Maya: Secrets of the Pros [Paperback]

1 star = particle system section
5 star = everything else
total = 4

This book is by pros for pros including an excellent chapter by Habib Zargarpour from ILM on "Complex Particle Systems" which uses a shot from "Perfect Storm" to demonstrate the water particles. Aspects of how they analyzed the wave and figured out how to emit particles at the right place are still evident in movies like "Day After Tomorrow".

There's also "Photo Real Facial Replacement" by John Kundert-Gibbs, Dariush Derakhshani and Rebecca Johnson which illustrates, step by step, how to create the mouth shapes, textures and comp onto a picture of a cat, thus creating a talking cat. This is an excellent work flow for getting very near to close results that have garnered success for studio's like Rhythm&Hues for films like "Cats & Dogs" and the upcoming "Narnia Chronicles".

I wasn't a big fan of mocap, however the company I'm working for is using it in a big way. I've read about it in previous articles and such, but haven't found much usful info for practically using it, except in this book on the chapter by Robin Akin and Remington Scott titled "Animation and Motion Capture -Working Together." After reading this chapter I have a new respect for the art and science of this technology. The results from films like "AniMatrix -Flight of the Osiris" and "Lord of the Rings" demonstrates that this is powerful new medium with characters like Gollum raising the bar. Working through the tutorials, I've gained a stronger command of the medium which has helped greatly at work.

I wouldn't have posted this except for a rebuttal to one of the reviews you have posted for this book by "Ilya from Israel" who has obviously not even read the book with comments like "The easiest go like: make a cylinder, shape up a horse out of it, now you'll do the lip-synching." -It's obvious that she didn't even read it. The chapter on "Modeling a SubDivision Horse" by Peter Lee goes into extreme modeling detail and tutorials where the modeling starts with nurbs, gets converted to polies, then details such as the mouth, eyes and ears and every aspect of creating a cg horse model is shown step by step. If you work through this chapter you will end up with an excellent subD horse model.

This book doesn't cover everything, with four parts, "Modeling", "Animation & Motion", "Complex Numbers", and "Surfacing and Rendering" with only 2 or 3 chapters in each section, it doesn't cover everything you need to know. Rather it's extremely focused on very specific aspects of 3D computer graphics in Maya and gets under the hood of the authors inventive methods of working in production.

and the print quality is superb.. colour pictures throughout!