Learning Maya 5: Foundation [With CDROM]

This book is a perfect manual for everyone who want learn maya... projects are detailed and let you learn the most important things to start with 3d world

I'm not sure I understand some reviews I've read here. Maya is not wordpad and yes you will be searching for menu buttons sometimes, yes sometimes you'll have to go back and search but the step-by-step approach works great to get your hands on the software and actually create something that works. If someone had told me i'd one day be for instance creating spaceships, animating them, creating special effects i'd have never believed them! The fact that you are working on projects and not examples makes the difference : you have the final animation rendered on the DVD so you know where you're heading...even if you only get there by the end of the day...or the week! I learnt so much doing all the tutorials and I can assure you this is money well invested. Of course it's better to do a week training (why not a personal instructor 12 hours a day?), but if you can't afford it this book is like a personal teacher at home almost for free. I would recommend trying to go as far as you can with books and then get training, you need time alone doing the research by yourself anyway. Yes you might get stuck, yes you're gonna scream sometimes wondering where you went wrong, but using Maya does not come for free. Nevertheless, I can tell you that when things start coming together, when you do the final render of one of the projects you will be rejoiced. A must buy for starting learning Maya in my opinion.

I have not looked at the Maya 5 book, but I am eager to get my hands on it. I've noticed that the ratings arn't that great for this book, but I have reasons to love the book if I had it. You see, I am an animation student and one of our coarses is Computer animation, using Maya. When I entered the program we started using Maya 4. half way through Maya 4.5 was installed. This year Maya 5 is intalled. All through we have been learning from "Learning Maya, Foundations" Because the book is $150 in out book store, some of us can only afford to buy the book once, if at all. My point being, have some gratitude that there is a book at all available to learn Maya. Be thankful that you can afford it.Remember that Maya still has alot of Quirks to bug out, so be patient.

This book is great for those just starting with Maya as well as those who have a little more experience in it. The book is broken down into projects that use the different components of Maya. Advanced users might not find this book too useful but beginners to intermediate users will find that this book is a real asset. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get into Maya.

I'm guessing this book is what a quite a few Maya teachers use. It's easy to follow. Each and every step of the different lessons in the book is explained very explicit detail. I would recommend that if you're thinking of taking a Maya class you either get this book and go through it first. Or, compare its table of contents to the syllabus of any class you might be considering enrolling in. I think this book is probably a better deal than the cost of any Maya intro class a person might enroll in.