Getting Started with Maya 7

This pdf tutorial introduces the different areas of Maya in a set of brief lessons. The lessons are designed to let you learn these modules at your own pace.

If you are new to Maya, this guide provides a starting point for understanding the basics of Maya software.

Table of content

• Installing Maya
• Maya Basics
• The Maya user interface
• Introduction
• Starting Maya
• The Maya interface
• Saving your work
• Creating, manipulating, and viewing objects
• The Channel Box
• Duplicating objects
• Creating a project
• Save your work
• Viewing the Maya 3D scene
• Selection modes and masks
• Pivot points
• Components and attributes
• The Attribute Editor
• Surface materials
• Using 2D reference images
• Creating a polygon primitive
• Modeling in shaded mode
• Adding polygons to a mesh
• Splitting polygon faces
• Terminating edge loops
• Revolving a curve to create a surface
• Preparing a surface for sculpting
• Basic sculpting techniques
• Additional sculpting techniques
• Lofting curves to create a surface
• Lesson 1 Modeling a subdivision surface
• Creating a subdivision surface
• Splitting a surface in polygon proxy mode
• Animating an object along a motion path
• Changing the timing of an object along a motion path
• Rotating an object along a motion path

Excerpt from course

The Toolbox: Layout shortcuts

The Toolbox is located on the left hand side of the Maya user interface. It contains icons that open tools for transforming your objects within Maya (selection, move, rotate, scale) as well as layout shortcuts for changing the views and panel layouts.

The Quick Layout buttons shortcuts allow you to select a different panel or switch to another layout.