Rating: 
Summary: Just some samples that not much appreciated
Review: The book just presents some solutions for specific tasks which partly are similar to what the book from Alias/WaveFront said. The book is suitable for not beginner, but advanced people who knows functions and feature of Maya very well. I disappointed with the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Hammered Metal Knobbly Guys????
Review: The examples in this book will lead you to career ruin. They are laughable. Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Exploring Maya 4: 30 Studies in 3D
Review: The lessons in this book are not for a user unfamiliar with the Maya interface. The author skips any direction on where to find menu items, or how to create objects in his tutorials, assuming the reader has used Maya frequently (I think these lessons are from tutorials he presented to his Maya students at his school).Other than that, the lessons are useful if you know Maya and want to learn how to do a variety of things you probably have never done before. The cd has some nice animation samples on it too.
Rating:
Summary: Very Nice
Review: This book is a Maya equivelent of those little books of daily wisdom. Each chapter is less than 5 pages, but is a nice refresher for those of us who are pigeoned into doing only one thing in the industry. If I were starting out this is the book I would get, and as an industry pro I like the simplicity of the tutorials because they opened a dialogue between my skills and practices.
Rating: 
Summary: Great supplementary reference manual--and pretty fun too.
Review: This book is indeed short, being only 200 pages long, and it does not go into much detail on any of its 30 tutorials. However, I have found it to be an excellent reference manual for generating new ideas for my animations, and I've had a fun time executing most of its small projects. When I bought this book, I had 9 months of experience with Maya, using the Mastering Maya 3 book and Alias|Wavefront's own Learning Maya 3 textbook. Both of those are excellent and teach you everything you need to know to create a solid foundation for Maya work. However, I wanted a book on Maya 4 and decided to purchase this one. So far, I've found that it is also very valuable, especially as a supplemental book to inspire new ideas and teach you special details of Maya that will take your projects to the next level, such as animating a glow or creating the simple turning of a page in an animated book. If you are just beginning to use Maya, then I would not recommend this manual. But if you have a few months of experience and want to build on that, it is an excellent source of fun tutorials and neat ideas. Additionally, the author writes in an inspiring, encouraging tone that makes the book a pleasure to read. I do, however, wish that the publisher had put more quality into the book's physical production, especially its color pictures. Nevertheless, it is a worthwhile purchase.
Rating: 
Summary: Neat Little Book
Review: This is a neat little book (182 page). It's a short little tutorial book. It's not deep in-depth, but it has some useful tricks in it. For example, I couldn't figure out the best way to make my orange roll off the counter in my Ant cartoon. I used what I learned in the ball rolling tutorial to figure it out.
The printing quality, graphical layout, and organization in this book is the best I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Great tips in this book
Review: This is not the book to learn how to use Maya. Rather, it is extremely handy to learn solutions on problems which you may encounter during your projects. Think of this as a notebook of someone's project problems and solutions. Don't compare this book with instructional manuals - apples and oranges. I was hesitant on getting it since the reviews here contain some negative comment on its simplicity. Now I am glad to have purchased it and am grateful for its simplicity.
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