This book is great for intermediate users of Maya, but if you're a beginner I suggest picking up Maya Fundamentals. This book does not cover learning the interface, but focuses on polygon, sub-division, nurbs modeling, character rigging, and animation. It is filled with full color images to help you along with the tutorials and explanations of the author. It even has a section on learning whats new with version 4.5 and takes you through the basics of creating your own animation. While it does have nice color pictures, I found some of them to be too small to clearly see what was going on. For example, in an earlier chapter focusing on sub-d modeling with edge extrusions, I found it hard to see what edges were supposed to be selected because of the small picture. Aside from that its a great book and well worth purchasing.