Rating: 
Summary: Must-Have for Maya Unlimited Users
Review: Even though I use Maya 5, I purchased this book for one reason, it covers the four features available only on Maya Unlimited (Fur, Cloth, Maya Live, and FluidFX) on bonus chapters contained on the CD-ROM.I do not recommend this book for beginners if it is the only one you will purchase. I would recommended the Maya Fundamentals books by Jim Lammers that match your version as well as this book.
Rating:
Summary: A whole lotta info
Review: I have sat down and read this book from cover to cover. It has a lot of stuff for people that are new to 3D. I really like how the authors try and give you a little personal insight on how they feel about a tool or methodology. A lot of 3D books are just basically user manuals and give you no actual thoughts on a certain tool or way of using it. This book actually gives opinions, which everyone has but aren't willing to put in print. I especially was drawn into the rigging and MEL section. If you have ever tried to find a good MEL book out there you know how great this book can be in the technical side of things. There just aren't many books out there with useful MEL information for a beginner in MEL coding. Heck a lot of schools don't even teach MEL because there is a lack of people in the industry that understand it. I definately recommend this book for people that would like to gain an advanced knowledge of characters rigging and MEL coding as well as basic tutorials for the beginner in all areas of 3D.
Rating:
Summary: Maya 4.5 Bible
Review: I just purchased the Maya 4.5 Bible (I'm using windows XP w/ Maya 5.0) and it is most definately the most user friendly and knowledge packed Maya Book that I have ever seen on the Market. I've never seen a book that covers so many indepth topics about the production workflow! I found it quite humerous that the tutorial files were left off the windows version of the disc, (I know for a fact that these can be transfered and interperated from a mac to a windows operating system, no fault of the authors) but nothing that an internet connection and simple web address can't handle! Your resources and information are ever so valuable and I look forward to updates in the future!
Rating:
Summary: Maya 4.5 Bible
Review: I just purchased the Maya 4.5 Bible (I'm using windows XP w/ Maya 5.0) and it is most definately the most user friendly and knowledge packed Maya Book that I have ever seen on the Market. I've never seen a book that covers so many indepth topics about the production workflow! I found it quite humerous that the tutorial files were left off the windows version of the disc, (I know for a fact that these can be transfered and interperated from a mac to a windows operating system, no fault of the authors) but nothing that an internet connection and simple web address can't handle! Your resources and information are ever so valuable and I look forward to updates in the future!
Rating: 
Summary: what a delusion
Review: I really look into getting this book but I got very disappointed at the end. It convers a lot of topics and it promises lots of tutorials that usually are superficial.
This book helps to horient yourself through many functionalities in Maya but it keeps you to a level that you could get with just the online help found in the software.
Not to mention the terrible support for the buggy CD under windows OS
Rating:
Summary: Quantity more important than Quality?
Review: Pros
The author(s) cover a LOT of material. There are like 1,000 pages + several chapters on the cd The authors give thier insight into a number of areas. Many books I read seem more like an extended manual, however the authors share a lot of thier experiences along with pros and cons of certain features. This comes in handy, as Maya is a tool where you have at least 1,000 different ways to accomplish any one task. Cons
This book also happens to be one of the worst examples of a lack of QA / editing that I've ever seen. First off, I plug in the CD so I can work on the first tutorial, then I find out that the tutorial files are not on CD at all (found out its some issue with windows and the cd. It works with other OSs). I couldn't find any way to download the files after spending an hour with the web site (I guess they don't want to advertise they screwed up, but at the same time they make it very hard to find the download). I contacted their tech support (at least they seem on the ball), and they gave the URL for the examples. But even then a number of files were missing, I got to chapter 6 and even the downloaded version of the tutorial files were missing all of chapter 6's files. I contacted tech support again and they are shipping me a new cd. I guess ill find out if I can do chapter 6 next week. But even when the tutorial sections have the correct files, the authors sometimes forget to write down a step or two. This forces me to spend an hour or so trying to figure out what the missing step is (you still learn this way, I guess). Some steps are explained poorly and I find myself trying to guess what I'm suppose to be doing. There are numerous spelling / grammar mistakes though out the book. I'm horrible myself, so if I'm finding problems, there must be something seriously wrong (but im not the one trying to write a book). This also turned out to be the first book I tried to return to a store. However, the store wouldn't take it back as the cd was opened (not that the cd was any use in the first place). So I stuck with the book and have been trying to ignore its faults. It just seems obvious that no one took the time to read the book or run though the tutorials. if someone did check it, they don't seem to care about their work all that much. I do enjoy how much content is in the book, but working on the tutorials is an exercise in patience. The 3 stars are for the content, if it wasn't for that it would be 1 star.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book
Review: The book is useless unless the CD is working, but the CD has two major problems: 1. It is missing all chapter demo files. 2. The pdf files for bonus chapters can not be opened by PDF reader. How could a publisher be so irresponsible?
Rating:
Summary: what a delusion
Review: The good news is that this book covers everything for the most part. The bad news is that the examples used to explain things are incredibly complicated. It's often hard to see what you're supposed to be looking at in the screenshots. They don't use clear, simple examples of how to do basic operations. Instead it's more like "Let's build a model of a human brain" to see how booleans work. Also, I don't think anyone proof-read this before it got published. It is loaded with typos and errors. You can find a typo or error on probably every other page. Sometimes there are Figures references incorrectly, and sometimes paragraphs which were clearly copy-pasted from other paragraphs contain incorrect information. Not to mention a very high number of regular old typos.
Rating:
Summary: Ok overview, but horrible examples
Review: The good news is that this book covers everything for the most part. The bad news is that the examples used to explain things are incredibly complicated. It's often hard to see what you're supposed to be looking at in the screenshots. They don't use clear, simple examples of how to do basic operations. Instead it's more like "Let's build a model of a human brain" to see how booleans work. Also, I don't think anyone proof-read this before it got published. It is loaded with typos and errors. You can find a typo or error on probably every other page. Sometimes there are Figures references incorrectly, and sometimes paragraphs which were clearly copy-pasted from other paragraphs contain incorrect information. Not to mention a very high number of regular old typos.
Rating:
Summary: i study a lot from this book
Review: the toturials are maybe not the best and not very difficult to do but the explanation is great.
to realy understand maya read this book!!!
just to feel maya read other book but to know and understand everything in maya you need this book.
the knowledge which you get here is endless.
a must book.
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