Rating: 
Summary: For Novice to Intermediate User
Review: The Authors do a terrific job in introducing a newcomer to the world of computer graphics and especially 3D application. It doesn't give you instructions without explaining why. The reader will come away with some solid understanding of the world of 3D. This book takes the mystery out of many terms that took me a while to understand.
This book is not wordy, very well structured and easy to read. It includes movie files of step-by-step instructions that also give you visual guidance.
This book is not only for beginners. As a Maya user I found good information that sped up my workflow. The authors also explain a way to use subdivision modeling in Maya Complete. A feature that is only available in Maya Unlimited.
3D artists working with 3D Studio Max and Lightwave will also appreciate this book. At the end is a section that compares Maya with these two 3D applications.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book
Review: The book is a wonderful book that covers the fundamentals. It goes into many details and explains the fundamentals nicely. I was hoping that it would go into bones, animation of the skeleton and skinning but as the name implies it is the fundamentals. I have purchased several books on 3Ds Max as well as Maya and this book I find to be excellent, more because of the details that is given in the CD. The CD has some excellent how-to tutorials that I found to be very good. These CD based tutorials performed some real-time screen capture and are worth as much if not more then the book.
Rating:
Summary: Rough but good
Review: The book itself covers the necessary material, however there is some polish missing from it. The project that the authors take you through isn't particularly impressive (or interesting) but it does serve it's purpose. The manual is written clearly and concisely and covers most areas of Maya the a new user would be interested in.
The real value of the book is the CD that comes with it. It contains several hours of Video of the authors using the software and it matches the book almost exactly. The quality of the video isn't that great in areas, however it gets the point across.
Overall this book is worth the money and will teach someone how to use Maya, however, I would like to see some more polish in the next revision (mostly in the video).
Rating:
Summary: must have for newbies
Review: This book covers all the basics and then some, it takes a very rich and complex program and breaks it all down into easy to follow tutorials. To go allong with the subjects covered in the book, all of the files are on the disk as well as videos of the authors preforming the work as well. This is helpful if you think you did something wrong or don't understad something. you to open these files.A few things that I didn't like are that in the beginning of the book the authors rely on the files that they provide on the disk for you to finish the project. This happens on the boat scene with materials and the camera with sky attaached to it. Also in chapter 7, creature modeling with polygons, the disk explains how to finish the model, it would have been esier to work from the book in my opinion. Aside from these minor setbacks the book does a really great job of launching your learning experance
Rating:
Summary: Over all is not bad!!
Review: This book is about half theory and half practice which starts from the theory of Art and Graphic, then followed by equipment to use for Art and Graphic Design and types of graphic files before jumping into Maya. The book presents overall of basic feature and functions of Maya with commond examples. If you love some kind of long narrative with some samples, this is the one. The structure of the book is the same as other books which have explanation with samples, not just step by step instruction nor samples based. However, it is a good book in over all.
Rating:
Summary: Maya 4 Fundamentals
Review: This book is by far one of the best instructional guides to a 3d application that I have found as a novice 3d animator. The explanations are to the point and aren't jumbled with a bunch of tech garble that only experts can understand. The book defines basic concepts that I've been trying to grasp for some time. The cd package that comes with is complete and includes real-time tutorials that hammer out any details that the text doesn't complete. The best beginner book I've found yet.
Rating:
Summary: Bets I've seen
Review: This book is by far the best I've seen of its kind. I have read reviews that say the tutorials get lost in the long paragraphs, but those reviewers obviously didn't open the CD, because every single tutorial is presented in a step by step video that is shot from a first person perspective. How much easier could it be? This book is perfect for those new to Maya 4, because once you've finished this book, you can model a character from scratch, apply textures, set camera shots and various other activities and for those who have intermediate experience will find this book useful as a refresher and possibly learn short cuts to their work flow. The best thing about the book is that if the reader chose to, he or she could simply pop in the CD and learn all that this book has to offer. I am actually looking for other books written by these authors, becasue I haven't seen anything close to the way they teach.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the best
Review: This book is by far the best instructional book I have ever purchased and I don't just mean in the field of Computer Animation. Although I have bought several books for Lightwave, 3dMax as well as one other book for Maya, I could only recommend this one. Not only is the text informative and understandable, but with the CD Rom that comes included, you don't even need to read the book: Every tutorial is demonstrated by one of the two authors of the book and they follow along with the text verbatim. If I buy another animation book, it will be by these two guys.
Rating:
Summary: *THE* Best Book for Learning Maya
Review: This book literally has taken me from a clueless newbie to a novice artist. The concepts you learn in this book are presented easily for the reader and take you step by step through each hands-on tutorial. The most valuable feature of this book are the video tutorials on the CD. These videos, created by the authors, take you through every tutorial in the book and then some. This is esspecially useful if you're like me and hate having to jump from book to screen constantly. This book also is distribution independent so if you have Maya Complete or Unlimited, you do not have to worry about missing out. The only complaint I have about the book is that it does not go more in-depth into modelling for you. I would have loved to see more character modelling and mapping than what was presented. I think a tutorial in organic NURBS modeling would have been an excellent edition. That lapse in judgment aside, this book is a must have for anyone seriously interested in learning Maya.
Rating:
Summary: Bets I've seen
Review: This book made the conversion from other software very easy. I would recommend this book to anyone coming over from another package. The movies on the cd make following the steps very simple. I am in full production mode using maya with some time spent on the tutorials of this book.
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