Product Description

Create positively dazzling effects with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42409 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 350 pages

From the Back Cover
Create Dazzling Maya Visual Effects Out of Thin Air

If you need to create stunning effects on a tight deadline for finicky clients and demanding art directors, this book is for you. Go from Post-it Notes to positively dazzling with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

• Animate a zombie hand transformation, UFO glow, and streaking energy with textures
• Make a tentacle shake and slither using expressions and joints
• Use Paint Effects to create twitching nerves and bacterial hair
• Split crystals with Rigid Body Dynamics
• Animate a collapsing rope bridge using Maya Hair
• Master particle instancing and collision effects
• Get a handle on scripting with MEL

About the Author
Eric Keller has been using Autodesk's Maya to create professional animations since version 1 was released and has been an enthusiast ever since. He is currently a high-end animator for film, television, and scientific visualization. His clients include Disney, ESPN, Hewlett-Packard, CBS, and ABC. Prior to that, he created animations for some of the world's top researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was a contributing author to Mastering Maya 7 and Mastering Maya 8.5 (Sybex).

Customer Reviews

Could be more advanced
While containing some interesting ideas, I strongly wished it had been more in-depth and advanced. Many of the techniques used are rather simple and obvious. Unless this is one of the first Maya books you read, you'll probably know at least half of the contents.

There is some good material here: Keller shows the readers how to use things in some unobvious ways and challenges them to look for solutions in unexpected (and fast) ways. If you're a beginner, some of these techniques may help ingrain things you've learned, but haven't had much cause to use, making you a better vfx person.

I'd recommend this to self-learners who are looking to extend their knowledge, but aren't ready for more technical material. If you're already comfortable with visual effects, this book probably isn't for you.

what can I say?
not really worth the money I spent, there a few things that are worth taking note, but not what you would expect with a title like that, the online forums and tutorials are one's best bet to learn neat fx.

Great idea for effects artist that want to go beyond the basics
This is one of the best effects books I've purchased. It's not intended for people that just start out with effects, it's meant for people that want to learn to do actually work. I like the realworld format of the book, with projects that are similar to what you would get in actual production. Great Book!