Description:
Digital Effects Animation Using Maya takes an interesting approach to animation effects by categorizing them in terms of elements in nature: fire, water, air, and earth. It also employs a fifth element, dynamics, which governs the movement of the first four. Using these elements as a paradigm, the book offers eight tutorials that demonstrate ways of building scenes with fire, explosions, flowing water, splashing water, terrain, and grass. The instructions in the tutorials are all specific to Alias|Wavefront's Maya animation system, but many of the principles discussed can be applied to other software packages. Fire burns the same, water flows the same, dust and dynamics behave similarly from application to application. One of the most important chapters is "Generating Terrain, Grass, and Plug-ins." While it's important to know how to use the supplied effects and particle systems in Maya, it is 10 times more important to be able to write your own plug-ins (a.k.a. "shaders") for creating a specific or custom effect. This chapter describes how to write your own shader. (A programming environment is required.) The example in the book shows how to build a terrain generator and then use the "fur" shader to add grass. Unfortunately, the book's title considerably overshoots its content. It would be more accurate to title this book Digital Nature Effects or Using Natural Systems in Maya. The term "digital effects" is far too broad to be defined by the five elements of nature. In the scant few years since Alias|Wavefront released Maya, it has become known as a next-generation 3D animation tool for environments, particle systems, and effects. It is from this perspective that Digital Effects Using Maya is written, a handy volume of tutorials and tips for this high-end software for beginning to intermediate users. --Mike Caputo
| 
