ReviewsCritical Acclaim!"David's book is an excellent learning tool and reference for novice and veteran Maya developers alike. Maya developers can become more productive with MEL and the Maya API by applying what they learn from this book."
"David Gould is an expert at using, programming, and teaching Maya, and it shows. People who need to program Maya will find this book essential. Even Maya users who don't intend to do extensive programming should read this book for a better understanding of what's going on under the hood. Compact yet thorough, it covers both MEL and the C++ API, and is written to be informative for both novice and expert programmers. Highly recommended!"
"If you ever wanted to open the Maya toolbox, this is your guide. With clear step-by-step instructions, you will soon be able to customize and improve the application, as well as create your own extensions, either through the MEL scripting language or the full C++ API."
"Having provided a technical review of David Gould's Complete Maya Programming, I must say that this book is the definitive text for scripting and plug-in development for Maya. Never before has there been such a concise and clearly written guide to programming for Maya. Any user smart enough to pick up this book would be better off for it."
Reader ReviewsSubmit your own review by emailing David Gould at davidgould@davidgould.com. > Review by Maya Association read full review ... > What the Maya SDK documentation left out The documentation that comes with the Maya SDK is a great reference for
individual parts of the API, but comes up short on covering the big picture
of how and why everything fits together. This book fills that hole perfectly.
Even though I've successfully written several Maya plugins by banging
around with the examples and the API reference, in just a few hours with
this book I gained a much deeper level of understanding about how Maya's
internal framework is really constructed. If you're a professional programmer who's even thinking about working with Maya, buy and read this book before writing a single line of code. It will pay for itself in time saved.
> Magically morphs other begginer's Maya books into doorstops I learned more from the first chapter of this book than from all of 'Maya Fundamentals' or 'Maya Character Animation'. If your a begginer planning on getting serious with Maya I'd recommend going through the 10 or so tutorials that come with Maya and THEN pick this book up (don't waste money on begginer's books). It elegantly expounds the real fundamentals of Maya - the fundamentals that you must know in order to really uderstand the program. Don't expect to be dazzled with the examples. This book will provide essential understanding of the most important principles of Maya - not tell you how to model or animate. After reading this small book you should be able to pick up any book that assumes technical knowledge and focuses on artistic methods of modeling, animation, texturing etc. to learn how to be a true Maya artist.
> Must have book for serious maya freaks This is book is far more better than I expected, just like the previous guy said I can't put it down, its got stuff that explained extremely well, and damn fun to read. If you are an artist this book is easy to understand. If you are a C/java programmer this book is very easy to understand if you are some sort of computer science or related student, this is damn easy and very fun to read. I have loads of text books some I read few pages and now is in the dust, but this one is one of a kind that you can't get anywhere else.
> Well written and interesting too! Technical books by and large are difficult to understand and sparse due to the fact that aside from class room instruction they are very difficult to absorb. This book is excellent and different. It takes a approach that is an absolute must for people like myself in that It explains the why and theory behind something first and fore most. This makes the "voo doo" of programming not totally disappear but shrink considerably. I have an extensive background in 3DS MAX and it's accompanying programming language. I learned to use MAX script via technical books about MAX script and non have been close to the quality that is in this one is. The major difference being that this book offers even the experienced
user an understanding of why MAYA was built the way it is and how it thinks.
Which as I learned is truly unique and awesome and worth the price of
the book in and of it's self. Good job and thanks.
> Very thorough I had to spend a mini fortune for this book since i'm from india and
this title is not availiable as an indian edition.
> This book is what we want Normally I cannot read any English documents more than 3 lines, I cannot stop reading this awesome book. it's so clear,easy to read. and interesting. This book is what we want. If you want to know the internal structure of Maya and beyond. You need to read this book.
> Crisp, Clear and almost Complete Finally a decent documentation for Maya MEL/API programmers. Maya's own manuals are comparably lousy and the meager information available to newbies has to be verified and expanded during years of tedious trial and error programming. Most people simply follow in the footsteps of senior programmer colleagues who had to figure everything out for themselves and thus help propagate a culture of continuously reinforced bad code writing habits that do not make effective use of the full range of available tools. Especially the chapters on MEL and Expression writing are simple, clearly structured and easy to understand. The same can be said for the chapters on the Maya API, however, while the MEL and Expression sections do indeed warrant the use of the word Complete in the book's title the API section does not. I would have hoped for more information about some of the more exotic node types such as Shaders or Tool Contexts etc... This is where the Maya manuals fall short and where the book could have jumped in. However, with the book clarifying most fundamental aspects and structures of the API that missing information can be worked out by a skilled programmer. I'm glad I purchased this book and it will serve me well as a reference manual for both MEL and the API. Note to beginners: this book is not a fullblown tutorial but seems to be halfway between a tutorial and a reference manual. However, I've barely received my copy and I'm already considering it indispensible. My thanks to Mr. Gould!
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