Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 1/17: First Time In Maya and How To Set Up Projects

The following tutorial series is directly from Module 1 of 3 of "Maya Foundation: Home-Study Course" tutorial course.

I've released this entire first Module completely free. It is focused on teaching you how to get started learning Maya completely from scratch in 4 hours. Start with all videos in order within Maya Beginner Series here.

The full "Maya Foundation: Home Study Course" contains 3 Modules and 18+ hours of tutorials.

• Module 1 is focused on interface overview for game environment modeling.
• Module 2 is focused on environment modeling techniques (27 videos, 8+hrs).
• Module 3 is focused on UV mapping and UVing (21 videos, 5+hrs).

In this tutorial I will show you how to set up projects in Maya.

Video Tutorial

Project Set Up

Anytime you are working in Maya you'll be working inside a Project. It is a specific folder that contains your project's scenes, textures, images and preferences.

It is a way for Maya to organize your content and keep everything in one place.

Since this is your first time in Maya you will need to set one up. Follow same steps for any new projects you'll be working work on.

Go to File > Project Window:

Click New:

Name your project. I named mine MyFirstProject:

Use any name you want but avoid spaces.

Maya will allow spaces but develop consistent habits that extend beyond working in Maya.

Common practice in game development is to avoid spaces in file names, shader names, object names, scripting and code. Of course this depends on software and game engine you are using. But it's best to avoid spaces all together so you don't run into problems in the future no matter what software you are using.

Instead of spaces, use _ (underscore) and - (dashes).

Examples:

• MyFirstProject
• My_First_Project
• My-First-Project

Define storage location for the project. This will be a folder where all files are to be stored. Choose a location on your computer:

Primary Project Locations are folders where Maya will store specific files within your project such as scenes, images, textures, sounds, scripts etc:

These sub-folders are automatically defined and wouldn't need to be changed. Many of these folders you don't need for environment modeling. To maintain simplicity with your first project - keep everything as default.

Click on Accept:

Project Folder

You now will have a Project folder inside defined location directory. This folder name will be MyFirstProject (or name you used) and will contain subfolders to store your files in:

You only need to set a new Project once. Maya will keep the last worked on project active after you close and re-open the software.

With the Project set, if you attempt to start, save, open a scene or assign a texture to a material, Maya will automatically look inside this project folder and open appropriate subfolder to look into, thus organizing your content.

Setting Maya to Existing Projects

If you need to set Maya to a different Project already created, go to File > Set Project:

Select a folder where your project is stored and click Set. For example, I want ModelingTests as the active project. Select the folder and click Set:

Maya will now look into this new set Project folder to retrieve from and store files into.

Next Tutorial in the Series

Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 2/17: Interface Overview - Everything You Need to Know

Maya Foundation: Home-Study Course

Learn environment modeling. Pick Maya go all in. Learn how to model and UV with it better than anyone else. Become a modeling master with it. In "Maya Foundation: Home Study Course" I will show you how.

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