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Learning Maya 5 Foundation from Sybex is an official learning resource from Maya Press. This beginners introduction to Maya 5 is a colorful exploration through the Maya interface and fundamentals through a series of five projects.
Foundation covers all of the aspects of working in Maya, from basic navigation to animation, and rendering and surprisingly enough, even MEL scripting. The projects are familiar enough. Project one is a bouncing ball, project two is a Jack-in-the-box. Project three satisfies the required cliche of a space battle and project four pushes ahead into more advanced territory with a character rigging project using "Primitive man." Finally, project five is with Salty the Seal that bring together all of the skills you learned previously and combines them, including a use for Mel Script. Though the projects are uninspired, they are simple enough that they will provide the novice user with rapid, tangible results that will help to motivate even the most 3D challenged newbie. The project format means that each exercise will provide a renderable result so you can have direct feedback on your learning progress. Despite the market to novice users, Learning Maya 5 Foundation does take the user through more advanced parts of Maya, but does it in such a manner that your exploration and utilization of these more advanced functions and paradigms is seamless. Through the projects, you'll learn about the basics of walk cycles, nurbs modeling, polygonal modeling, UV mapping, secondary animation, F curve editing and even Maya's non linear animation capabilities as well as the mel scripting. The text is cleanly formatted with appropriate button pushing directions that are very readable and easy to follow. Probably the highlight of this text however that sets it apart from the competition is that it is in full color, all of it. The choice of full color means this is one pricey text, but the comprehension ability is unmatched. What you see on the page is exactly what you get on screen, the color makes what you see intuitive, and learning retention is deeper. On top of it all, this text ships with the Learning Maya Beginners Guide DVD which contains all of the supporting files for the projects. In addition, completed movies of all of the projects is provided (as well as on the edges of the pages, creating a basic flipbook animation of the projects you'll be doing.) Finally, you'll get over four hours of instructor led overviews of the projects. Though not quite as in depth as the text, they're pretty close, and if you've got a basic understanding of Maya, you'll be able to follow the projects on DVD without the book's help. All in all, Learning Maya 5 Foundation is a strong beginners resource. The projects make it ideal as a classroom resource or as a directional resource to an established Maya class. The inclusion of the DVD makes it an equally valuable resource for those that are picking up Maya on their own. The choice of color for the entire book really makes a difference in the approachability and comprehension of the material. | 