Free Download Maya Secrets of the Pros

Maya Secrets of Pros

Maya: Secrets of the Pros is an all-new, full-color Maya book, from the authors of our best-selling Mastering Maya 3 and a team of top-tier Maya veterans–pros who’ve worked on everything from “Star Wars: Episode One” to “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” Using detailed case-studies, the authors reveal high-level secrets they’ve learned through their real-world Maya experience.

Topics covered include: Modeling, motion capture, lip synching, crowd scenes, surfacing, and rendering. The CD features movie files of sample animations, scene and support files from the projects in the book, and Maya plug-ins.

Chapter 1 – Maya Cloth – The tutorials include a skirt, a curtain, and accessories (using cloth for animating jewelry and bracelets). Unfortunately, there are no fully clothed figures (no shirts, no pants, etc) so everything is very basic, but explained clearly.

Chapter 2 – Non-Photorealistic Rendering – First example has textures sketched in pen, scanned, and then mapped onto animated models. It creates a unique “hand-drawn” effect, and with some interesting rendering styles. Second example is how to create an impressionistic rendering style. Emit particles from object, make those particles strokes, and play with the render settings. I haven’t seen a tutorial like this one before, and it does a lot for making very basic shaded object into a more intriguing render.

Chapter 3: Realistic Camera Movement – The basics of CG cinematography (if you want more on this, I recommend Digital Cinematography & Directing by Dan Ablan). Also goes briefly into camera lenses and focal lengths. The good parts are the long tutorials on Creating Camera Shake and Creating a Handheld Camera. At the end there is a brief tutorial on capturing motion with Maya Live.

Chapter 4: Radiosity, HDRI, LDRI – This is the best and most thorough tutorial on this subject that I’ve found in a Maya format. Rendering tutorials on a spaceship, a robot, and a katana sword. The chapter ends with a brief tutorial on how to render a detailed, complex scene.

Chapter 5: The Character Pipeline – The information is here is so basic, I think the only reason it would be included in an “of the pros” books is that it has a few MEL scripts. Naming conventions, character sets, and some rigging scripts by the author. Certainly one of the least interesting chapters.

Chapter 6: Hair Systems – This very unique chapter that talks about using Maya Hair for alternative purposes. Octopus tentacles, Rope/wire, Character’s secondary motion, and shark animation. Great tutorials for all these examples, which can obviously be applied to nearly anything.

Chapter 7: Dynamics – This is all very basic stuff, with very basic examples (ie a torus lands on a plane, boxes interacting with eachother). Has a couple pages on using Maya Hair and dynamics to make car suspension.

Chapter 8: The Art of Maya Noises – Basic dynamics tutorials. I have no idea why this was in the book. You WILL find better online tutorials because most of the examples are clones of things you will find elsewhere. 1) A water fountain, 2) spinning particles to create a “vortex”, 3) a “hermite electric arc” (two spheres with electricity flowing between them). MEL scripts are included for these examples.

Chapter 9: Polygon/Subdivision modeling a character head (cover of book) – Starts out talking about edgeloops — which has an interesting twist because the character has a “third eye”. Draws curves in the front and side viewports using the EP curve tool, thus creating a skeletal/basic cage that will be used as outlines for poly faces (so, it’s like NURBS modeling, but poly). Has a few pages about filling in the curves-wireframe, pointing out problem areas (triangles, five sided polys, and “stars”) and how to fix them. The tutorial stops at completing the trapezius and neck muscles. No texturing/lighting/rendering discussion is included.

Overall, I was slightly disappointed in this book. Sure a complete beginner would be lost, but for the average/intermediate Maya user many of the tutorials are not worth the pricetag. Before buying this, go to the bookstore and browse through the chapters that sound interesting and see if its worth your money.

File: maya-spros.pdf
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