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An excellent introduction to critical fundamental concepts of UV mapping as required by Maya. This tutorial is in six lectures. The first two make a fairly slow start, but if you are completely unfamiliar with the basic concept of UV mapping, these might be needed, and they contain good demonstrations of UV mapping gone wrong. The next three lectures are excellent, with the demonstration object and the problems encountered in using it being very well chosen. The final lecture is essential in presenting the next set of problems likely to be encountered in UV mapping, but the lecture goes too quickly. However, students can re-create the problem set on their own, and work it out. Enough foundation knowledge is given in the intermediate three lectures to enable a student to explore the rest of the subject on his or her own.
Overall, this is an excellent tutorial for anyone needed a firm foundation in UV mapping, regardless of the application program they use.
If you are transitioning from another modeling program to Maya, this one is for you!
Of course, you should purchase the Foundation Books for Maya by Autodesk, but this video series from Digital Tutors covers so many things that are not in the books, it will almost make you weep.
It appears the premise of this particular series is that you have had some prior experience with another modeling application and are moving up to MAYA. The author does a brilliant job of handling "interface confusion." He starts by making everything go away, and then brings back one segment of the interface at a time, fully explaining its purpose and operations before moving on to the next segment of the interface. Great technique for giving you a complete knowledge of the interface. And, make sure you look at every lesson, even if you think you have already worked all this out. I thought I had this part down, but I learned something in each of the 17 individual lessons on the interface.
One way you know this is not aimed at the beginning modeler is that these first lessons on the interface extend out to scripting your own controls and tool sets. Not enough scripting to terrify you if you are uncomfortable with programming - just enough to give you an idea of how easy and thoughtfully made are the MAYA scripting and programming tools. And this is just the beginning!
This DVD set covers construction and texturing of a simple alleyway, not quite what I was expecting as an "urban environment." No building design or construction tips. Still, it is very useful and a great rental investment for three reasons.
One, if you are transferring to Maya from another program, this DVD set is great for showing you how to use polygon tools you might have 'referenced' but didn't think would be useful for much. A real eye-opener, especially for people used to boolean ops in other programs, but confounded by Maya's disregard for boolean ops.
Second, this DVD provides some real lessons in standard modelling methods of making buildings and related structures look weathered and old. Not intended, but a real highlight. Can't do it all with textures, you know!
Third, this DVD does a much better job of explaining the UV mapping tools and how to use them / go about texture mapping in MAYA than any other tutorial I've looked at. Much better than ..., or at least a great companion to the DVD tutorials specifically intended to teach UV mapping for Maya.
