Tip of the Week: Three Books

There are so many books on Maya and different aspects of 3D that it can be tough to know where to start, so I thought I'd recommend a few of the ones that were most illuminating when I was first starting out. There's no shortage of good resources out there, and you can learn a lot from tutorials and blogs online. (Like this one, I hope.) But these three books were the most useful for me. They've been around for a few years now, so they may not have information on some of the newest features. But the fundamentals are solid, and for someone just starting out or looking to improve in a specific area, they're sure to help:


Maya Character Creation, by Chris Maraffi

Before reading this book, I was terrified of rigging and didn't want to get near it. Today, character setup is one of my specialties professionally. Obviously there was a lot of work and learning in between, but this book got me started along the way. It takes you step by step through the process of setting up a bipedal character rig. You'll learn how to use constraints, expressions, driven keys, custom controls, and lots more. There's a section on MEL at the end that's pretty good too. The best part, compared to a lot of the tutorials out there, is that it explains why you do what you do as you go along, so you really learn the underlying concepts and can apply them to completely different rigs.


Stop Staring by Jason Osipa

I'm pretty sure that there's a newer edition now than the one that I used a few years back. This book is a must read for animators, character TD's, and anyone modeling faces. It's approach to facial animation is completely different from the advice that's given out to most people when they first start out. And the facial rig that it shows you how to build is of production quality (at least in principal, if not in sheer detail - DreamWorks animators, for instance, have literally thousands of parameters at their disposal for facial posing). But this book will get you up and running with the general formula and give you the concepts you need to build from there.


MEL Scripting for Maya Animators by Mark R. Wilkins and Chris Kazmier

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. You don't have to be a Technical Director; it doesn't matter what you do; you should learn some basic MEL. This book will get you started. It assumes no prior scripting/programming experience. Even if you don't wind up writing epic scripts, you're sure to use at least a few of the tricks you learn in this book, and you'll definitely come away with a deeper understanding of what's going on under the hood in Maya.