Maya 6 Killer Tips

With more than 90 percent of film effects houses and half of the North American game studios using Maya in their projects, the pressure is on for 3D modelers to prove their Maya chops! It's not enough to just know how to use the program; you need to demonstrate that you can do so swiftly, efficiently, and with dazzling results! Here to ensure you do is a fun, full-colored guide that's been pared down to just the essentials: the hundreds of tips, shortcuts, and tricks the pros use every day to speed their Maya 6 workflows. Along with tips for customizing the Maya interface, polygonal modeling, rendering, and more, veteran author Eric Hanson also provides tons of insider techniques for working with Maya 6's newest features including tips for working with new tools like the Soft Modification Tool, Animation Retargeting, and High Quality Shading; advice for working with the new particle behavior features; cool new hotkeys; and insight into streamlining the texting process with Maya's new Photoshop integration, to name only a few. You'll quickly find that the techniques revealed here allow you to work faster, smarter, and more creatively!

Ready to learn from a seasoned visual effects veteran? Then sit down and pay attention! In Maya 5 Killer Tips, effects wizard Eric Hanson lets the genie out of the bottle, revealing all of the Maya tricks, techniques, and shortcuts he's employed to create visual marvels for films like The Day After Tomorrow, Cast Away, Fifth Element, and more. By focusing on concise tips, informative nuggets, and seasoned productivity secrets that are rarely found in other volumes, this book takes you straight to the heart of the matter: the productivity enhancers that you usually only acquire after working with a program in an intensive professional environment. In this case, Eric reveals many of these road-tested Maya secrets: efficient modeling with NURBS and polygons; creating rich rendering results with shader networks; conveying professional camera techniques; using particle systems, dynamics; and more. Along the way he explores Maya 5's new features as well, including improved rendering and character setup options.

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Well-known Maya professional, Michael Ingrassia, takes readers through his unique style of modeling: "Image Based Modeling" where efficient, realistic models can be created very quickly. Ingrassia's techniques allow modelers to create exact replicas of their concept characters or objects. The techniques presented are very efficient and allow game modelers to quickly build out stand alone props to populate environments and game levels. Presented are tried and true techniques that the author has used successfully in game production for the past 10 years. Most, if not all 3D books, focus on basic "box" modeling techniques, which are the basis for proper 3D modeling but not the complete solution. In the author's experience, students who have learned through the Image Based Modeling brand, have quickly excelled into effective modelers. One of the hardest things for any modeler to do is match their model EXACTLY to the concept art or photos they are provided. The insider tips in this book walk artists through this process. Artists begin with basic modeling and advance to a creating a complete scene and set design/game level. Rather than including sporadic models with zero association from to one another, each model in the book becomes an integral part of an overall theme realistic in game development today. The accompanying downloadable resources include 8 exclusive video tutorials on advanced Maya techniques as bonus tracks for artists providing invaluable modeling, rigging and texturing samples. Also, an in-depth video on assembling a "Killer Demo Reel" showing simple but effective video editing techniques used by the author so that artists can learn how to get their work seen. The book not only teaches effective methodology, but provides the user with impressive content for producing effective demo reels and portfolios. Pros and cons of demo reel, website and artist representation are given, along with insights into the expectations of game studios today. The video tutorials show users the finished product, and then run through the process of step by step creation of that particular technique.