Acknowledgments I would like to first thank Eric Keller, who passed the reigns of the Mastering Autodesk Maya series on to me after expertly crafting the two previous editions. Eric is also a co-author for this edi- tion and wrote Chapter 1, "Working in Autodesk Maya," and Chapter 2, "Virtual Filmmaking with Autodesk Maya Cameras," as well as bonus material for the DVD. Eric is a skilled artist and great to work with. I'd also like to thank Lee Lanier. Lee wrote Chapter 9, "Lighting with mental ray," and Chapter 10, "mental ray Shading Techniques." We were very fortunate to have Lee's expertise on this book. Thank you also to Beau Janzen, who wrote Chapter 12, "Rendering for Compositing." Beau also helped edit several chapters, making my job a lot easier! Anthony Honn built the vehicle models used in many of the example scenes; Eric Keller's brother, Travis Keller, designed the kitchen and pergola models used in the lighting chapters; and Chris Sanchez provided the fantastic space suit design used in the modeling chapters. I would like to thank all the people from Wiley. A special thanks to Mariann Barsolo, Heather O'Connor, and Christine O'Connor. Their management and editing skills are superior. --Todd Palamar