Fully updated to reflect Maya's latest features, the book takes a hands-on approach to instruction, providing readers with a diverse set of tutorials designed by real-world professionals to showcase 3D animation and visual techniques used in industry settings. The book makes an excellent desk reference for the working animator, and is an ideal resource for those seeking Maya certification. Topics include: animation using inverse kinematics, keyframes, and deformers; hard surface and organic modeling; proper rigging techniques, and working with Maya Muscle; Xgen, Paint Effects, and rendering with mental ray; texture mapping, compositing, nParticles, and more; and virtual filmmaking and scene management. It emphasizes the practical, day-to-day uses of each skill, and discusses which solutions best fit which scenario. --