In This Chapter


It's time to start Maya and begin learning to use it. Before discussing how you'll create beautiful 3D renderings, however, this chapter introduces you to Maya's structure and design. You'll learn all the interface elements and get a feel for navigating around in the panels. You'll also look at playing back animation and using the Shaded and Wireframe modes of viewing objects. These are the primary parts of any 3D program, and after you gain some comfort with these true fundamentals of Maya, you'll be poised to move on to specifics:

  • The Maya interface Take a tour of each feature as it's described.

  • Manipulating views Learn how to tumble, track, and dolly your 3D view.

  • Detail and shading See how any 3D panel can be displayed in several different modes.

  • Changing your interface Learn how to quickly change the Maya interface to suit the task at hand by resizing and reassigning panels and minimizing or maximizing any single panel.

Key Terms

Attribute Editor The primary interface for changing objects and such in Maya, available as a floating window or docked at the interface's right side.

Channel Box Used to view and edit variables of your currently selected item, usually accessed at the interface's right side.

Hotbox A workflow speedup that many Maya animators love an overlaid menu triggered by holding the spacebar.

tumble The official term for spinning or rotating around in a view.

track The official term for panning or moving linearly across a view.

dolly The official term for zooming into and out of a view (technically, the term for moving the camera into or out of a scene).

zoom Used for actions in which you draw a window to magnify or reduce.

LMB The left mouse button, the primary action-taking button.

MMB The middle mouse button (can also be the scroll wheel); often, a secondary or alternative action-taking button.

RMB The right mouse button; usually provides options to select with the LMB (as with most Windows applications).

Wireframe mode Viewing a 3D scene as lines that make it look as though the objects are made from a wire screen mesh. Until the fairly recent advent of higher powered 3D graphics cards, the only interactive way to work with 3D scenes.

Shaded mode Lets you view geometry in a crudely rendered interactive way (not to be confused with the high-quality renderer). Any 3D view panel in Maya can be in Wireframe or Shaded mode.

Gouraud shading Maya's shaded mode uses this crude form of smooth shading that adds highlights to polygonal objects by averaging the polygon corners. It sacrifices quality for speed so that interaction is quick.


Hotkeys to Memorize

Alt+LMB Orbit.

Alt+MMB Pan.

Alt+RMB Zoom.

Ctrl+Alt+drag window (left to right) with LMB Zoom in window.

Ctrl+Alt+drag window (right to left) with LMB Zoom out window.

Ctrl+A Open the Attribute Editor.

f Use the Frame Selected Object option (zoom in or out to the boundaries of the current object).

Shift+F Frame selected object in all views.

a Use the Frame All Objects option (zoom in or out to the boundaries of the scene).

Shift+A Frame all objects in all views.

spacebar tap Toggle full-screen mode of selected panel.

spacebar hold Open Hotbox.

1 Selected NURBS object at low detail; selected SubD object at coarse subdivision.

2 Selected NURBS object at medium detail; selected SubD object at medium subdivision.

3 Selected NURBS object at high detail; selected SubD object at fine subdivision.

4 Wireframe mode for selected 3D view panel.

5 Shaded mode for selected 3D view panel.

6 Shaded mode with hardware texturing for selected 3D view panel (note: forces default lighting).

7 Use scene lights (instead of default lights) for selected 3D view panel.

- Decrease manipulator size.

+ or = Increase manipulator size.

q Select mode (pointer).

w Move mode.

e Rotate mode.

r Scale mode.

t Manipulator mode.

F1 Help.

F2 Animation mode.

F3 Modeling mode.

F4 Dynamics mode.

F5 Rendering mode.

Ctrl+z Undo.

Shift+Z Redo.

[ Panel view undo.

] Panel view redo.




Maya 5 Fundamentals
Maya 4.5 Fundamentals
ISBN: 0735713278
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 198

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