Maya 4.5 Bible

Joe Spadaro is a professional animator who has held positions ranging from CGI Supervisor, Character Technical Director, and Character Animator/Modeler Project Lead Animator for companies including MTVN/Nickelodeon Digital Labs in Manhattan and Victory FX Animation Studios at Walt Disney M.G.M. Studios, Florida. Joe's past CGI projects include "The Dooley and Pals Show" (Victory Television), "Sabrina Down Under" (Viacom), "Cruiseline Tinkerbell " (Disney), and "The Spell of Sistina" (HR Giger). Current projects include two unannounced Saturday morning CGI cartoons (Victory Television & Fred Silverman) and "Sheena" (Disney/TriStar). Joe has produced artwork or animation for many major companies and clients including the following: Walt Disney World Companies, Columbia TriStar, Viacom, CBS, H.R. Giger, ElfQuest, Tupperware, Alias|Wavefront, Esso/Exxon, American Express, Burger King, Toyota, Campbells, MasterCard, BELLSouth, The Box Music Television, Flowers Bread, Sportpads, Arkansas Razorbacks, Florida Marlins, Florida Panthers, Natcom, Alamo, Camel, Impact, Style Club (Disney and Marvel Comics licensed and approved), Condor Farms, Coral Gables Federal, Bacardi, Coca Cola, Hiram Walker, McCann--Erickson, Tropicana, S.G.I., Readers Digest, Expert, Infosource Rainbow Optics, Anne Klein, Kodak, Interaxx, and Erickson. Joe's artwork and animation have been featured and/or published in numerous trade magazines including Digital Magic, CGW, Post, Markee, Hot Rod, Hot Truck, Sport Truck, All Chevy, Low Rider, Easy Rider, V/W Trends, and Truckin'. Joe has served as a member of the executive committee for the AWGUA and is often called upon to give animation lectures and instruction for Alias|Wavefront, AWGUA, SIGGRAPH, Full Sail School of Animation, and other universities. Joe also contributes regularly to the board of advisors for Full Sail's animation curriculum. He has spent two decades working in the art field, with one decade focused on using computers for 3D character animation. His work at Lightpoint Entertainment and Victory FX Animation Studios at Disney M.G.M. Studios in Florida has been a valuable experience and has provided many examples in this book. Don Kim is an animator/SFX supervisor from Los Angeles who began his career in 3D while working on digital cel animation production at Rough Draft Studios, Inc., on "The Maxx for MTV Oddities." During the last few years he has worked on animated pilots and development for major studios in the United States and abroad, and has worked on commercials and music videos for the United States, Mexico, Japan, and South Korea. He has been using Maya since it was released and used Alias PowerAnimator, Electricimage, FormZ, and Softimage3D prior to that.

Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. Quick Start. Part I: Getting Started with Maya 4.5. Chapter 1: An Introduction to Maya. Chapter 2: Exploring the Maya User Interface. Chapter 3: Working in 3D Space. Part II: Modeling. Chapter 4: NURBS Modeling. Chapter 5: Polygon Modeling. Part III: Using the Hypershade. Chapter 6: Shaders. Chapter 7: Textures. Chapter 8: Lighting. Chapter 9: Cameras. Part IV: Rendering. Chapter 10: Software Rendering. Chapter 11: Interactive Photorealistic Rendering. Chapter 12: Hardware Rendering. Chapter 13: Render Wrangling. Part V: The Maya Workflow. Chapter 14: Using Artisan. Chapter 15: Using MEL. Part VI: Animating in Maya. Chapter 16: Keyframe Animation. Chapter 17: Fine--Tuning Keyframes. Chapter 18: Set--Driven Keys. Chapter 19: Path Animation. Chapter 20: Deformers. Chapter 21: Expressions. Chapter 22: Nonlinear Animation. Part VII: Character Animation in Maya. Chapter 23: Character Setup. Chapter 24: Inverse Kinematics and Constraints. Chapter 25: Character Animation. Chapter 26: Animating Multiple Deformers. Part VIII: Creating Special Effects. Chapter 27: Using Dynamics. Chapter 28: Using Paint Effects. Part IX: The Maya Pipeline. Chapter 29: Making Connections. Chapter 30: Using Relationship Editors. Part X: Compositing and Postproduction. Chapter 31: Compositing. Chapter 32: Outputting to Video and Film. Appendix: What's on the CD--ROM? Index.