What You Will Need

For starters, of course, you need a license for Maya or the Maya PLE (the free Personal Learning Edition) for Windows or Macintosh installed on your computer. See Maya's documentation for instructions on installing the program.

Maya's documentation will also give you information about the program's hardware requirements, or you can find it on Alias's Web site (www.alias.com). Maya is resource intensive, so you should beef up your machine as much you can manage. We recommend at least 1GB of RAM; and if you plan to do a lot of rendering, we also suggest ample processing power.

Another important aspect is the kind of video display card you use with Maya. The video card affects the speed of your real-time display and can drastically improve response times while you're working. The support section of the Alias Web site contains a current list of qualified display cards. For Windows, Quadro FX or Fire GL cards are recommended. See the Alias Web site for specific models and driver versions.

For Mac, Alias recommends the Quadro FX4500 display card. Always check the card manufacturer's Web site for driver updates, because out-of-date drivers are often shipped with cards.

Also be aware that Maya requires a three-button mouse, because the middle mouse button is used as a Virtual Slider feature for many functions. Using Maya without a three-button mouse is possible but very, very cumbersome: any serious Maya user will want to purchase a three-button mouse.

Check out the Maya documentation for minimum system requirements and additional information, or visit the Alias Web site.