Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 7/17: Axis Orientation and Important Tool Settings for Move, Rotate, Scale

Category: Maya

January 20, 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'll learn important settings for Axis Orientation for Move, Rotate and Scale tools. Something often not talked about and the first thing beginner's get stuck with.

Video Tutorial

Axis Orientation

Each object will have its Move, Rotate, Scale gizmos oriented in a specific way.

You can tell by looking at the Move, Rotate and Scale gizmo and how it is positioned on the object:

You can modify and change the Axis for each object to use different orientation. These include: World, Object, Component and more.

The way you change and control this is through Tool Settings for Move, Rotate and Scale.

Double Click on the Tool Box icons for Move, Rotate or Scale to open Tool Settings for each.

Move:

Rotate:

Scale:

Most common 3 Axis Orientations you'll be using are:

World
Object
Component

Increase/Decrease the Size of the Gizmo

Use the shortcut + (plus) or - (minus) to increase or decrease the size of the Move, Rotate, Scale gizmo.

+ or - = Increase/Decrease Gizmo Size

Next Tutorial in the Series

Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 8/17: Importance of Scale, Size, Dimensions, Setting Up Your Grid and HUD Display

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.