Maya Visual Effects: The Innovator's Guide

Create positively dazzling effects with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

Create Dazzling Maya Visual Effects Out of Thin Air

If you need to create stunning effects on a tight deadline for finicky clients and demanding art directors, this book is for you. Go from Post-it Notes to positively dazzling with the unique insights and practical advice in this innovative guide from a working professional Maya artist. Need to create plasmatic energy by lunch? Animate a field of sprouting daisies before tomorrow’s meeting? Fashion a force field by Friday? With Maya’s flexible toolset and the unique tutorials in this book, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems, improvise, and finish your professional assignments on time and with flair.

• Animate a zombie hand transformation, UFO glow, and streaking energy with textures

• Make a tentacle shake and slither using expressions and joints

• Use Paint Effects to create twitching nerves and bacterial hair

• Split crystals with Rigid Body Dynamics

• Animate a collapsing rope bridge using Maya Hair

• Master particle instancing and collision effects

• Get a handle on scripting with MEL

Eric Keller has been using Autodesk's Maya to create professional animations since version 1 was released and has been an enthusiast ever since. He is currently a high-end animator for film, television, and scientific visualization. His clients include Disney, ESPN, Hewlett-Packard, CBS, and ABC. Prior to that, he created animations for some of the world's top researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was a contributing author to Mastering Maya 7 and Mastering Maya 8.5 (Sybex).