Mastering Autodesk Maya 2016: Autodesk Official Press

Foremost my grade on the content: A+! While these books tend to do a lot of referring to supplementary material available on the book's website, if you have been using Maya for some time already, it may not be needed for you to still get the most out of this book. For me, I have been an intermediate user and this fills in the gaps. The author makes no bones about it, that you really need some ground understanding of Maya before picking this one up. That said, there really aren't a lot of great intermediate or expert books out there on Maya - and Mr. Palamar does a great job with handling the necessary details of the different angles of the intermediate and advanced Maya topics. The reality for those of us though who really know something about Maya it's this: it's not an application as much anymore as it is an operating system these days - it's so big & comprehensive of an application in the visual arts world and has so many pieces to it, a "full" comprehensive guide would be 10,000 pages. So the author does a great job of getting to the necessities and "most used" items in Maya, and not spending an inordinate amount of time on the items that you may use - well, never - or rarely. I have been reading this from cover to cover and have enjoyed it.Unlike other reviewers, I only purchased the Kindle version (not the textbook one) and can say with authority that the example photos are quite detailed and easily zoomable. Since anyone with a PC or Mac (or Linux.. or iPad.. or whatever) could download the Kindle app for free I'd recommend getting this in digital format. I'm an old-schooler too when it comes to text books, but it's useful as a reference guide in addition to being a great starter for the intermediate user to round out their knowledge. That being said, even if the paper book didn't have the problem with the pictures as some mention, I'd still recommend getting this in a Kindle format.There is one downside to this book. Maya 2017 has been out for a little bit, and some things have changed (though not dramatically - things tend to get added in by Autodesk moreso than made-over). So this is applicable to Maya 2017 installs, but the 2016 1/2 improvements (like HIK quck-rig, etc) aren't covered. But there is enough YouTube material out there on it to fill in that gap.

I feel that the current illustration of, apparently, a man flailing in blood, does accurately represent how I feel about some of the changes in this version of Maya. However, it is informative (As these particular editions are), and the kindle edition has colored, magnify-able images.

If you're looking to learn Maya 2016 then this is definitely a book you should consider. While there are other introductory books available this one will definitely lead you down the path to becoming a master of 3D modeling and Maya 2016. Hoping Todd updates the book shortly for Maya 2017.

I have the 2009 hefty paperback version of this book by Keller. I was looking for a mobile, updated electronic version, knowing that the content was valuable. I have given 3 stars for the authors efforts at updating content. However, the kindle version (on IOS IPad) formatting of this book is horrible. This version is a few years old (but is the latest release as of fall 2018), and so Kindle updates may have broken formatting. I wonder why the publisher has allowed such a flawed product to go unfixed. Many of my Kindle books are of a technical nature - with images, tables... and yet still usable in electronic form. This book instead, has a table of contents with links that do not work, intermixed paragraph text and headers (making following each sentence difficult), and unusable images due to poor source resolution. Is this the best Autodesk Press and Sybex can offer?

This book did not help me at all! The pictures are blurry and black and white, the content seems all over the place. I have some knowledge of Maya but this book was completely useless

Great book

Was looking forward to this book. BUT I found that you cannot zoom in on any kindle device or Kindle for PC app. Which is retarded. If you look at page 81 you'll find that there is a screenshot of a portion of the screen .... you cannot even make out what the author is trying to show -- the tiny fonts are illegible due to the small size and resolution. It might work on your phone..didn't try that ..but I don't want to read the book on my phone nevertheless.Beware.To Amazon: THAT WAS REALLY REALLY DUMB...What were you thinking ???

There is a a lot of fantastic information, and these tutorials really elevate this book over so many others that I've looked at. However, the greyscale screenshots are really hard to read sometimes. I'd recommend getting the Kindle version instead.

Muito bom. Recomendo!!

Tutti quelli che vogliono cimentarsi nell'arte 3d usando Maya dovrebbero possedere questo libro

I bought this book expecting a hard time understanding the advanced concepts of the program, i'm fairly new to maya(only being famiiar with the overral interface and modeling tools) and still this book manage to develop excercises and explanations deep enough so you can understand and apply on your own. Nice invesement for all those who want a better and bigger understanding of the software.

My God. The book that wanted forever. It has everything you need to know to be pro in Autodesk Maya. Thank you Todd palamar.

Thank you.