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Tutorials to Becoming the Best Level Designer and Game Environment Artist (since 2008)

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

Category: Maya
January 27, 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 very important tutorial you'll learn how to set up your grid and create objects to correct size, scale and dimensions.

Video Tutorial

Dimensions in Maya

Base dimensions in Maya are set to centimeters (cm).

  • 1 Maya Unit = 1 Centimeter

To check if that's true, go to Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences and go to Settings:

So if you create a cube in Maya and set it's Width, Height, Depth to 100 in the Inputs Box:

The cube will be 100x100x100cm.

Every prop and every environment asset will have a specific size in the real world. All you do is match that size in Maya. This allows you to create everything in Maya to correct scale and dimensions.

Creating Human Reference Scale

You need an object in your scene to help you judge proportions and dimensions of all props and environment assets you create.

A simple cube that matches and average human dimensions is a good starting point.

Average height of a human figure is about 6 feet, which is 180cm tall. It's actually 182cm but we'll rounded down to make things easier.

So create a cube and give the following dimensions to create a human reference scale:

  • Width: 50cm
  • Depth: 50cm
  • Height: 180cm

Always create this human reference cube in all your scenes. This will help you build environments and props to correct dimensions. Use this cube to judge proportion of your scenes to human reference cube scale.

Setting Up the Grid in Maya

You now need to adjust the default grid to match the scale of objects in the scene. You do this through Maya Grid options.

In Maya go to Display and Grid Options. Set up the following properties:

  • Length and width: 1,000 units (size of the overall grid appearing in the viewport, change this any time to make the grid cover larger area)
  • Grid lines every: 10 units (actual size of each grid unit (change this to increase or decrease the size of each grid unit)
  • Subdivisions: 1 (set this to 1 and do not change it)

Enable Heads-Up Display

Enable Heads-Up Display so you can see your scenes poly count.

Go to Display > Heads Up Display and enable Poly Count:

  • Column 1: All objects
  • Column 2: Selected Objects
  • Column 3: Component Mode

Next Tutorial in the Series

Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 9/17: Saving, Opening and Starting New Scenes

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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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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