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.
In this tutorial we will cover Maya interface and everything you need to know.
Here is what we will cover:
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Menu Sets help you use Maya for specific purpose. Such as for Modeling, Animation, Rigging, FX, Rendering:
Whichever Menu Set you make active, the first 7 drop down bar menus will be the same BUT the rest of the drop down menus will change, streamlining your workflow:
For environment modeling, set this to Modeling, it is what you'll be using the most.
Status Line gives you access to most commonly used functions like selections, snapping options, saving and more.
Most important items under Maya's Status Line are the Snapping options:
Snapping objects to grid and to other geometry is extremely important for environment art and we'll focus on the first three:
We'll be using a hotkey for snapping but you can also enable/disable these in the Status Line to always have on.
How to use snapping in Maya will be covered in a later tutorial within this series.
Shelves in Maya give you access to most commonly used commands so you don't have to use the drop down menu every time.
Maya comes with default shelves already created such as Curves/Surfaces, Poly Modeling, Sculpting, Rigging and more:
But we'll create our own custom Shelf and place most commonly used modeling functions to help speed up Maya's workflow.
Tool Box contains quick access for object movement and selection. These include Select, Lasso, Paint Select, Move, Rotate and Scale:
You will be using shortcut keys to switch between Select, Move, Rotate and Scale instead of left-clicking on the icons. We'll cover how in a later tutorial.
You can also double-click on any of the Tool Box icon to access more settings for that Tool.
Layout Menu allows switching between different layout panel configurations:
Right-click on any of the Layout Menu icons for additional options:
Most commonly used for game environment modeling are Single Perspective, Four View and Orthographic/Perspective (first three icons):
Last icon is the Outliner. This will show a text list of all objects in the scene:
Each viewport contains a panel toolbar, giving you a quick access to viewport options.
You can toggle this menu bar with Ctrl + Shift + M.
Viewport Panel Toolbar has many options to control how that specific viewport will look.
Knowing your object's triangle, poly and vertices count is very important. It will be shown at the top left of the viewport:
You should have Poly Count Heads Up display enabled. Go to Display > Heads Up Display > Poly Count:
Here is what each column represents:
Viewports need no introduction. It allow you to see what you are creating.
Most common set up you will use for modeling are maximized Perspective Viewport, Side by Side (orthographic and perspective), Four Views (2x2 Split).
Perspective View:
Side by Side (Orthographic and Perspective):
2x2 Split Views (Perspective, Top, Side, Front):
Each viewport contains a lot of options for how to view your objects in it. We'll cover some of them in more detail later.
For now you can use the Layout Menu to switch:
If you hover mouse pointer over any viewport and hit Spacebar - you will cycle between maximized and restored viewports. Each viewport is mouse sensitive and by simply placing the cursor inside a viewport and pressing Spacebar, Maya will maximize or restore that viewport.
Channel Box and Attribute Editor allow editing and adjusting properties for selected objects.
Channel Box is the compact view and Attribute Editor is expanded view of the Channel Box.
Channel Box:
Attribute Editor:
Press Ctrl + A to switch between Channel Box and Attribute Editor or click on the tabs here:
Each object will contain variety of different options to edit and adjust. Channel Box will have some limited options to set:
Compared to the Attribute Editor, which will offer more options to choose from:
For environment modeling you will be using both Channel Box and Attribute Editor to set various dimensions for the polygonal objects such as width, height, depth, subdivisions, renaming objects, setting input/output components and editing material/shader properties on objects. More on this in a later video tutorial within this series.
Below the Channel Box and the Attribute Editor you'll find Layer Editor:
Layer Editor allows placing objects onto display layers and controlling their visibility in the viewport. This helps us to organize your scene, especially when the viewport becomes cluttered with too many objects.
Playback, Time Slider and Range Slider are used for animation controls. We won't be using them for environment modeling.
You can hide viewport elements you don't need by going to Window > UI Elements > Uncheck Time Slider and Range Slider:
Help Line shows a short description of tools and menu items. It gives you tips of what the tool is or what next step with that tool is:
MEL/Python are scripting languages inside Maya. This menu allows to toggle between MEL and Python execution of the command line source. As a beginner you don't need to know about this.
The Script Editor lets you execute single or multi-line scripts in a MEL or Python as well as see the output history.
Workspaces allow you to choose between different Maya interface layouts to streamline for specific workflow.
Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 3/17: Complete Guide to Viewport Navigation
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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