Hey guys,

I just got Autodesk Maya 8.0 Unlimited. It's an amazing program. Bummer is, it's as user friendly as the wrong end of a flamethrower. I don't know where to start. The tutorials aren't much help, I'm pretty lost.

anyone got experience with this program?

Lesson one - Familiarization

Start out by playing around with it. Click on stuff, observe what happens. Do anything. Give attention to it...

Alright, let’s start somewhere insteed. And then you play around!

There are a couple of work modes to be in. It says Modelling up in the left corner, under File, Edit, etc (under the Main menus). You can choose ‘Animation’, ‘rendering’, plus some other stuff.
You will be in ‘Modelling’.

Here are some shortcut-keys that you should know. You will use it very often.

F1 = Using Maya. It will take you to a page where you will learn how to use the program. It will be useful for you to go there and check out information about the Main window, marking menus, shelves etc. Knowing the names and understanding them.
You can go to the same place this way: Main menu: Help>help Maya.

Q= select tool
W = move tool
E = rotate tool
R = scale tool

F = zooms into the working space, or in object mode (you just have to click the primitive you have chosen to work with; polygon cube, poly triangle or other) it locks onto the selected part. You can use this when you choose a vertex and other stuff. You will understand when you use it. Just one click after all and there’s nothing bad that can happen... hehe.

G = it repeats the last action (very useful) For example; you created a polygon cube. You can create one more just by using G-key. ^__^ It will be a great help with more complex actions.

Alt + left mouse click/right click = moves the viewpoint and zooms in/out

R = redo

4 = wire frame it (it starts this way)
5 = shade it
6 = texture it (you need to have already put on a texture for this)
7 = I can’t remember.. I think I used this to se/put on normal map.

To know other basics:

Start by creating a cube primitive: Just click on the cube icon (there are spherical, plane etc, you will find it in the shelves under polygon) or you can also do the same from the Main menu: Create>polygon primitives (you get a list here) and chose: cube.

When doing it the way I describe last. You can click a box on the right side of the text *cube*. It is the polygon option for your primitive. You can change: width, height, death, subdivisions, axis… Anyhow, you can change this information after you have created it also. Just look on the right side in the ‘channel box’ when the mesh is selected (object mode). You can read values of its position and stuff, and also if you look under that, it says INPUTS- polyCube1 (if you did not change the name after creating it). Click the name and you get the option to change width, weight, depth etc.

When Right-clicking on object, you get a set of choices; you can go into UV mode (this is for texturing (mapping is the work to prevent the texture to stretch and get on the right spot you could say…)).

You can also choose:

Edge, face, vertex after right-click = you can move those around. You will understand when you start creating something. There is also ‘vertex faces’, but I don’t know what that is. Ignore it. Or try out for a bit, and then ignore it.

You can also go back to object mode by right clicking and choosing ‘object mode’

Plus there is a list when right-clicking. If you check it out it says material somewhere down there. You can choose material, and texture. You can try it out. I may describe how to put on textures later.

So, start out by familiarize yourself with the program. Then I come back telling you how to start building a character.

Hey guys,

I just got Autodesk Maya 8.0 Unlimited. It's an amazing program. Bummer is, it's as user friendly as the wrong end of a flamethrower. I don't know where to start. The tutorials aren't much help, I'm pretty lost.

anyone got experience with this program?
Buy a book. That's the only real way to quickly learn a big chunk of the program quickly and easily, besides taking classes and that kind of crap. I used the Maya Quick Start Guide. It was around 500 pages, and really easy to get through. I learned everything in the book in a few days, and then just used experimentation and online tutorials from there. Quick and easy! :3

I hade a teacher that had lectures on a projector, that’s the easies way! IT IS. XD

awesome thanks guys

Have you ever seen the music video to Roc by Nâdiya? That was made with Cinema 4D which is similar to Maya. It's pretty amazing.

Chr!5t on a stick that blooming awesome!!!

Hmm, sorry never heard of the program before. But I've used similar 3D software, something called a Blender pl. It's a primitive programs but man, did it take me forever to figure it out. Now, I'm completely clueless on how to use it.

Hmm, sorry never heard of the program before. But I've used similar 3D software, something called a Blender pl. It's a primitive programs but man, did it take me forever to figure it out. Now, I'm completely clueless on how to use it.
lol, Jesus Christ. What you just said is basically equivalent to saying "Photoshop? Hmm, I've never heard of that before, but I've been using this really cool program called MS Paint."
Maya is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to 3d animation. :heh:
(Along with its great competitors, 3dsmax, lightwave, and...actually, I think that covers the big three. And of course, 3dsmax is now owned by the same company as Maya, hahah.)

lol, Jesus Christ. What you just said is basically equivalent to saying "Photoshop? Hmm, I've never heard of that before, but I've been using this really cool program called MS Paint."
Maya is pretty much the industry standard when it comes to 3d animation. :heh:
(Along with its great competitors, 3dsmax, lightwave, and...actually, I think that covers the big three. And of course, 3dsmax is now owned by the same company as Maya, hahah.)

Poser? DAZ? (Please note I'm not huge on the 3d programs)

If you still have trouble, try simpler software to learn the basic consept of what you're doing. I use sketchup all the time. It's simple, free, and still quite powerful. Get the basic concept of 3d modeling in that, then go for maya.

Well, Poser goes for 170 USD. Daz goes for 20 USD. Maya goes for 10,000 USD. I'm sure you can guess which program is considered the best of the three. XD

Daz and Poser fall into the MS Paint category too. I don't think any real studio would ever use either of them... :heh:

shade, I say stick with Blender and go through the tutorials. Also, use their forums. [link01 (http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/)] [link02 (http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com/)]

Just think of it as learning Photoshop. Practice, practice, practice.

Well, Poser goes for 170 USD. Daz goes for 20 USD. Maya goes for 10,000 USD. I'm sure you can guess which program is considered the best of the three. XD

Daz and Poser fall into the MS Paint category too. I don't think any real studio would ever use either of them... :heh:
I'm sorry, but price is a terrible way to qualify a product. while it's true that better products typically cost more, there is a point where something just become overpriced. I wouldn't pay 10,000 USD for anything electronic, either hardware or software.

And, according to your comparison, Google Sketchup Pro (500 USD) is better than most other programs out there. And it doesn't even render curves!

Fine, I guess I should have mentioned that while Maya goes for ten grand, it's still the program of choice for almost all movie companies, and many game companies, while nobody in either industry would touch either Poser or Daz.

And if you were serious about cg animation, you would spend the money on Lightwave, Studio Max, or Maya, otherwise your studio would have no real chance of competing with the other studios out there. ;P

And the programs aren't overpriced. I don't think you understand the insane amount of work that goes into making these things. (And neither do I! I can't even imagine!) Anyway, supply and demand, etc etc.

That seems better.

And I know firsthand how much time goes into coding programs. I code in BASIC and Java. To do 3D, you need visuals, an image manager, physics engine, 3D coordinate system, etc. It totals up to be a huge amounts of work. The thing that really baffles me is this: a company (we'll use Microsoft) puts all this work into their new Operating System (we'll use their new concept, Windows Vienna). Lets say they release it for $400 US. Then, a company (Say, Canonical) put an equal amount of work into their new operating system, Ubuntu 11.04, then they release it for nothing.

Now, With 3D software, you may need to pay if you want a quality product, but why people don't embrace OSS for other uses blows my mind. But that's a discussion for another thread.

Anyway, I think I'll stick with Sketchup.

Lets say they release it for $400 US. Then, a company (Say, Canonical) put an equal amount of work into their new operating system, Ubuntu 11.04, then they release it for nothing.

Now, With 3D software, you may need to pay if you want a quality product, but why people don't embrace OSS for other uses blows my mind. But that's a discussion for another thread.
Supply and demand again. Specifically the demand part. Microsoft charges so much for Windows, because the vast majority of PC users want to use Windows. People don't charge anything for linux, because not many people want to use Linux, let alone would pay for it.

Basically, Windows dominates the market. Most software developed is developed for Windows, and Windows is more user friendly than Linux is, so Microsoft controls the casual market (As in, they control most of the OS market). Linux, as of right now, is a niche product, which is probably the main reason Linux distros are all distributed freely.

Believe me, ten years from now, if Linux catches up to Windows in terms of market share, they'll start charging for Linux too. ;)