Maya: Secrets of the Pros

In this unique full-color book, a cadre of professionals led by Maya expert and best-selling author, John Kundert-Gibbs, team up to share what they've learned using Maya in the CG trenches.

Contributing authors include veterans of such high-profiles projects as The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Star Wars: Episode I, The Perfect Storm, as well as animations featured at SIGGRAPH.

Whether you're new to the field or already have solid 3D experience, Maya: Secrets of the Pros offers insights and step-by-step instructions designed to help you build and sharpen a range of critical skills, including:

• Preparation techniques for modeling and animation
• Improving motion capture and lip synching
• Creating crowd scenes from a small number of base models
• Controlling dynamics in plot-driven sequences
• Developing massively complex particle systems for film effects, such as those in The Perfect Storm
• Modeling subdivision surfaces
• Creating a GUI animation set-up for animators
• Using effective natural lighting
• Writing software for a multi-platform renderfarm

Contents

Part One: Beginnings: Modeling
Chapter One: Accelerating the Preproduction Process
Chapter Two: Modeling a SubDivision Surface Horse
Chapter Three: Organix—Modeling by Procedural Means

Part Two: Putting Things in Motion: Animation
Chapter Four: Animation and Motion Capture—Working Together
Chapter Five: Lip-Synching Real-World Projects


Part Three: The Numbers Game: Dealing with Complex Systems
Chapter Six: Creating Crowd Scenes from a Small Number of Base Models
Chapter Seven: Taming Chaos: Controlling Dynamics for Use in Plot-Driven Sequences
Chapter Eight: Complex Particle Systems
Chapter Nine: Creating a Graphic User Interface Animation Setup for Animators

Part Four: Endings: Surfacing and Rendering
Chapter Ten: Effective Natural Lighting
Chapter Eleven: Distributed Rendering