Mastering Autodesk Maya 2015

Expand your skills with complete Maya mastery

Mastering Autodesk Maya is the ultimate guide to the popular 3D animation software. Author Todd Palamar draws on his extensive professional animation experience to help readers take their Maya skills to the next level. Written for those who already know the basics of this enormous program, the book covers advanced topics and professional techniques for modeling, animation, texturing, and visual effects.

Fully updated to reflect Maya’s latest features, the book takes a hands-on approach to instruction, providing readers with a diverse set of tutorials designed by real-world professionals to showcase 3D animation and visual techniques used in industry settings. Complete and comprehensive, the book makes an excellent desk reference for the working animator, and is an ideal resource for those seeking Maya certification. The unique combination of challenging material and practical instruction make this one-of-a-kind guide the ultimate Maya handbook. Topics include:

• Animation using inverse kinematics, keyframes, and deformers
• Hard surface and organic modeling
• Proper rigging techniques, and working with Maya Muscle
• Xgen, Paint Effects, and rendering with mental ray
• Texture mapping, compositing, nParticles, and more
• Virtual filmmaking and scene management

The most complex skills are useless if they can’t be applied, so the book emphasizes the practical, day-to-day uses of each skill, and discusses which solutions best fit which scenario. For the computer animation professional seeking a more in-depth mastery of this popular animation program, Mastering Autodesk Maya is an excellent investment in the future of your career.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Working in Autodesk Maya
Chapter 2 Introduction to Animation
Chapter 3 Hard-Surface Modeling
Chapter 4 Organic Modeling
Chapter 5 Rigging and Muscle Systems
Chapter 6 Animation Techniques
Chapter 7 Lighting with mental ray
Chapter 8 mental ray Shading Techniques
Chapter 9 Texture Mapping
Chapter 10 Paint Effects
Chapter 11 Rendering for Compositing
Chapter 12 Introducing nParticles
Chapter 13 Dynamic Effects
Chapter 14 Hair and Clothing
Chapter 15 Maya Fluids
Chapter 16 Scene Management and Virtual Filmmaking

Appendix A The Bottom Line
Appendix B Autodesk Maya 2015 Certification