How This Book Is Organized

Maya 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 haven't had much of a background in art or computer graphics. 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 a overview of the entire process.

Part II, "Maya Basics," is where you become proficient at using Maya. You 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. Because Maya offers polygons, Subdivision Surfaces, and NURBS for modeling, all three forms are covered in the modeling chapters. In Chapter 5, "Modeling with Polygons," the tutorial subject is an architectural rendering with an emphasis on realism. In Chapter 6, "Polygon Character and Subdivision Surfaces Modeling," you see how to use photographs of a model to begin building a fully detailed human head, using the polygonal aspect of Subdivision Surfaces modeling. In Chapter 7, "More Subdivision Surfaces Modeling," you continue modeling the head and learn more about using Subdivision Surfaces techniques. In Chapter 8, "Modeling with NURBS," you focus on building with curves and creating NURBS patches that are stitched or attached together to form a long Matrix-style robe. Chapter 9, "Materials," explains how to create many standard surfaces and textures with Maya's Hypershade. In Chapter 10, "Lighting," you see how to get dramatic and realistic lighting results with Maya's virtual lights. Chapter 11, "Animation," demonstrates Maya's strength with animation and automating animated responses. Chapter 12, "Character Animation," teaches techniques for getting your character models to animate in a lifelike way as easily as possible. In Chapter 13, "Cameras and Rendering," you learn to finalize a project by fixing a viewpoint and producing your final rendered results from it. This chapter also gives you an overview of the new Vector and Mental Ray renderers.

Part III, "Going Further with Maya," begins with Chapter 14, "Paint Effects," which demonstrates this powerful module, capable of creating all manner of plants, trees, hair, and even clouds, stars, and nebulae. Chapter 15, "Particle Systems and Dynamics," shows you methods for creating complex animation in an automated way. At the end of Chapter 15, you will have completed the book's projects and produced several sophisticated animated sequences from beginning to end in Maya, starting from an empty screen. Chapter 16, "Your Next Steps: Efficiency and Artistry," offers guidelines on speeding and simplifying the animation process and steers you away from common traps.

Part IV, "Appendixes," includes two useful reference appendixes. Appendixes 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 them adapt more quickly to using Maya.