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

Introduction xvii CHAPTER 1 Understanding the Maya Interface 1 CHAPTER 2 Creating Your First Animation 15 CHAPTER 3 Modeling with Polygons, Part 1 37 CHAPTER 4 Modeling with Polygons, Part 2 69 CHAPTER 5 Modeling with Polygons, Part 3 87 CHAPTER 6 Modeling with Subdivision Surfaces 103 CHAPTER 7 Surfacing Your Character 127 CHAPTER 8 Getting Bent Out of Shape: Blend Shapes 153 CHAPTER 9 Dem Bones: Setting Up Your Joint System 165 CHAPTER 10 Weighting Your Joints 191 CHAPTER 11 Rigging Your Character 205 CHAPTER 12 Making It Move: Animating Your Character 225 CHAPTER 13 Let There Be Light: Lighting Your Shot 243 CHAPTER 14 Rendering and Compositing Your Scene 263 Index 275

Paul Naas is a professional animator and educator. He runs the Multimedia and Computer Graphics Program at Cañada College in Redwood City, California, and has done animation work for companies such as Disney, Cisco, bZillions/C2 Gaming, and the Children′s Discovery Museum. He is also a professional cartoon artist. He has a Master of Fine Arts in animation from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco.