Maya: Secrets of the Pros
Paperback: 384 pages | Publisher: Sybex (July 22, 2002) | Language: English | ISBN-10: 0782140556 | ISBN-13: 978-0782140552 | Size: 63 Mb Mb

Maya: Secrets of the Pros is an all-new, full-color Maya book, from the authors of our best-selling Mastering Maya 3 and a team of top-tier Maya veterans–pros who’ve worked on everything from “Star Wars: Episode One” to “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” Using detailed case-studies, the authors reveal high-level secrets they’ve learned through their real-world Maya experience.

Topics covered include: Modeling, motion capture, lip synching, crowd scenes, surfacing, and rendering. The CD features movie files of sample animations, scene and support files from the projects in the book, and Maya plug-ins.


Chapter 1 - Maya Cloth - The tutorials include a skirt, a curtain, and accessories (using cloth for animating jewelry and bracelets). Unfortunately, there are no fully clothed figures (no shirts, no pants, etc) so everything is very basic, but explained clearly.

Chapter 2 - Non-Photorealistic Rendering - First example has textures sketched in pen, scanned, and then mapped onto animated models. It creates a unique “hand-drawn” effect, and with some interesting rendering styles. Second example is how to create an impressionistic rendering style. Emit particles from object, make those particles strokes, and play with the render settings. I haven’t seen a tutorial like this one before, and it does a lot for making very basic shaded object into a more intriguing render.

Chapter 3: Realistic Camera Movement - The basics of CG cinematography (if you want more on this, I recommend Digital Cinematography & Directing by Dan Ablan). Also goes briefly into camera lenses and focal lengths. The good parts are the long tutorials on Creating Camera Shake and Creating a Handheld Camera. At the end there is a brief tutorial on capturing motion with Maya Live.

Chapter 4: Radiosity, HDRI, LDRI - This is the best and most thorough tutorial on this subject that I’ve found in a Maya format. Rendering tutorials on a spaceship, a robot, and a katana sword. The chapter ends with a brief tutorial on how to render a detailed, complex scene.

Chapter 5: The Character Pipeline - The information is here is so basic, I think the only reason it would be included in an “of the pros” books is that it has a few MEL scripts. Naming conventions, character sets, and some rigging scripts by the author. Certainly one of the least interesting chapters.

Chapter 6: Hair Systems - This very unique chapter that talks about using Maya Hair for alternative purposes. Octopus tentacles, Rope/wire, Character’s secondary motion, and shark animation. Great tutorials for all these examples, which can obviously be applied to nearly anything.

Chapter 7: Dynamics - This is all very basic stuff, with very basic examples (ie a torus lands on a plane, boxes interacting with eachother). Has a couple pages on using Maya Hair and dynamics to make car suspension.

Chapter 8: The Art of Maya Noises - Basic dynamics tutorials. I have no idea why this was in the book. You WILL find better online tutorials because most of the examples are clones of things you will find elsewhere. 1) A water fountain, 2) spinning particles to create a “vortex”, 3) a “hermite electric arc” (two spheres with electricity flowing between them). MEL scripts are included for these examples.

Chapter 9: Polygon/Subdivision modeling a character head (cover of book) - Starts out talking about edgeloops — which has an interesting twist because the character has a “third eye”. Draws curves in the front and side viewports using the EP curve tool, thus creating a skeletal/basic cage that will be used as outlines for poly faces (so, it’s like NURBS modeling, but poly). Has a few pages about filling in the curves-wireframe, pointing out problem areas (triangles, five sided polys, and “stars”) and how to fix them. The tutorial stops at completing the trapezius and neck muscles. No texturing/lighting/rendering discussion is included.