peter Lee, Perry Harovas, John L. Kundert-Gibbs

Maya is a tool for 3-d modelling, animation and a wide range of special effects. This book is a guide, step-by-step, to realizing concepts in models, characters and settings. Beyond the basics, this... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0782125212
• ISBN13: 9780782125214
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Sybex
• Length: 842 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 7.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Makes the offical manuals look like toilet paper

It explains every tool and function. Most importantly it has "real world" tutorials to show how each tool fits into the modeling, animation, rendering, and effects workflow.The offical maya manual explains functions well, but leaves you guessing as to when those functions can be actually used. I suppose that is part of the challenge of being a 3d artist, but if you're lazy like me and like to be held by the hand of professionals instead of wasting many hours/days experimenting, get this book. you'll cover ALOT of ground in very little time(compared to A/W's expensive maya encyclopedia).I'm looking forward for the 3.5 Complete revision from the authors!

Forget the official MAYA manuals - this is the boy!

With such a complex program as Maya, you really need all the help you can get right at the beginning. Unfortunately the official set of manuals, though very good, are not really the best way to learn this fantastic 3D package and tend to be better purely as reference. Even the Learning Maya book that comes with the package can be misleading and overly complex for the beginner. Ideally you'd have a tutor sat next to you - or the next best thing, a copy of Mastering Maya Complete. I learnt more in one hour reading this book, going through the tutorials than I did in several days struggling through the official manuals. Within minutes you can be creating models and getting to grips with the wonderful interface - all explained in easy to understand terms, with very useful tips and notes as you go along. Even though my copy of Maya is 2.5, the book serves extremely well and is a damn-sight more intuitive than the other manuals. Very highly recommended - put your official manuals on the shelf (where they look very nice Indeed) and get this book - it's all you'll need if you're a beginner - it's probably all you'll need for most things ... Great!

Recommended!

This is an excellent book. I have already recommended it to my character animation class at the School Of Visual Arts.Mastering Maya Complete 2 is a well rounded, well written presentation of maya that goes far beyond simple instruction. The authors offer that (unfortunately) rare commodity in books of this type: insight.It is obvious that the authors have sorted through maya's extensive tool set and found what works ELEGANTLY. We are the beneficiaries.

The Bible of Maya 2

Mastering Maya 2 is the Bible of Maya, if you have Maya 2 you ought have this book because is essential. Maya 2 Character Animation is a book of knacks and Masyering Maya 2 is a consultation book. Any doubt is explained in this book.

The biggest and the most comprehensive Maya book

Our book is 880 pages with numerous tutorials PER chapter. We have included everything from making your character walk, run, grab objects, throw objects; to in-depth physics of setting up particle simulations, soft bodies, MEL scripting; to modeling, lighting, texturing, rendering; to PaintEffects (which no other book covers).We also have interviews: ILM's Habib Zargarpour, who created the crashing pods for Star Wars: Episode OneDuncan Brinsmead of Alias|Wavefront, who wrote95 percent of PaintEffectsMark Sylvester, also of Alias|Wavefront Who founded Wavefront, and who now spends his time educating customers about how the software has been developed, and where they are going in the future.We have tried our best to provide you with the tools, information and examples (on the CD) that will get you using and understanding Maya as fast as possible. Maya is incredibly complex, and therefore our book had to be twice as long as the others out there in order to cover it all!We welcome contact with all who read the book who have questions, and have provided 2 support websites for the book. If anyone has any other questions, I'll be happy to get back to you ASAP, and to answer any and all questions.We hope you enjoy this book, it was our dream to make it the standard text on Maya.We think we've succeeded!