bullduck的博客

I n the last three years, the pace of updates to Maya has accelerated. New features seem to appear every few months. However, the foundation of Maya, consisting of MEL and the dependency graph, remains largely unchanged. This second edition serves to bring MEL Scripting for Maya Animatorsup to date with the interface changes that have taken place between Maya 4.5, with which the first edition was written, and Maya 6. Certain regrettable omissions, such as a chapter on formLayout, have been corrected. Known errors have been fixed. Also, new chapters on utility nodes and Maya’s Web Panel feature provide some new ideas for how to use MEL in one’s applica-tions. More than anything else, feedback from people who have used the book to learn or teach MEL has spurred us on. To the contributors of these thoughts and perspectives, thank you!

Given the depth and breadth of Maya's programming functionality, it became quickly clear that a single book couldn't possibly cover it all. The first volume focused on giving the reader a solid understanding of how Maya works and on its two programming interfaces: MEL and the C÷÷ application programming interface (API). This book extends on that work, while paying particular attention to the areas of geometry and modeling. Clearly, in order to have a deeper understanding of these areas it is important to first understand the fundamentals of computer graphics, and in particular the mathematical foundations on which they are built. This book, therefore, explains the fundamental building blocks of computer graphics so that a complete understanding of geometry and modeling is possible.