Top 10 Best "Maya" Books

The ancient Maya civilization of Central America left behind a riddle: an intricate and mysterious hieroglyphic script carved on stone monuments and painted on pottery and bark books. Because the invading Spanish suppressed nearly all knowledge of how the script worked, unlocking its meaning posed one of archaeology's fiercest challenges, until now. For the first time, NOVA presents the epic inside story of how the decoding was done, told by the experts at the center of one of archaeology's greatest detective stories. Cracking the Maya Code highlights the ingenious breakthroughs that opened the door to deciphering the elaborate and exotic script and finally cracked the code, unleashing a flood of dramatic new insights about the ancient civilization

Develop out of this world modeling and animation skills with Learning Autodesk Maya 2008 I The Modeling & Animation Handbook . Follow clear, step-by-step tutorials to understand the modeling and animation stages of production using artwork from the LAIKA short film Moongirl . Learn to build models with a variety of surface types and then make them move with a wide range of animation techniques directly from the makers of Autodesk Maya. You'll learn to make sound decisions from the beginning, to save yourself unnecessary challenges further down the pipeline. You'll learn how to model with polygons, NURBS and Subdivision Surfaces; understand skeletons and joint orientation; work with inverse kinematics, skin your characters; animate a complete scene including props, constraints, and characters; and much more. The bonus DVD includes free models from Turbo Squid, Autodesk Maya reference guides, and scene files to help you breathe life into your creations.