Rating: 
Summary: excellent jump start
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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for beginners of Maya or 3d
Review: This book will give someone a good foundation for Maya. After finishing the book you will have enough understanding of how Maya works to move on to more advance or specialized books. If you are
new to Maya I recommend going through this book before "Learing Maya" or "Mastering Maya". The other two books are great, but better for people that are comfortable with the Maya interface or
have a good understanding of other 3d packages.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent Video tutorials
Review: This book would be just like any other if it wasn't for it's cd-rom. It contains not only the working files and images you need for the tutorials, but also hours of video tutorials compiled by the author. They are very close to what's written in the book, so by watching them you can jump across the book and read only the important bits, speeding up the learning process. It really saves you a lot of time. It's just like online training, but much more affordable. I hope other authors add this to their books too.
Rating: 
Summary: Beginners
Review: This is a good book if you are just starting out with Maya. First few chapters weren't so good for me, since i already knew about that stuff while taking the tutorial that comes with the software.
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This is a must buy for all who want to learn Maya. Their method of tutorials are outstanding. I really enjoyed the fact that I could have Maya running in the background and your tutorial running in front then pause it and do the step. I wish others would learn from you. I have spent a lot of money on books but this is by far the best. I highly recommend this book for all who want to learn Maya. The cd is filled with scene files and animations. Just an all around outstanding book. THANK YOU to the Authors. I hope there will be more from all of you.For all who are debating on purchasing this book, look no further. I have about 13 books on Maya including ones from Alias/Wavefront and there is no comparison in my eyes. The tutorials are very easy to follow and are done in a way that users with very little knowledge of Maya can learn from it. I am looking forward to getting the next book put out by these authors. There are scene, animation and project files on this cd that prove to be an added bonus. Not only can you see how they are done step by step but you can go through and compare your project with there's. (for those who are perfectionists like me)
I am in no way affiliated with the authors or the publishers of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Best ever saw!!
Review: This is one of the best maya books I ever saw.
I was already quite deep into maya befor the book, but this book overviewed all basics really good! If you are a beginner, you will have no problem with it since they overview all fucntions and explain every action they do. And the best of all is the cd-rom you get with the book. Every tutorials is showed and explained in full detail. If you want to get deeper into maya or start learning maya BUY THIS ONE!
Rating:
Summary: The fastest way to find the buttons in Maya.
Review: This is the perfect format for someone with a little 3D animation experience who wants to get a feel for Maya as quickly as possible. The book reinforces common tasks by working through projects that require the same types of operations many times (e.g. NURBS Trim comes up many times while modeling a simple house). It only took me a few days to go through all the videos, only consulting the text occasionaly, mostly for figures. I hope to see more software-oriented books in this format in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Maya 4 Fundamentals
Review: This is truly the best Maya book for beginners to advanced Maya users. The AVIs put this book far above the other Maya books.
You can watch video clips of the authors doing the tutorials right on your computer. And, you can toggle between the Maya interface and tutorial to work along with the author.
Authors, EXCELLENT job! Keep up the good work.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the best!
Review: This is, without a doubt the best Maya book I've ever read. A must buy if you want to learn Maya 3D.
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but....
Review: Yes, I have learned a lot from this book. But.., I knew nothing about Maya & this is my first book, so that is expected. Like almost all computer books, I don't think the command sequences were checked for accuracy. Several times I had to fumble around with the menus until I found what the author was talking about. Here is one example from chapter 5, the author has you hide ALL of the UI elements. Then he says click the save button. How am I supposed to click on the save button after I just hid it? There are a lot of things like this.
Then the style is a little off for me. The author gets a little wordy. It becomes tedious reading a paragraph for each simple command.
And one more thing, the first part of the book is concerned with creating an animation of a boat following a path around an island. I think the author wanted to demonstrate the impressive capabilities of Maya and to a degree he did this. At the same time, he managed to wear me down with complicated procedures I didn't yet understand, and frustrate me with command sequences that were not clear and accurate.
I find this book useful, but.. it has a lot of room for improvement.
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