Maya Ultimate Workshop : With 18 Complete Workshops on CD-ROM

Rating:
Summary: so-so
Review: in general, yes, you will learn a lot of things; I'm so much more knowledgable than i was when i began, and for that i'm very grateful. but I doubt very much you'll be able to work through the lessons as written; steps are omitted, and sometimes two chapters later you get a little piece of information that would have really helped out much earlier. it's also a fine example of the annoying practice of referring to an illustration that comes three pages later...why do they do that?

with more aggressive and thorough editing, this could have been something, but in a program as vast and daunting as this, little frustrations can be overwhelming and discouraging. they need to give these books to absolute beginners and pay them to make detailed reports before they ever go to press.

to it's credit, there are scene files on the CD-ROM, several for each chapter, so if you get hung up at one step, you can just skip to the next step and keep working. this makes quite a big difference when you just can't seem to get things to work right but would rather continue.

Rating:
Summary: One big tutorial
Review: Just like the description says, this book is one big tutorial. Everything mostly works like the tutorial says, but if you get stuck at some spot then that's too bad. Most of the time you feel like you're blindly creating something without the understanding of how the tools really work. I guess that's the problem with tutorial books though. Also has decent intro chapters on Fluid Dynamics, hair, fur, and clothing, if you have Maya Unlimited, else pgs. 675-771 are useless.

Rating:
Summary: NOT for beginners
Review: Not for beginners or the faint of heart. Instructions are often incomplete, sometimes entirely missing, and occasionally just plain wrong! Expect to spend a lot of time using Maya Help and other books to try (often unsuccessfully) to figure things out.