The Art of Rigging (A Definitive Guide to Character Technical Direction with Alias Maya, Volume 1)

The Art of Rigging, volume one, is a beautiful text printed at the highest quality in full color. The text presents what is often considered to be a confusing topic in a clear and concise manner that will truly benefit both students and professionals. Because each chapter is designed to become progressively more advanced, readers can quickly find the information they need regardless of whether they are at a novice or professional level. Included with the book is a DVD-based training course with over 30 video lectures spanning every major topic from the book. This DVD is an unprecedented value giving readers over 9 hours of quality training material at no extra cost. The DVD features many Maya scene files, including many original creatures (and their rigs) that were designed especially for this book. To help prospective technical directors learn how to harness the power of Maya's Embedded Language or 'MEL', every chapter in The Art Of Rigging includes full coverage of the creation of a custom script. Line-by-line breakdowns help to demystify complex script creation and will inspire readers to get started writing their own Maya programs. Seasoned MEL scripters will benefit from getting an inside look at alternative programming techniques. No current MEL texts include in-depth discussion of advanced techniques like file I/O, recursion, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices.