How This Book Is Organized

Maya 4.5 Fundamentals is composed of four parts . Part I, "A Quick-Start Guide to Maya," gives you the basics of using Maya and creating 3D animation with it. Chapter 1, "Pre-Maya: A Primer," gives some guidance to users who are weak in one of these areas. It's for people who are skittish about computers or people who didn't like art in school and have avoided it ever since. Chapters 2, "A Tour of Maya," and 3, "Maya Interaction," give you the basics of navigating through and interacting with Maya so that you can begin your 3D creating. Chapter 4, "Diving In: Your First Animation," consolidates all the steps of modeling, texturing, animating, and rendering with Maya into one tutorial that gives you an overview of the entire process.

Part II, "Maya Basics," is where you become proficient at using Maya. You'll revisit the major stages of creating animation with Maya by working through tutorials in each chapter, and move into a more sophisticated mode of using Maya. As Chapter 5, "NURBS Modeling Basics," begins, the tutorial workflow moves from the simple pull-down menus to a more professional marking-menu approach, designed to immerse users in real-world workflow. Because Maya offers both NURBS and polygonal modeling, both forms are covered in separate chapters. Chapter 6, "More NURBS Modeling," delves into NURBS modeling in more detail, with a tutorial that involves building a house. In Chapter 7, "Modeling with Polygons," you'll model a creature to see the techniques of organic modeling with polygons. Chapter 8, "Materials," explains how to create all kinds of standard surfaces with Maya's Hypershade. In Chapter 9, "Lighting," you see how to get dramatic and realistic lighting results with Maya's virtual lights. Chapter 10, "Animation Basics," demonstrates Maya's strength with animation and automating animated responses. Chapter 11, "Character Animation," teaches the techniques for getting your models to animate in a lifelike way. In Chapter 12, "Cameras and Rendering," you learn to finalize a project by fixing a viewpoint and producing your final rendered results from it.

Part III, "Going Further with Maya," begins with Chapter 13, "Paint Effects," which demonstrates this powerful module, capable of creating all manner of plants and trees, natural media, and even clouds, stars, and nebulae. Chapter 14, "Particle Systems and Dynamics," shows you methods for creating complex animation in an automated way. At the end of Chapter 14, you will have completed the book's projects and produced a sophisticated animated sequence from beginning to end in Maya, starting from an empty screen. Chapter 15, "Your Next Steps: Efficiency and Artistry," offers guidelines on speeding and simplifying the animation process and steers you away from common traps.

Part IV, "Appendices," includes several useful reference appendixes. Appendices A, "Maya Headstart for Max Users," and B, "Maya Headstart for LightWave Users," give 3ds max and LightWave users brief compare-and-contrast guidelines to help adapt more quickly to using Maya. Don't forget to browse through this book's color insert to see a collection of inspiring images created by professional Maya artists . We've also included some figures and sample renderings from the book's tutorials to give you a chance to see them in full color.