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Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 5/17: Geometry Modeling Basics and How to Work With Polygon Objects

Category: Maya
January 15, 2025

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 just 4 hours.

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 you will learn how to work with polygon objects in Maya to begin your modeling journey.

Video Tutorial

Creating Polygon Primitives

For environment modeling you will be working with polygons. You will start with basic geometric shapes to model from such as a cube, cylinder, plane and sphere.

Two common ways to create Polygonal Primitive objects are through Polygon Shelf and through Create menu.

Create > Polygon Primitives and choose the polygon primitive to create:

Poly Modeling Shelf:

Creating Polygon Primitives using any of the two methods above will place an object in the center of the scene. This center of the scene is known as 0,0,0 XYZ location or world origin:

Going back to Create > Polygon Primitives, you will notice a small box next to each object:

This is tool settings menu. Many functions in Maya contain this option.

In the case of Polygon Primitives, you use an option menu to define few parameters prior to creating that object. So instead of creating a cube first then resizing it, you can enter specific values and create it:

Every time you create the same Polygon Primitive for tool settings you've changed, it will retain those values until you reset the options back to default.

To reset settings back to default, bring up the options menu for Polygon Primitive object and go to Edit > Reset Settings:

In addition to Polygon Primitives, there is another object type you could use to model with - NURBS.

NURBS is geometry type based on surface curves.

Create > NURBS Primitives:

Few things about NURBS you should know:

  • NURBS are different type of geometry than polygons
  • Avoid using NURBS as a beginner
  • NURBS are very helpful to start modeling from to help you create a complex curved surface that would be very difficult to achieve with polygon primitives
  • You will always end up converting NURBS to polygon object prior to export into a game engine
  • You will almost always will have to clean up a polygon object that has been converted from NURBS

Object Controls and Selecting Objects

Basic object controls in Maya:

  • Left Mouse Button = Select Object
  • Delete = Remove Selected Object
  • Left Mouse Click and Drag = Marquee Select Objects
  • Shift + Left Mouse Button = Add to Selection
  • Ctrl + Left Mouse Button = Remove from Selection
  • Z = Undo

Move, Rotate, Scale and Select

To enable Move, Rotate, Scale and Select objects tools in Maya use the Tool Box:

But it is better to use hotkeys:

  • Q = Select Tool
  • W = Move Tool
  • E = Rotate Tool
  • R = Scale Tool

Left-click to select an object in the scene then use shortcut keys (W, E, R) to cycle between 3 different manipulation tools (Move, Rotate, Scale). For each tool you will see the gizmo change:

Left Mouse Click or Middle Mouse Click Hold and Drag on X, Y, Z gizmo handles to manipulate move, rotate or scale that object.

Using X, Y, Z handles will only Move, Rotate, Scale along that specific axis:

For Move and Scale tool you will also have universal handle to transform along XYZ together. You will find this in the middle of the object.

Move along XYZ together:

Scale on XYZ together:

Left Mouse Click or Middle Mouse Click Hold and Drag on middle gizmo to move along XYZ together or scale on XYZ uniformly.

Quick Way to Find Correct XYZ Gizmo Direction

How do you find which color represents which XYZ gizmo direction?

It is not very apparent to a beginner to know which color represents which XYZ direction.

  • X = Red (left/right)
  • Y = Green (up/down)
  • Z = Blue (forward/backwards)

Quick reference is to take a look on the bottom left of the perspective viewport:

This will tell you the direction of each gizmo for XYZ.

Using Channel Box for Object Manipulation

With Move, Rotate and Scale tools you are able to manipulate the Polygon Primitives without constraints.

But what if you know the specific values for movement, rotation or scale?

Let's say you know your cube has to be 300 in XYZ and rotated 45 degrees along X only – how do you do this?

Using Channel Box you can Translate, Rotate and Scale any Polygon Primitive with specific values. Select the object and take a look inside the Channel Box:

Now input values for Translate, Rotate or Scale:

Now before you start using Scale option in the Channel Box, there is something you should know about the workflow of setting specific size of your object to start with.

Setting Polygon Primitive Size/Scale Values Correctly

Here is the best workflow to set your object's initial size and scale.

Create a Polygon Primitive object:

Make sure the object is selected so its properties show up in the Channel Box.

In the Channel Box, scroll down to INPUTS text and left-click on the name below Inputs to open a menu. The name below INPUTS will vary depending on the object you created. In our case it is "polyCube1". The menu will also contain different options depending on the object:

This is where you want to set the first initial size and scale of your object by defining Width, Height, Depth and Subdivisions:

Here are a few different options you will see depending on which Polygon Primitive you created.

Cube:

Cylinder:

Sphere:

Using the Inputs property to set the initial width, height and depth is very important. This is what I use at first and I do not use Scale XYZ values above in the Channel box to start with.

The values you enter for Width, Height, Depth will be relevant to the game and game engine you are using to export.

Setting Up Correct XYZ Viewport Orientation

To make your job easier to model, it is very helpful to match your perspective viewport orientation to match orthographic viewports.

Make sure that Z-axis (blue arrow) is pointing towards you in perspective viewport:

  • X-Axis (red arrow): Pointing to the Right
  • Y-Axis (green arrow): Pointing Up
  • Z-Axis (blue arrow): Pointing Towards You

Reason to do this is for making your orthographic viewports (top, side, front) match the same direction as perspective. If you don't then very often your scene's side viewport can become front and back viewport becomes side.;

It will not cause any issues if you do not do this. But it will make it easier to distinguish side, front and back orthographic viewports.

If this doesn't make much sense right now, just simply make Z-axis (blue arrow) facing you in perspective viewport.

Naming/Renaming Objects in Your Scene

Naming objects is a good habit to start for organizing your scene. Also many game engines will use the same object's name during export/import.

Select the object and in the Channel Box left click on pCube text (or other default name Maya gives):

Type in new name and press Enter:

Guidelines to use while naming objects:

  • Avoid spaces
  • Use underscores or dashes instead of spaces
  • Lower case are ideal but it is ok to use upper-case letters

These guidelines extend beyond Maya into game development to keep your project and naming convention consistent.

For example, some game engines do not like if you include spaces in names or capital letters. You can use and break the guidelines but it is best to maintain a process that is consistent across modeling and game engine usage to avoid problems and errors in your development pipeline.

Using Isolate Select

Very useful shortcut key and workflow tip is to be able to isolate selected objects and hide everything else from view.

Select an object or objects and press Ctrl + 1. Selected objects will remain in view, everything else will be hidden. Press Ctrl + 1 again to bring everything back.

  • Ctrl + 1 = Isolate Select

There is an icon in the panel viewport toolbar for this as well:

Next Tutorial in the Series

Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 6/17: Component Mode and How to Work with Polygon Vertices, Edges and Faces

Maya Foundation: Home-Study Course

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My name is AlexG. I am self-taught level designer, game environment artist and the creator of World of Level Design.com. I've learned everything I know from personal experimentation and decades of being around various online communities of fellow environment artist and level designers. On World of Level Design you will find tutorials to make you become the best level designer and game environment artist.

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