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Best Sellers | | Home MEL Scripting for Maya Animators, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) | |
|  | |  | | | MEL Scripting for Maya Animators, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) | | | | | SKU:
ACOMMP2_book_usedverygood_0120887932 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Trying to learn Maya programming from the documentation can be daunting whether or not you are a programmer. The first edition of MEL Scripting for Maya Animators earned the reputation as the best introductory book on MEL, Maya's scripting language. Now fully revised and updated, the second edition also includes new features, such as a discussion of global procedures, new chapters on fixing programming bottlenecks, advanced user interface techniques, and optimizing character rigs. New chapters on utility nodes and Maya's Web Panel feature provide new ideas on how to use MEL in applications.
This new edition has kept the popular style of the first edition that offered very clear explanations of programming concepts to those without programming experience. A generous collection of code examples and Maya scene files is included on the companion Web site. This is a book for animators, artists, game developers, visual effects developers, and technical directors who want to learn the fundamentals of Maya, how to automate tasks, personalize user interfaces, build custom tools, and solve problems with MEL.
* Fully updated with several new chapters.
* Profusely illustrated and includes a companion Web site with numerous code examples and scene files.
* The authors bring their extensive experience in professional production studios to provide expert guidance. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Mark R. Wilkins | | Paperback: | 552 pages | | Publisher: | Morgan Kaufmann | | Publication Date: | August 08, 2005 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0120887932 | | Product Length: | 9.3 inches | | Product Width: | 7.48 inches | | Product Height: | 1.17 inches | | Product Weight: | 2.08 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.0 inches | | Package Width: | 7.4 inches | | Package Height: | 1.3 inches | | Package Weight: | 2.4 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 16 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 16 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 24 found the following review helpful:
 I learned MEL from reviewing this book Jan 28, 2003
By zeppocat
"Kate"
Mark and Chris have done an enormous service to the Maya animation community by writing this book. I was very impressed, as I reviewed this book prior to its publication, with how well they were able to communicate important programming concepts to an audience that usually has little or no experience with writing code. Many of the chapters will serve as an invaluable reference for future projects, while the examples show how the concepts are applied in the context of specific requirements. There is no other book on the market that specifically teaches this language, even to experienced coders. Animators with absolutely no prior knowledge of programming may buy this book with confidence, knowing it will clearly explain the concepts they need to know to use MEL effectively in their work. Highly recommended.
12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Tutorial and Reference Feb 17, 2003
By Michael Goldfarb
This book is a very clear introduction to the mel scripting language. Often a user will need or want to explore mel to get the most out of Maya, to speed up workflow, repeat tasks more quickly, or achieve complex actions difficult to do in the GUI alone. Those users with programming experience will have little difficulty understanding mel fundamentals from the documentation included with Maya, but those with little or no previous programming experience will have a tough time learning from the documentation alone. Now Maya users of all levels of experience can gain the benefits of mel through the concepts presented in this book, in the form of detailed explanations and dozens of example scipts.
Mark Wilkins and Chris Kazmier have writen an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn mel and get the most out of Maya. I highly recommend it.
21 of 24 found the following review helpful:
 All in all good book,BUT Dec 25, 2004
By O. Perry
Reading the book cover to cover, I found myself obligated to write a review here about it .
I will divide my review to Good and Bad
The bad:
This book is DEFINTLY not for animators, means, it's for programmers, if you are an art person and never seen or heard about programming, this book will be very difficult to learn.
Second. a LOT OF errors!! And I don't mean errors on the text, if you download the files in the site(which should be updated) they contain a lot of bugs!! some times while reading it, I found myself debugging the author CODE!! Outrages!
Third, some of the chapters are not in place!, for example the author start in chapter one using all sorts of parameters and varibale,but only in chapter six he bothers to explain about them
Forth, as mentioned earlier there are chapters on vectors, recursive functions and more, this is for sure not for beginners, and for sure not for persons with out some math background or programming background
.
Fifth, there is to much examples on the GUI and less examples on practical things, like moving particles and stuff( there is some of it , but few..)This is sad because some of the examples the author does write are very good.
The good
This is basically the only book on MEL, and if you are joining a big team and you have some background in programming and some mat skills, you will find it very interesting because not only the author explain code, his examples are interesting, cover most of the basics in the studio needs, and some of the tips he is giving during the book worth gold, he explain many times how to work in group, how to program to someone else and what to think about before you even start to program, it can easily be seen that the person who wrote it work in the subj .
All in all a good book to start , but in some point t it missing the point
lengthy chapters with no actual code or explaining any useful things
It seems as if the author try to catch it all...
To explain things to beginners while giving advice for novice programmers...
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Great Book! Oct 18, 2004
By Greg
Not only is this giving you a look at MEL scripting but it is also giving you a course in programming itself. I feel so much more comfortable with Maya now because of the fact I am learning the inner workings of the application. It's almost like learning Flash Actionscripting, you are only scratching the surface if you are just doing basic tweening and moving objects around the screen. Once you learn the scripting side of things, that's when your ability grows beyond basic use of the application.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Great for getting going Aug 29, 2003
This book did a lot for getting me rolling on Mel. I found though, that even still, I had to do a lot of question asking of people I knew that know MEL. As is the case with most books on topics so complicated, it has a little trouble in the "why" and "would be applied to..." areas, but overall, it is a great buy, and the best resource available for those mentioned in the title. Do you animate? Want to learn about MEL? Pick it up.
See all 16 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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