[.ca] Maya 4 Fundamentals w/CD-Rom (ISBN 0735711895)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Maya 4 Fundamentals is aimed at newcomers to Maya. Unusually, for a beginner's book, it is written in a professional and technically authoritative tone, never straying into unexplained jargon or descending into patronising simplicity. The book is organised into three sections—"A Quick-start Guide to Maya", "Maya Basics" and "Going Further with Maya". The first of these covers all the bases, introducing colour theory, composition, digital graphics and operating systems before moving onto the Maya environment and interface and finishing with your first animation. Maya Basics" introduces NURBS and polygon modelling, materials, lighting animation, cameras and rendering in a series of project-based chapters. "Going Further with Maya" explores Paint Effects and Particle Systems. The final chapter, "Efficiency and Artistry", answers all the questions that inevitably arise as you work through a tutorial-based book of this kind--how to speed up rendering, creating your own Marking Menu, where to get plug-ins and MELscripts, how to build your own Material Libraries and, not least, how to start a career in professional animation. Appendices aimed at converts from 3ds Max and LightWave offer in-depth coverage of the main differences between these applications and Maya 4. A CD includes all of the scene files as well as all of the tutorials in video format. Whether you're a 2-D artist adding a new dimension to your work, an expert in traditional media with limited computing skills, or crossing over from 3ds Max or LightWave Maya 4 Fundamentals has something to offer. --Ken McMahon

tutorials are of little help:
I am not certain how many users praising this book my have used an older version of Maya to work through the tutorials. While I do not have any difficulties with any tutorials released by Alias Wave-front, the exercises in this book do not match Maya 4.0. Windows that according to the book are supposed to pop up do not, and if they do, they look entirely different from the images in the book. I suspect that Maya 3 looked like this and the book was released without a thorough update, to match number 4. This does render the book quite useless.

excellent jump start:
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.

Bets I've seen:
This book is by far the best I've seen of its kind. I have read reviews that say the tutorials get lost in the long paragraphs, but those reviewers obviously didn't open the CD, because every single tutorial is presented in a step by step video that is shot from a first person perspective. How much easier could it be? This book is perfect for those new to Maya 4, because once you've finished this book, you can model a character from scratch, apply textures, set camera shots and various other activities and for those who have intermediate experience will find this book useful as a refresher and possibly learn short cuts to their work flow. The best thing about the book is that if the reader chose to, he or she could simply pop in the CD and learn all that this book has to offer. I am actually looking for other books written by these authors, becasue I haven't seen anything close to the way they teach.

Best of the best:
This book is by far the best instructional book I have ever purchased and I don't just mean in the field of Computer Animation. Although I have bought several books for Lightwave, 3dMax as well as one other book for Maya, I could only recommend this one. Not only is the text informative and understandable, but with the CD Rom that comes included, you don't even need to read the book: Every tutorial is demonstrated by one of the two authors of the book and they follow along with the text verbatim. If I buy another animation book, it will be by these two guys.

Beginners to Maya... Look no further!!!:
Maya 4 Fundamentals--- So you want to learn MAYA... well this is a GREAT place to start... This book and CD does not only cover the basics in writing... but they take it one step further and go step by step on CD... Jim Lammers is extremely understandable and makes learning MAYA fun... They walk you through designing a haunted house...and much more... I did have a hard time understanding Lee Gooding... but he only covers 2 or 3 of the 14 chapters. I found that reading those chapters thoroughly and then watching the movie helped... I would recommend this book for any beginner to MAYA. This book is not intended for the Intermediate to Advance MAYA user...