Both attributes work together to establish the amount of subframe sampling. The negative side-effect is simulation time increases. To minimize the cost, animate the frame sampling during high-stress times. For the jump, try animating frame sampling from its default value of 2 at frame 18 up to a value of 6 or more at frame In addition to the increased sampling, the skirt should be stiffer during this period to prevent the cloth from stretching and tangling.
Set keys for the values as shown in the following list. It helps to ramp up your settings a few frames before the motion hits its extreme. In this way, the properties reach full strength smoothly. The same is true for easing out of these values during the landing. Bend Rate works in conjunction with Bend Resistance in that its effect becomes progressively stronger as the bend angle increases.
Stretch and Shear Resistance are increased across the board to make the skirt less rubbery. Low stretch and shear resistance tends to give cloth a springy effect that can result in distracting motion. Lowering Density gives the cloth less mass, which reduces the effect of forces on the cloth during the jump. Thickness is the distance maintained between vertices and other cloth objects as well as when it Figure 1.
Painting on the cloth mesh creates a map that becomes a multiplier. The darker region indicates that density is reduced. This attribute also minimizes the effect of self-collisions. Once property attributes are set, you can use the Paint Cloth Properties tool to vary the values on a per vertex basis. The available attributes, which are shown in Figure 1. Since some of the cpProperty values have been altered globally, for example, Thickness Force, you need to delete the cache and start the simulation fresh see Figure 1.
Pulling the skirt below the knees will help keep it from pinching into the back of the legs as they bend during landing. The axes are based on world space coordinates. Increase Magnitude to , and set the direction vector to —1 in the Y axis to force the hem down. Set this value to 0 to maintain a uniform force throughout the animation.
A larger selection will have a greater overall effect on the garment. You also want the garment to interact with other objects in the scene. If the character kneels, the cloth should rest on the ground plane. If the character sits, the cloth should conform to the shape of the chair. To make a surface into a collision object, follow these steps: 1. Under the Shapes node, some new attributes appear: Collision Offset This is the distance in centimeters, offset away from the collision surface, that the solver will repel cloth.
It creates a buffer to reduce the possibility of the surface penetrating the cloth. Collision Depth The depth is the distance within the surface where the solver continues to apply a repelling force. Once cloth has gone past the collision depth, the solver no longer repels. If the depth gets too large, an overlap is created where the vector of the repelling force becomes unpredictable. The lowest value is the highest priority collision object see Figure 1.
The priorities are switched on the right. The right sphere has fewer poke-through issues as a result of its higher tessellation. The direction of force from the collision surface is determined by its normal. If the cloth gets sucked into the collision object, rather than being repelled, view the normals and reverse their direction if they are pointed the wrong way see Figure 1.
To view normals, select the object. To reverse the direction of the normals, select the object. When the collision object has too low a resolution, the cloth will have penetration issues, and when dragged over the collision object, it will tend to pop see Figure 1. As much as low resolution can cause difficulty, complex collision surfaces can be equally problematic. Hands and feet with their multiple digits and relatively small surface areas can also poke through cloth. They can also intersect, causing other collision problems.
You can fashion a polygon sphere that encompasses the entire hand and use that as the collision object. Avoid collision objects that have sharp edges or if big gaps appear between surfaces. These are also candidates for replacement with simpler collision objects. Also, you can generate new, simpler surfaces by lofting and attaching surfaces together.
Often, collision objects are unavoidably animated to the point where cloth is stretched beyond its designed limits. Each thigh is applying an outward force while the back of the horse is pushing the cloth up. Affecting Cloth Motion Using Constraints Constraints are versatile tools that provide a great deal of added functionality and are invaluable in cases where the solver does not readily provide a solution.
Each constraint has a unique capability to control the motion of a garment. Constraints are commonly used to create the sensation of additional forces being applied to the cloth, including creating effects such as the wind blowing or some force pulling on the cloth.
Another category of constraints allows for part or all of the garment to attach to other objects or to pass through them without collision.
Used in this way, constraints can be an immense aid during difficult solves. Quite frequently constraints are used for applying additional forces on the cloth. This might be the wind blowing against a sail or some force pulling on the cloth, such as picking up a napkin. There are constraints to allow objects to be parented onto a garment. This makes adding details like buttons or jewels a simple affair. Garments can also be attached to each other using a cloth constraint.
If you had a vest over a shirt, adding this type of constraint helps keep the garments together, increasing the sense of friction and texture. These collision constraints are an immense aid during difficult solves where cloth gets pinched or stretched too far. This level of granularity gives you much more artistic control and can make the difference in creating a convincing performance. Transform Constraint You can use transform constraints when a set of cloth vertices must travel to a certain location or follow a particular path.
Imagine tossing a towel into a basket. The solver calculates the motion for the section of the garment that is not affected by the constraint. Pay particular attention to the timing such that the cloth feels like it is being driven by a natural force, e. Otherwise transform constraints can give the distinct look that the cloth is being pushed or pulled in an unmotivated fashion. Open buildTransformConstraint. The cloth falls due to the lack of any constraints or collision objects.
Gravity is the only force acting upon it. To create a constraint, follow these steps. Set the Timeline to frame 1 and delete the cache. A small box appears, indicating that vertex has a constraint on it see Figure 1. Create another constraint on the upper-right corner using locator2. As the cloth simulates, the constrained vertices follow the locators.
In the Outliner, expand the hierarchy for cloth1. There will be two constraint nodes. Select transformConstraint1 and look at the Channel box. Under the shape node are attributes for the constraint see Figure 1.
Constraint Weight Sets the constraint on and off. Any value over 0 indicates the constraint as turned on. Is Soft Off, the default, which means the constrained vertices stick to the transform object Figure 1. Turning Is Soft on attributes allows for smoother cloth motion.
The sideeffect is that the constrained region and transform object can separate. Stiffness Sets the strength of attraction to the transform object when Is Soft is on. Damping Attempts to reduce the springy effect that occurs as the cloth vertices pull away from the transform object. This also only is relevant when Is Soft is on. If a sleeve is taut near the shoulder but the cuff area is loose, mesh constraining the top of the sleeve will ensure that it does not slide excessively.
This idea can be expanded to cases where cloth motion must be reduced for stability reasons. If a simulation begins failing due to the character moving too quickly, constraining a section of the garment to the body for a few frames can help reduce its activity.
In the opposite case where the garment is up close and static, using mesh constraints can lock down popping vertices. Open buildMeshConstraint. The cloth should hang down under the cylinder. The mesh constraint attributes are similar to those of the transform constraint see Figure 1. Cloth Constraint Cloth Constraints bind one cloth garment to another. The advantage is reduced solver complexity, but the down side is that the garments do not interact.
If the garments are of equal weight, then a cloth constraint is the appropriate choice. It is also useful in special cases where two garments must be bound together. An example would be a piece of fabric being torn in half. You could create a cloth constraint to join the two halves together and animate the constraint weight from on to off, then use a series of cloth constraints to have the halves separate one vertex at a time or create the constraint using a panel curve and animate its start and end param values.
Open buildClothConstraint. The simulation for cloth2 is driven by the motion at the end of cloth1. The stitch feature attaches the two garments. This supersedes the Stiffness, Damping, and Offset attributes see Figure 1. Under Inputs in the Channel box for the constraint node is a curve assigner. Setting the Start and End Param values enables you to specify a partial section of the curve to constrain.
This constraint is less direct than a manual technique like a transform constraint, but it tends to yield smoother, more natural motion. Open buildFieldConstraint. You should see the cloth being pushed in the region of the constraint. Collision Constraint Collision constraints allow constrained vertices to pass through collision objects to other cloth meshes or allow the vertices to intersect.
Allowing self-intersection can be useful in folding areas such as in the underarm region of a shirt. Sometimes, collision objects are animated to the point where cloth gets stretched beyond its designed limits. Adding a collision constraint to allow the cloth to penetrate in a section that is off camera can give enough looseness for the cloth to solve effectively.
Open buildCollisionConstraint. You should see the cloth simulate over the sphere collision object. Upon simulation, the cloth should pass right through the collision sphere see Figure 1. If you look at the shapes node of the collision constraint, you will see that both cloth and rigid collisions are turned off. You can animate these independently.
Often you will want to allow self-intersections cloth collision off but still respect the collision objects rigid collisions on. Button Constraint The Button constraint can be used for adding any rigid objects, such as pins, lapels, nametags, badges, and, of course, buttons.
Note that these objects cannot be collision objects because this would create a cycle where the collision object would affect the cloth solve and the cloth solve would affect the position of the collision object. Because the solver cannot factor in the button object, clipping can occur if the garment were to fold heavily. The easiest way to manage this problem is to manually rotate and possibly translate the button object under the cpButton transform node.
Unlike the cloth constraint, the button constraint allows rigid objects to be parented onto the surface of the cloth under the cpButton transform node. This gives you extra control to animate the constrained object on top of the motion provided by the constraint.
One application is it to rotate the button object to prevent clipping with the cloth. Open buildButtonConstraint. By default, the constraint maintains the offset between the constrained object and the cloth. You can apply an additional offset within the option box. Avoiding Cloth Problems During Character Animation One of the most effective ways to help the simulation along is to take extra care during animation. The forces generated by collision objects are strong and tend to overwhelm everything else.
Therefore, it is imperative that the animation of collision objects works in a predictable fashion. A common problem is that the character is often animated to the camera, which means that any part of the character off camera is not given much attention. This can cause nonanimated limbs to crash through the body or be left in odd positions.
Self-intersection in a collision object is another area where animation changes can make life a lot simpler. Although the goal is always not to limit the performance of a character, a pose can be so extreme that the solver will have difficulty simulating without introducing instability.
The cylinder in Figure 1. You can see the eyelet-shaped area where the collision surface reverses the direction of force within a small distance. If the cloth gets caught in this region, the abrupt direction change manifests itself in Figure 1. Use this command as a last resort.
If you resimulate, these tweaks will be lost. Be sure to use this in small doses as averaging over large areas will cause the cloth to reduce in volume. To polygon average the vertices: 1. Select the popping vertices. Use averaging as a post process step as the averaging information is not saved in the cache. The node remains an input to the cloth even after deleting the cache. Remove polygon averaging before running a new simulation. To do so: 1. Select the cloth mesh and open the attribute editor.
Select the tab for the polyAverageVertex node, click the Select button and click Delete. If you have several nodes and you want to remove all of them, run the following MEL code. By default, the. Maya 6 has the expanded notion of a cpCache node. Select the cloth garment, open the Attribute Editor, and select the cpCache node.
Set the cache name and click the disk icon to save see Figure 1. And now on to some noncloth things you can do with Maya Cloth. Alternative Uses for Maya Cloth Up to this point, you have learned how to create a cloth garment by constructing panel curves and seaming them together. You also learned how to create a workable collision environment for clothing animation. Sometimes though, in a 3D production, the work of a clothing animator does not just center on skirts and other garments; it can also involve props, accessories, and even jewelry.
Cloth simulation is a great way to deform anything that behaves in a similar manner to cloth. You can even go as far as animating the cord of a video game controller with Cloth. So, the next time you are animating curtains, cords, towels, or even the fringe that hangs off older lampshades, consider a cloth simulation.
Now, it is time to take your new knowledge of Maya Cloth a step further and see how to use it for nongarment deformations in a production pipeline. You will see our character standing in the neutral position at the origin.
We will deform the bracelet model you see around the left wrist. Select a part of the bracelet, and press the F key to center it in your view. Turn on point snapping. MM drag over a surface in the view window. Rotate and scale the group node until, from the top view, a rectangular box is completely encompassing the bracelet. Your top view should look similar to Figure 1.
Check the perspective view, and make sure the NURBS square is above the highest point of the bracelet by at least a few units in the Y direction. Move the duplicated group node down in Y so that it is below the bracelet. Your perspective view should look similar to Figure 1. Selecting the curves individually is more of a suggestion than a necessity.
Select the corresponding seam curves along the thumb edge of each square. Repeat these steps for the other pinky side of the garment. You should see a lowpoly surface appear within the box that the seamed curves form.
Your view should look similar to Figure 1. Select the cloth mesh. Highlight cpStitcher in the Channel box. Enter for the resolution. You want the resolution to be high enough to get a good simulation, but not so high as to slow down your Maya session.
Next, we need to enter some better values for the cloth properties of the panels. Select a panel node. In the Channel box, highlight cpDefaultProperty. Enter the values shown in Figure 1. The default settings are a good starting point, but will rarely give you an acceptable cloth solve. Again, with experience, these values will become second nature. Until then, starting with the values in Figure 1. Now, the cloth solver needs its settings tweaked to give us a better simulation environment.
Highlight cpSolver in the Channel box. Again, the default settings for the solver will rarely give the best of conditions for simulating your cloth. Select the polygon model of the female character. Set Collision Offset to 0. Set Collision Depth to 0. These settings control how the cloth collides with the mesh. Once again, these default settings will not always give you the desired results.
You might need to raise these numbers until your simulation is the distance above the skin you want. Especially in this case, when dealing with a garment that should be close to the skin, you will have to massage these settings. Click Play to begin the simulation. You should see the expanded cloth mesh begin to collapse around the wrist of the character and move around as it settles to a near stop. After the bracelet settles, it should look similar to Figure 1.
The Time Slider should be at the end of the Timeline now. Now, scrub the Timeline to the last frame, and you should see the cloth garment back around the wrist and settled. Now we can move on to animating the cloth and deforming the bracelet model.
At frame , the character begins the action of pointing with her left hand. See Figures 1. These areas include, but are not limited to, pinching collision surfaces, extremely fast animation, and intersecting collision surfaces. Click the Play button to begin simulating the cloth object. You might encounter problems, but most likely the simulation will complete successfully. Now that you have a baseline of settings to simulate with, you must decide exactly how the bracelet should move and react.
The answers to these questions will steer you toward making the bracelet animation great and getting it approved. If you see the need for changes, adjust the cloth properties or add constraints. Animate, simulate, and playblast until you get the results you need. To accomplish this, you use a wrap deformer on the strand surface. A MEL script handles sticking the beads to the strand surface throughout the animation.
This works on skirts, vests, pants, shirts, jewelry, accessories, and props. Select the tubular strand surface of the bracelet. Shift-select the cloth mesh.
Click anywhere in the Timeline to see the strand surface following the cloth mesh and being deformed appropriately. Playblast the animation to see your results in real time. Constraining the Beads Though the strand should be moving quite nicely with the cloth, there is still one problem to solve. The beads, which should stay with the bracelet, are not moving along. They were not included in the wrap deformer for a reason. If the beads were included earlier, they would be moving along, but would be deforming inappropriately.
They would squash and stretch based on the cloth, instead of being hard. Open the Script Editor. Select any bead on the bracelet. Set your view so that the whole bracelet is visible. Hide the character geometry, as well as any other geometry obstructing your view of the bracelet.
Make a display layer for the beads. Set the beads layer to be templated. This will allow you to select the strand surface points that line up with the beads without actually selecting the beads themselves.
Now make sure that the strand is the only thing selectable in your view window. Right-click over the strand geometry to open its marking menu. Select Surface Point.
Left-click the strand surface in the middle of the top bead. You should see two yellow lines cross each other at that point on the surface with a yellow point at their intersection. You have just selected a surface point on the strand surface that should line up with the center of the bead on the strand. Now, with that surface point selected, follow these steps. Left-click in the Command line, or press the back tick reverse apostrophe key. Type UVGlue.
Press Enter. Upon successful completion of the script, a locator is created at the selected surface point. Repeat these steps for the rest of the beads around the strand. Select a bead, and Shift-select the corresponding locator. Repeat these parenting steps until all the beads are parented to their corresponding locators. Unhide the character geometry; switch to a perspective view that shows your work to the best advantage, and playblast the animation.
If everything was successful, the beads should follow along through the animation. What About Changes? In this case, the bracelet is completely driven by the cloth simulation. So, to handle changes, the only thing you need to do is resimulate the cloth. To simplify this process, hide the bracelet geometry. Make sure you unhide the cloth mesh and delete the cloth cache so that your new cloth properties take effect. Continue to edit properties and resimulate, making sure to unhide your bracelet now and again to check the deformations.
This process will continue until you get your animation approved. Always Learning This chapter introduced you to using Maya Cloth for everything from garment creation and simulation to deforming jewelry.
Cloth simulation can be a versatile tool when you face animating something out of the ordinary, but be patient: Sometimes animating cloth can be like animating a marble with a straw.
If you follow the directions given here, and use the settings we provided, you will jump into your shots prepared and ready to go.
Collectively called NPR for Non-Photorealistic Rendering , these techniques allow for a broad range of aesthetic and narrative effects that complement and extend the capabilities of photoreal rendering. Photorealism and Non-Photorealism With numerous big-budget movie successes, starting with Jurassic Park and continuing with recent blockbusters such as The Lord of the Rings, Spiderman 2, and others, photorealistic rendering has become so successful that general audiences have a difficult time distinguishing CG characters from their real counterparts.
However, producing photorealistic effects is still expensive and time-consuming and does not necessarily mean box office success as movies such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Chronicles of Riddick, and others have shown. Photorealism also limits the range and style of a story: a movie such as Spiderman 2 needs to present an illusion of reality even though characters use webs and giant metal arms to do battle.
By creating stylized looks, NPR techniques have great freedom to explore narrative and aesthetic modes that are not easily available to stories rendered with photorealism. The narrative freedoms and aesthetic effects of NPR techniques are well worth considering as you conceptualize a new animation. Within this range of styles, the general aim has been to allow or force the computer into the role of artist—letting it make aesthetic decisions about line and color placement, stroke size, and such.
Although this approach is laudable, it is complex and subtle to get computers to act appropriately in the role of artist. As a means of exploring NPR techniques in Maya, we will present an example of both methods in this chapter. Further, these textures are blended via shading networks, allowing for line density modulation to show relative luminance on the surface of the model. The second method uses MEL scripting to automatically apply Paint Effects brush strokes to surfaces in object space, creating a look similar to that of an impressionistic painting.
Samples from each style are shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. While the former technique creates a stark world with contrasting details that is well suited for comicbook style action sequences, the latter creates a soft world in which edges and colors blend and that is well suited to the calmer, more domestic scene created with this technique.
Anime is a term encompassing a number of styles coming from a Japanese tradition of animation in which the line of a drawing is strong, the characters somewhat stylized, especially around the eyes, which are usually very large and rounded Western eyes to the Japanese observer , and coloring can be very simple or non-existent.
Two popular examples in the U. Our main concern when mapping is to minimize distortion of the texture. This is accomplished by keeping the polygon faces in the Texture Editor proportional, as they are on the model. Also, a polygonal face should keep its relative shape when viewed in the Texture Editor. Distortion causes stretched lines on the texture and destroys the illusion of the hand-drawn look.
Maya provides four ways to map UVs: automatic, cylindrical, spherical, and planar. A cylindrical mapping is applied, and with some tweaking, the result is shown in the UV layout on the right. See Figure 2. A cylindrical mapping obviously works well for legs and arms. You might use automatic mapping on the faces of the front of the torso and automatic or even planar mapping on the back.
Maya has divided the faces into a lot of small, connected pieces, but this is not a bad starting point for a complex object. By moving and sewing connecting seams, we were able to minimize the distortion and get most of each boot in a single piece, thereby avoiding a lot of seams. Instead of crowding everything side by side into the grid of the Texture Editor, common elements for example, parts of the pants or the upper torso are grouped together.
The polygonal faces that compose each group are given their own colored shader, which acts as a placeholder. In Figure 2. All the faces for each particular area were selected and assigned a colored shader. Although the situation in the Texture Editor now looks hopeless, you can access any of the groups through its assigned colored shader.
Or you can create a quick select set for the UVs or faces that a group comprises. Right: All seven of the mapped groups are placed directly on top of each other.
Using the Isolate Select mode is relatively easy. Select the UVs of the group that you want to work with, and click the Add Selected icon on the Texture Editor toolbar, as shown in Figure 2.
Click the Toggle Isolate Select Mode button. Now all of the other UVs should disappear, leaving only the group that you added to the set. Toggle the Isolate Select mode off. You can apply one giant texture to a model and achieve similar results without layering UVs, but pen-and-ink drawing techniques are limited in how thin a line they can produce. Thus, for the scale of the texture drawings to remain the same size, a large scanner would be necessary or a patchwork of multiple scans.
Both methods present a multitude of their own problems. By strategically adjusting the UVs so that seams fall where a drawn line will occur see Figure 2. It is not always possible to create seams where lines would naturally fall, however, so other seams are manipulated to manifest in hidden or seldom seen areas like on the back or under the arms of a character. Isolate Select Remove Selected Figure 2.
However, this is a planned seam. Right: A line is drawn on each of the pieces where the red line is, and it merges into one solid line on the model, as indicated by the blue arrow.
To bypass this problem, copy the UV group into a new temporary UV set. Select the UVs of the group for which you want a snapshot. Now you can make the snapshot.
Instead, make a new empty set for each of the UV groups and repeat the process until all the snapshots are output. The left side of Figure 2. In an image manipulation program, the luminance of the snapshot should be inverted. The levels are adjusted so that the black lines are brought down to a light gray; making these lines nearly invisible makes it easy to remove them upon rescanning after drawing in the lines.
Black marks are then added to each of the four corners. These are registration marks and are important later to match up the drawn image to the original snapshot. As shown on the right Figure 2. A printout with the UV lines just barely visible is most desirable and requires some adjustment to the Figure 2. Right: The snapshot ready to be printed. The size of the printed UV mapping is important in controlling how large the drawn lines appear on the object.
To stay fairly consistent with line width, the size of the printout should be relative to the size of the object being textured. The texture is drawn directly on the printed UV map using the barely visible lines for guidance. A line drawn on each edge of the same seam appears to be a solid line on the model. Once the drawing is complete see the right side of Figure 2. Scan an area slightly larger than the printed and drawn portion of the texture. It is essential for proper placement that the scanned texture be as accurate as possible in alignment and rotation.
However, the scanned drawing will probably be slightly askew. You can use a little-known Photoshop method to adjust this. Magnify the scanned image until the pixels are evident and the view is at the very top of the upper left registration mark the dark mark made earlier. Carefully crop the image to the outer edges of the registration marks. Adjust levels on the scanned image to get rid of the light printed reference lines, and darken the drawn lines if necessary.
Our shader network, described later in this chapter, gauges the amount of light striking any portion of an object. Sam and Remi are know to chastely lock lips from time to time. There is the occasional reference to Remi's good looks and shapely physique and stunning beauty.
There is nothing in the story that would make your grandma blush. Language - 2 The characters tend to avoid adult language. There are few potty words here or there but Sam and Remi contribute very little to the swear jar. Violence - 3 If Clive Cussler's name is on the cover, there has to be some violence. There is plenty of shooting and quite a few bodies litter the jungle.
Surprisingly, the violence is less than the previous novels and tends to be mild in nature. View all 5 comments. Sep 07, Gevera Piedmont rated it it was ok. Full of filler. I don't care what the Fargos ate, ever. Or what type of wine they had with their food or how that wine tasted. I don't need an exhaustive list of what they packed and in what type of luggage, or what the bad guys pack to come after them.
Or every hose and connection they check in their vehicle before driving away. The plot wasn't that great to begin with and it really got dragged down with all this stupid unnecessary crap. View all 4 comments. Sep 06, John Buxbaum rated it really liked it. I am very fond of Sam and Remi Fargo. I love the characters and their interactions. My favourite is Selma Wandrash. What a great character she is, I really want to see more involvement with Selma.
MI really loved the line in the Tombs "be a good Selma". While a departure from the iconic Dirk and Family, Clive has really hit the mark with these characters. Their adventures are fun, entertaining, and thought provoking. My favourite has been and is book 4 "The Tombs".
In this, the 5th book of the se I am very fond of Sam and Remi Fargo. In this, the 5th book of the series head to Central America for an exploration of the Mayan culture, present and past. The primary antagonist in this book is not as strong as in previous book but interesting nonetheless. You will enjoy taking this person 'down'. There is a scene, near the end, where Sam's past is revealed to be something a bit more than he has led Remi and us to believe.
It is perhaps a sign of deeper character development to come and was most satisfying. I have tried not to include any spoilers here. In closing I would not recommend you read this without having read the previous books indeed this applies to the whole series as Clive has done a great job of building the story from book to book.
It won't be your favourite entry but you will enjoy it. Have Fun!! Oct 21, Jason rated it it was ok. Oh how I expected so much more from you, Clive! Cussler is one of the few novelists whose books fill three or four full bookshelves in the bookstore.
This was my first venture into Cusslerland, if you will. I was really disappointed. I don't know how he managed it, but there was so much filler in this novel, yet there was so much nothing at the same time. He spends a lot of time telling us about what the characters pack in their bags to go on their little adventures and what they eat at the Sigh.
He spends a lot of time telling us about what the characters pack in their bags to go on their little adventures and what they eat at the restaurant, but so little about what actually should be described to the reader in an adventure novel; namely, oh I dunno, the adventure!?
For an adventure novel I really didn't feel like I was on an adventure. The novel is too thin for that. Literally, there aren't enough pages to describe what needed describing to make a good story out of this. The Fargo duo hops from one destination on the globe to another with the blink of an eye. Snap your fingers, they are in Europe; snap them again, they're back in America; again, Central America.
Ugh, just stop for a second and tell us the damn story! And for as much "action" that takes place, I felt like the main characters experienced almost zilch in terms of danger or conflict. There wasn't enough there to make me feel like they had anything stopping them from the inevitable conclusion. They had too much going for them for me to believe they wouldn't succeed. Shocker, the bazillionaires with every resource at their command end up beating the bad guys - where's the fun in that?
Cussler reminds me of a Danielle Steel type. They churn out novels at an alarming rate simply because they can, without taking time to develop a novel with substance. Probably on the lower side of 2 stars, more like 1. The only adventure I took was the walk to the bookstore and back home.
I wish I could go on another to return this book. Alas, it was already used and can no longer be returned. The more you know. Nov 24, David Roberts rated it it was amazing. I am reviewing the novel The Mayan Secrets by Clive Cussler et al which is an excellent adventure story which I bought from a local supermarket.
This book is part of the Fargo series about a married couple who are also treasure hunters and they often get into scrapes connected to that. The story kicks off in Guatemala in the 16th Century when soldiers try to hunt down ancient texts owned by the Mayans that a priest has been studying in the hope of learning about and which a rival priest has clai I am reviewing the novel The Mayan Secrets by Clive Cussler et al which is an excellent adventure story which I bought from a local supermarket.
The story kicks off in Guatemala in the 16th Century when soldiers try to hunt down ancient texts owned by the Mayans that a priest has been studying in the hope of learning about and which a rival priest has claimed are satanic. A rival treasure collector who isn't interested in its history and just wants to own it is hot on their trail. She is an extremely wealthy heiress with her own private army at her disposal. The fargo's are also trying to help a nearby area with aid because it has an erupting volcano.
They have to track down where the book came from and when the heiress takes it, prove it's been stolen and get it back. It results with a big battle in Guatemala and there is a happy ending when the find the book is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of historical artifacts.
There is also a secret in the book and they fear the heiress may get it translated. It's an exciting story and one which I really enjoyed. The Fargo series is one of the best series that Cussler does and this is one of the better ones in the series. It has only just been published in hardback in Britain, presumably to take advantage of Christmas and the potential sales.
I should think this book will do well. Fifth in the Fargo Adventure archeology suspense series revolving around Sam and Remi Fargo, a pair of scrupulous and wealthy adventurers. My Take Well, it is a Cussler, so it is full of adventurous fun.
The more outrageous, the better. But it reads too much like a congratulatory brag-up with Sam and Remi the so-very-modest heroes of the hour. Yes, they are wonderful, but must it be delivered in this suck-up manner? Nor do we get a sense of how tired, hungry, or aching they are. Okay, explain this to me. Why not dump it in a public institution? Um, computer backup, anyone? They must know her type?
As for the wicked Sarah. Oh, brother. Um, Caine talked to all sorts of people. God forbid they should come up with a villain with brains.
Which leads to another quibble. How is it that Sam and Remi blithely breeze through all this? They rarely come up against any real opposition. And when the chips are down, everyone is in place. Totally out of character. While their domicile is being rebuilt, the Fargos are off adventuring. This time helping to tag great white sharks off the coast of Mexico when an earthquake hits and a volcano erupts.
All this rumbling has brought devastation but it also reveals that which was lost long ago. The Characters Sam is former black ops of some sort, and Remi is a crack shot.
Both Fargos enjoy the good life, but they spend their wealth giving it back. Part of the rescue team includes: Dr. Maria Garza and Dr. Christina Talamantes are both ER doctors, and Dr. Martinez is a surgeon. David Caine is an archeology expert specializing in the Mayans, and he teaches at the University of California-San Diego.
Albert Strohm is the vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. Sarah Allersby is a British heiress who owns businesses and an extensive ranch, Estancia Guerrero , in Guatemala with more of an interest in wringing everything she can out of it. With emphasis on collection. Russell and Jerry Ruiz love doing odd jobs for Sarah Allersby. Diego San Martin is the drug dealer using a part of Estancia Guerrero. Carlos Huerta are the first people Sam and Remi meet in town. Commander Rueda is sweet on Amy and inclined to support her.
Tim Carmichael is the helicopter pilot in trouble; Art Bowen is his boss. He is also enthusiastic about the knowledge contained within the Mayan books. Kukulcan leads the people in Rabinal; Tepeu is his warrior son. The Cover The cover is a scene from the end when helicopter gunships take out armored cars, jeeps, and more helicopters in a small village just outside a Mayan ruin. The title may be The Mayan Secrets , but those secrets are more about those held by the good and bad guys in keeping the Mayan codices for themselves.
Feb 26, Trish Jackson rated it it was amazing. Sam and Remy Fargo are a fabulously wealthy couple who have the kind of adventures most people can only dream of. In this story, they accidentally find an ancient Mayan book, or codex, which has a map of Mayan cities and sacred places in Guatemala that have never been discovered.
When super wealthy heiress Sarah Allenby gets wind of the codex, she is determined to gain possession of it so she can get the credit for disco Sam and Remy Fargo are a fabulously wealthy couple who have the kind of adventures most people can only dream of. When super wealthy heiress Sarah Allenby gets wind of the codex, she is determined to gain possession of it so she can get the credit for discovering the ancient sites and sell the artifacts to buyers all over the world.
When Sam and Remy refuse to sell it to her, she steals it. Sam and Remy do everything in their power to get it back, but it seems they have set themselves an impossible task.
She has very powerful allies in Guatemala, including high-ranking government officials, who control the law enforcement authorities, and a notorious and ruthless drug baron. I think what I like the best about the Fargo series is that revenge is sweet and everyone always gets what they deserve in the end. This book was well written in my opinion. There are so many mysteries, twists and turns along the way. He takes a prior military married couple who seek out adventure after adventure.
Sam and Remi find the last one to be more embracing than their research project that they took on earlier, and their humanitarian project that they took shortly before. This Mayan adventure unravels many secrets over a four hun This book was well written in my opinion.
This Mayan adventure unravels many secrets over a four hundred year time span. However, with any good archaeological mystery, there are dangers and risks along the way.
As Sam and Remi and a team of people work to put things back in order, and turn things back over to the proper authorities, see what challenges they embrace along the way. We may request cookies to be set on your device.
We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website. Click on the different category headings to find out more.
You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer. These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features. Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions.
You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored.
0コメント