Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide [With CD-ROM]

I accidentally stumbled upon this book while searching for a great tips and tricks manual. Usually, these things begin with a very basic extrusion tutorial and finally end up with a soft body fluid dynamic spring loaded bouncing ball particle simulation. Frustrating. With this book though, the author nicely provides information of a good level for the working professional / enthusiast. It's full of deeper Maya knowledge that I can use to make my work that much more visually pronounced. Basically, a good leg up on everybody else. I've only been thru half of it so far, but it's perfect for at least what I need.

If you are interested in taking your existing knowledge of Maya to the next level then Eric's book is a great place to start. The book is laid out logically and easy to follow. The step-by-step examples have plenty of color images makeing it easy to understand. Eric has touched on very broad areas from texturing to rigging some complex setups. There are plenty of Mel and expression examples that add some more complexity with nice results. Many of examples Eric shows can be used for an array of other projects that you may encounter later on.

It's rare to find a book that challenges you to think creatively about Maya's incredible toolset - this was definitely a pleasant surprise in that regard! "Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide" does not aim to replace the "Maya 101" books out there, but instead tackles something infinitely more interesting: how to adapt and use Maya's expansive toolset to create novel effects. As the author says in the intro: "Every tool in Maya has three or four common uses, and about a billion possibilities for uncommon solutions" - this pretty much sums up the premise of the whole book. Particle collisions grow Paint Effects strokes - particles are used to control cameras. A skeleton controls a lattice that controls a blendshape sequence... you get the idea: not your typical, vanilla-flavor "let's make a walk-cycle" or "model a race car." Not saying those aren't important, but it's refreshing to pick up a book that doesn't rehash those same topics. Instead it does a masterful job at suggesting novel ways to put these common tools to work. The "Innovator's Guide" also happens to be written in a very approachable, friendly and enjoyable tone - the author had a good time coming up with the concepts and writing about them, and it shows. You won't be bored as you work through this material. You also won't be frustrated: the tutorials are cleanly laid out and, as a non-programmer, I also thought the MEL examples were excellent - thorough and well explained (clearly some thought went into the technical editing). Every tutorial is also presented in the context of a production environment - every project starts with an imaginary "art-director" who challenges us to create a specific visual. Even if you are NOT actually part of such a team-oriented work environment, it's fun and useful to be thinking in those terms. Many of the book's tutorials have an emphasis on building flexibility into your workflow and the final implemented project... indeed, the art director often changes his/her mind (in the book, but also in the real world)! In the end, having been through much of the Gnomon & Digital Tutors DVD collections (which are excellent), it's pretty safe to say that this book covers different ground. It leaves you with more of a 'philosophy' to approaching problem-solving in Maya... something I hadn't encountered anywhere else. In short, I highly recommend it to anyone who not only wants to take their Maya skills to "the next level" but, more importantly, who is interested in thinking about old tools in new ways. A guaranteed great buy.

I just got this book and couldn't be happier. Not only does it cover the topics and concepts that nothing else does, but it does so in an entertaining manner. The author does a great job of explaining the why behind the what, something that many books don't cover, leaving the reader guessing why they just set this paramater to 30 and checked that box. This is definately not a book for beginners, though. Without a firm grasp on Maya's fundamentals and core concepts, this book will probably sit on a shelf collecting dust. I would strongly reccommend going through "The Special Effects Handbook" cover to cover to get a good handle on those concepts, expecially Maya's dynamics. Also, many of the tutorials in this book rely heavily on expressions and/or mel scripting, and this book is not a great intro to that. But if you are looking for something to guide your mind into developing good problem solving skills, this book is an essential.

I consider this book to be a rare find. An instructional Maya book that knows exactly who it's for, and the writing reflects that. By this I mean, that certain things the book assumes the reader understands and knows about, and it does not bog itself down with explaining all of that vocabulary. However, every time a tutorial asked me to do something I wasn't quite sure why I was doing (often to do with MEL), the very next paragraph would explain what I had just done, and how to manipulate it for purposes other then just that of the tutorials. I'm a professional working in the field of motion graphics, and it is nice to see a book dealing with cool effects that can be achieved through Maya, instead of another book on character modeling / rigging/ texturing / animation. The approach is quite innovative as well, as all of the projects are presented as problems in a production environment. Some you get to start from scratch, some you have to jump into an already created scene, and most have serious time constraint. There is also an emphasis on flexibility, this is really important, as in Maya there is more often then not many ways to achieve an effect, but this book offers many short cuts to get effects done fast, and in a way that would be easy to implement changes. I would recommend this book to most Maya users, if you are truly a beginner, get up to speed else where and then get this book. Besides broadening ones understating of what all these Maya nodes can be used for (I myself am looking at the hypershade in a whole new light), the tutorial are really cool, and fun. The book itself is written in a pretty funny tone. Lastly, though I'm not sure it is this books intention, it is a good introduction to MEL. I use to be quite scared of it, and would end up doing tidious busy work as a result, but this book is helping me get over this phobia.