Maya Professional Tips And Techniques

Designed for busy Maya users like you, this guide offers dozens of how-tos, workarounds, and shortcuts culled from years of experience in a fast-paced, deadline-driven production pipeline. You’ll discover tricks and timesavers on texturing particles, customizing Paint Effects brushes, modeling polygon faces, creating facial rigs with wire deformers, and much more—and helpful full-color illustrations reinforce the concepts. From modeling, animating, and rigging to texturing and lighting, this book will help you streamline workflow and improve your skills.

This is not a book about Maya software with a few animation pointers thrown in here and there. This is a guide to Maya software written by professional animators. This book provides you with complete, set-by-step walkthroughs of essential animation techniques that increase your speed and efficiency while using Maya 2017 for character animation. From curves to constraints, this book covers all of the methods available in the latest version of Maya. Featuring gold-mine coverage this book teaches you new techniques for working with characters in animation tests and short films. Accompanied by a companion site, this is the one and only guide to get you up to speed.

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.

Learn to work effectively and creatively with all versions of ZBrush! ZBrush is used by top artists in Hollywood to model and sculpt characters in such films as Avatar, Iron Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean. In addition, this amazing technology is also used in jewelry design, forensic science, aerospace, video games, toy creation, and the medical field. Written by Pixologic's in-house ZBrush expert Paul Gaboury, this full-color, beautifully illustrated guide provides you with the ultimate tips and tricks to maximize your use of all versions of ZBrush. Reveals numerous little-known tips and tricks that exist within ZBrush, but often go unexploited Shares an abundance of helpful techniques and insights that the author has acquired from years of helping professional artists in various industries Offers dozens of version-neutral solutions and shortcuts in areas such as sculpting, texturing, posing, rendering, and more Features "Artist Spotlights" from several ZBrush experts, offering their how-to's for using the feature-rich software in today's studios Improve your productivity and quality of work with this helpful, easy-to-understand resource.

The Maya guide for animators, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 presents everything you need to know about character animation in Maya. Fully updated for the latest revision of Maya, this book provides you with complete, step-by-step walkthroughs of essential animation techniques to increase your efficiency and speed. This is an animator's workflow in book form, written by professional animators-not a software book with a few animation pointers thrown in. In addition to all the gold-mine coverage and interviews with expert animators from the previous edition, How to Cheat in Maya 2012 also features a new in-depth chapter on the principles of animation, updated information on camera settings and animation using Maya's new Camera Sequencer tool, the ins and outs of the brand new Editable Motion Trails tool, new techniques for working with characters in multi-shot animation tests and short films, a new cycles chapter covering actions like flying and walks, time-saving scripts, and advanced tricks with the new Graph Editor. The proven "How to Cheat" series gets you up to speed quickly, and in a way that's fun.

All professional animators know a handful of secrets that give them an edge in a production environment. "How to Cheat in Maya" puts these secrets in your hands! Learn time and energy-saving techniques tested in real Hollywood productions in this book, jam-packed with screenshots and scene files designed to get you up to speed quickly. From menus to modeling, lipsync to lighting, How to Cheat in Maya 2014 covers all of the methods available in the latest version of Maya. Get up to speed quickly and produce stellar results with these insider workflows. With new, updated cheats for the latest version of Maya, How to Cheat in Maya 2014 is an essential guide for amateur and professional 3D animators alike. Fully updated with gold-mine coverage including: expanded sections on production workflow, all new chapters covering rigging cheats and Maya's referencing tools, and brand new project files demonstrating production-proven techniques. The companion website includes complete scene files for exercises and techniques, extra rigs, Quicktime movies of full projects, and video tutorials.

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!