Autodesk Maya 2013 Essentials

Learn Autodesk Maya Quickly and Easily

This Autodesk Official Training Guide teaches you the fundamentals of Autodesk Maya. Through step-by-step tutorials, full-color illustrations, and fun, hands-on exercises, this practical book gets you up to speed on modeling, texturing, animating, lighting, and other core Maya topics. Whether you're a beginning animator or just updating your skills on the latest version of the software, this task-based book provides the solid grounding you need.

Learn these Autodesk Maya essentials—and more:

• The Maya 2013 interface, menus, and tools

• Simple animation—set keyframes, adjust tangents, and more

• Modeling with polygons—bodies, faces, and cleanup before rigging

• Adding character with blend shapes and surfaces

• Building bone structure, adding joints, and weighting joints

• Rigging, animating, and lighting basics

• How to render and composite a shot

• The hows and whys of certain techniques and decisions

Explore vertex weighting to create smooth joint bends

Learn step-by-step how to animate your character

This striking Essentials book features:

• Chapter-opening learning objectives

• Step-by-step tutorials

• Four-color screenshots and illustrations

• Essentials and Beyond—summaries and additional suggested exercises

• Downloadable exercise files