| Maya 5 Savvy, by John Kundert - Gibbs and Peter Lee is one heckova tome. 900+ pages in length, it is distinguishable in that a majority of those pages are filled with use full information you couldn't get by simply reading the Maya manual. Though not quite the beginners book that most Maya literature seems to be, Maya 5 Savvy is beginner friendly. That is, it explains concepts and procedures fully without assuming that the reader has any preconceived notions. Regardless, Maya 5 is not a beginner book by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, though ideally for the intermediate crowd, the advanced or professional user of Maya will find excellent instruction within these pages. It starts out with the customary chapter on the Maya interface, but here, comprehensive information is presented about the interface in depth, so you learn to customize all aspects of it to your individual needs. After that introduction, the book immediately dives straight into a project that will be utilized and referenced throughout the book. Coincidently, the project is varied enough that it takes you through an in depth journey of much of the Maya toolset to create a final output. The first project chapter tries to summarize the elements necessary to create an animation/story that doesn't suck. We can only hope. Subsequent chapters take you through the creative process, and the preproduction process on a small scale. An important reminder chapter to all the self made people who seem to think that pushing a mouse is all they need to do to become the next Blue Sky. The modeling chapters do an excellent job of utilizing as much of the Maya toolset as possible, and you'll find NURBS, sub d surfacing, and polygonal modeling all covered. In addition, you'll find exercises in spline modeling that are unrelated to the main project, but important to provide a comprehensive review and explanation. And this is where Maya 5 really shines, in any of the chapters, the authors go into depth explaining a tool's function, as well as the reasons why you would utilize it. Animation, Lip Sync, and character rigging. It's all there, and explained to an extent that is rare for most technical literature involving graphical programs these days. Though character rigging is a dark art at its best, Maya 5 Savvy does an excellent job pushing through difficult concepts, without dumbing down the exercise to a level of non-practicality. The exercise/animation project featured in this book is real, and as a result, the problems and solutions are real. This is Maya 5 Savvy's real strength, comprehensive and concise writing on real world problems and how to solve them. As a result, you'll get instruction on dynamics, Mel scripting, and cloth deformation and setup. Later chapters explain the renderer in depth, and explore quite a few neat tricks with the Maya shader system. Post production compositing is also covered briefly as a means of wrapping up the project and presenting a complete production workflow. Though I've yet to find a Maya 5 bible, or replacement for the mediocre Maya 5 manual, Maya 5 Savvy comes the closest to filling that gap. Though presented in project format, the information is partnered with an excellent index, and that makes searching and utilizing the book as an on demand reference just as rewarding. Highly recommended for beginner and advanced user alike. | 