Maya Featuring Creature Creations (Graphics Series)
by Todd Palamar

List Price: $49.95
Our Price: $1.00
You Save: $48.95 (98%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of Maya Featuring Creature Creations (Graphics Series)

Book Review: More than skindeep into maya
Summary: 4 Stars

The weak spot of the book is bit between the two parts, that where the clay model is scanned and digitally translated. Not many readers will have the hardware to properly scan a clay model. This makes the first part of the book somewhat useless. Interesting for someone who wants to know the process of creature creation in films but not usable for personal training.

The strength of the book therefore lies, in my opinion, in the latter halve of the book. Todd Palamar there dives deeply into several modelling and rigging methods. Other than the standard Maya book he views more savvy ways of production and the Maya user with experience can learn a lot from it. In the last part of the book Todd looks at skinning methods using softbodies with underlying muscles and tendons. Extremely interesting, but since even the larger studios are battling with the difficulties of dynamics driven skin, it is not surprising that the methods explained do not lead to smooth results. The troubleshooting section in the end trying to solve problems in this field could have been a chapter in itself since many problems come with dynamic skinning. It's typical that Todd is not able to show a properly muscle skinned animation of his creature at the end of the book, but is able to show some pics of where the skin went horribly wrong.

So why 4 stars? Because the book is an excellent training tool, a well written manual deep into Maya and only one of the few books able to touch upon the area's of dynamics driven skin or mel driven rigs. Also the wide scale of methods explained is great for those who are not looking for quick solutions and crappy rigs. Combine it with the Jason Schleifer dvd lectures and `Maya Character Creation: Modeling and Animation Controls' from Chris Maraffi for the full picture and learn to create your own methods for advanced rigs and skinning methods.

Summary of Maya Featuring Creature Creations (Graphics Series)

Graphic Design Books

• Books > Subjects > Arts & Photography
• Business & Investing > Job Hunting & Careers > Guides
• Computers & Technology > Programming > Game Programming
• Graphics & Multimedia
• Software
• New & Used Textbooks > Business & Finance
• Computer Science > Graphics & Visualization