The Art of Maya: An Introduction to 3D Computer Graphics [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Well let me start by saying this book is a great technical reference. If you're an absolute beginner like me than you'll find this book unbecoming of its title as an introduction to 3D graphics. With merely a single chapter devoted to explaining 3D computer graphics and a short synopsis in the beginning of each subsequent chapter it left me puzzled and I couldn't really understand why they would call this an introductory book. If your really interested in what every tool in Maya 8 does and what the software is capable of doing then you'll get lots of use out of this book as each tool is explained in detail. No tutorials, no work along projects and no beginners guide make this more of an intermediary book best suited for people who already have basic knowledge of computer graphics who are also using a learning series book or some other guide to teach themselves Maya. This book alone is definitely not intended to teach Maya or basic principals of computer graphics but does give you a great understanding of what the buttons in Maya do... now if it would only explain WHY I'd use that button, but I guess that's where the learning series books comes into play. I'll be ordering one or two of those next...

Often Autodesks recommended path for learning Maya is not so hot, and this is an example of an innacurate assessment on their part of who should be reading this book. In fact there are aspects of many Autodesk books that I feel were not well planned, so you might want to explore other Maya books as well as Autodesks to see what works for you.
Apparently Autodesk sees this as an "introductory" book, and really it isn't, at all. Here's why. This book doesn't tell you "how" to do anything. It does tell you "what" things are and "why" you would use them in a very specific way, but nothing is explained in a user friendly way.
Essentially this is a book of quick overviews, but with almost nothing that will guide the reader through a step-by-step process to achieve any kind of end result. In fact many aspects of the book are almost stupidly ambiguous.
Here is a metaphor of how this book works. It's like if somebody was instructing you on how to build something but they only told you WHAT to do, but not HOW to do it. For example, say somebody decided to help you build a car. So the first thing they tell you is to "Put the engine together". You think great, here we go! Your first step is "to connect the transmission to the engine block." But you realize that the transmission isn't put together, so you ask "How do I build a transmission?" The response you get is, "put those parts together"... and that's all you get. In other words the information isn't wrong, it's just useless because it doesn't give you any genuine instruction. It doesn't tell you what parts go where or in what order, and often it doesn't even tell you where to find them. Much of this book works exactly in this manner.
With that said, if you already have an intermediate/advanced working knowledge of most everything Maya has to offer, this is probably a good book, because it gives specific overviews and general explanations on almost every aspect of Maya.
If you are new to Maya this book is completely useless. Maya calls this an "introductory" book, but it's so poorly thought out that the information comes across as being jumbled and incomplete.

this book gave me lots of things to learn off it, i havent finished it but i tooked so many notes off this that i need to write up my own notes on a book... i have like too many stickies on it that i cant really keep track off it. This book is great!