Maya Visual QuickStart Guide

Rating:
Summary: Awesome.....
Review: Get this book, this is the starting point for any productive use of Maya. Now you dont need to take those $10,000 courses at your local Art Academy,,,,ahem, to learn this app.

This book wont give you the talent, but it will give the technical skill necessary to get started effectively.

Rating:
Summary: not good
Review: Maya is (I'm told) an immensely powerful tool. This book leaves out the crucial first step of any file; basic file creation. Although the back of this book indicates that it is for begininng and intermediate Maya users, chapter one jumps immediately from a description of the toolbar layout, to manipulating an already finished drawing of a shark. Ummmm. how the hell did that shark come into existence, Danny? Although every other Visual Quickstart book I've used is terrific they get very low marks for this one. Hey publisher! Do NOT put "revised and expanded" on the cover again if you continue to omit a basic drawing chapter.

Rating:
Summary: A recommended core reference for Maya programmers
Review: Maya: Visual Quickstart Guide by web design experts and educators Danny Riddell and Andrew Britt is a superbly presented introductory and intermediate level reference for programmers who need to learn the basics of Maya quickly. Filled with "do it yourself" step-by-step instructions and black-and-white screenshots, Maya: Visual Quickstart Guide seeks to presents its information directly to the eyes as well as with words. Chapters cover creating text, templates, polygons and surface modeling, animation, creating light effects and much more. Readers will especially appreciate its usefulness for quickly and easily looking up practical information. A recommended core reference for Maya programmers and graphical artists of all skill levels, Maya: Visual Quickstart Guide is direct, simple, and easy to follow.

Rating:
Summary: Love these books
Review: No B.S. step by step instructions. Very clear and direct. This book is not for those of you who are looking for a few paragraphs on what a button does, but rather instructs you very directly on what your doing and gives you ideas and options as to what everything else does within that pannel/topic

Rating:
Summary: Definitely a worthy buy!
Review: Price-wise you can't beat it! Unlike the other books which are several inches thick, this book provides a straightforward approach to getting started with Maya 4. The book is a little more than an inch thick, and certainly worth every penny. A lot of the instructions and illustrations were easy to follow and straight to the point. If your broke from buying Maya or are exploring the possibilities with Maya: Personal Learning Edition, then this book is certainly worth getting. No fillers, just down-to-earth instructions.

Rating:
Summary: Inexpensive book for experienced 3D people new to Maya...
Review: This book can't be beat price wise. And the page count is not as scary as most books on this topic (1000+). I guess as such is a good reference for a beginner in Maya. Above that level, I wonder if the more experienced reader will not quickly find it not comprehensive enough. It also depend on your learning style. I prefer to learn via tutorials that take me through the paces. This is one has very little of that, but is mostly like, this button does this and that menu is for that, and then you figure out yourself how to use it all in a project. But I suppose that will do if you are experienced in another 3D application, and you want to switch to Maya. Complete beginners are better advised to look for books like New Riders' Maya 4 Fundamentals (to be honest I don't own that book, but their 3DS Max 4 Fundamentals), that will make a point of explaining everything in this new 3D world.

Rating:
Summary: Good start for Maya
Review: This book is easy to read and follow, and will give you a good basic knowledge of Maya.

There are pictures on every page, illustrating what the steps are telling you to do. The steps are short, and not mystic. A good training book will tell you how to do something, and if it requires knowing how to do something else first, it will teach you how to do that and then continue. This book does that. It doesn't get you lost looking for a command you have never heard of before.

Rating:
Summary: Good start for Maya
Review: This book is easy to read and follow, and will give you a good basic knowledge of Maya.

There are pictures on every page, illustrating what the steps are telling you to do. The steps are short, and not mystic. A good training book will tell you how to do something, and if it requires knowing how to do something else first, it will teach you how to do that and then continue. This book does that. It doesn't get you lost looking for a command you have never heard of before.

Rating:
Summary: Maya Quickstart
Review: This book is okay for some quick notes on shortcut keys and such, however, I have yet to find it helpful in learning Maya from the beginning. It's images and short descriptions assume you already know how to use Maya and are just flipping thru reference books such as this for little reminders and idea-triggers. The only page I've found to be very useful is the first page of shortcuts. The rest I could have lived without paying for...but then, I had to learn this for myself as this was a required textbook for my class.

Rating:
Summary: very useful for beginner
Review: this book was very useful for beginner. this book tells us the interface and how to use most commom tool in maya to do modeling, rendering, etc.. , but not all of it. the explanation is very clear with a lot of pictures to support for us to understand each chapter. i cannot say that after reading this book, people can creat a nice animation or human figure. however, it's gonna be the step of understanding the intermediate books, not for beginner. if you don't know how to use maya at all, you must get this book first.