File -> set project -> exercise files in desktop -> select "set"
Menu Bar across the top: file, edit, create (allows you to create objects), select, modify, display (controls how you display objects), windows (gives access to a whole bunch of different editors), edit and mash (Modelling menu set). Can't fit everything into on menu along the top. Under file is a drop down menu which has a bunch of other different menu sets e.g. Rigging. This will cause all the options after windows to change to suit the controls of that mode.
Graphic icons are below the top row, file, open, save, undo and redo. Snapping options that allow us to snap to gird and so on. Rendering controls after the symmetry drop down menu that allow us to render the scene. Sign in to autodesk button. then we have some buttons that change the channel box on the right hand side of the screen, provides a different set of menus. Channel box, tool settings, attribute editor (allows to manipulate objects more deeply), character model editor and a modelling toolkit.
Shelves located below this, they contain a graphic representation of most of the tools. Curves/Surfaces, polygon manipulation, animation tab and a rendering tab.
Left hand side have a select tool, lasso select, paint select, move, rotate and scale.
Below is a number of select view and layouts. Single panel, 4 panels, 2 panels and outliner + one panel.
Along bottom is a time slider for animation and a range slider so we can zoom in on time slider. Right of this are some playback controls, playback speed controls, tools for looping and so on. Bottom of everything is a spot to type commands into maya and below this is a help line, tells us what various tools will do.
Can have a lot of data that can be pulled out of many different places: can have geometry data, bitmap data etc. All data needs to be organised so maya knows where everything is, uses project system to locate everything
Jumping out to the project folder (exercise files), you can see it's all organised. Scenes folder is where all of maya scenes are. Images file where all of output images will go so rendered images will show up here. Textures and bitmap images come into the sourceimages folder. Folders for sound and movies etc. If you move maya between different machines, projects become even more important, because it gives you a known directory structure where to store data. So if you want to move a project from machine to machine, Maya will always link up the associated files. So let's go ahead and do that from Maya. So I'm going to go back into Maya, and under File we have a Set Project command. So I'm going to go ahead and go Set Project, and what we want to do is just jump out to our desktop and find that ExerciseFiles folder, and then just hit Set.
When I do that, everything should line up. Now if you're starting up a project for the first time, you can also use Maya to create your own projects. So, all you have to do is go File, Project Window, and this allows us to setup a project. So, we can give it a location here. We can give it a name, as well as names for all of the different types of folders. Now I'm using the defaults, and if we want we can hit Accept.
Now I already have the project created, so I don't need to do that, but if you were to create a new project for yourself, this is where you would go. So when you work with Maya, make sure that you work in projects. It makes moving data between machines much, much easier.
Now let's take a look at how to navigate in Maya. Navigation in Maya requires a three button mouse. Now, if you have a laptop with a touch pad, or maybe a Macintosh with a one or a two button mouse, you're going to have a rough time. So go out and get yourself a three button mouse. Now with that in mind, let's go ahead and take a look at how to use those three buttons. Navigation in Maya is a combination of one keyboard key and one mouse button.
If you hold down Alt and left click you can orbit the scene. So, here I am left clicking and dragging and I'm orbiting the scene. Now you'll notice that if I go left and right it orbits left and right. And if I go up and down, it tilts the camera up and down. Now the next control is the middle mouse button. So if I hold down Alt and middle click I can pan the scene.
So, left click, orbit, middle click, pan. Now, the right click is camera truck. So basically, it moves the camera towards, or away, so if I were to truck all the way out, you can see the scene here. Now this is not a zoom. A zoom, actually changes focal length. This is a camera truck, we're physically moving the camera and keeping the same focal length.
Now if you want, you can also use a middle mouse wheel to perform the same function. So if you hold down the Alt or Command key and roll the middle mouse wheel you can also truck the camera. So, you've got Alt plus left click. Middle click. Roll the middle wheel. Or, right click and drag to truck the camera. So, go ahead and just use this scene to practice moving the camera around and navigating in the scene.
Navigation is very important in Maya so go ahead and take some time to get comfortable with it.
When we navigate in Maya, we're navigating in what's called a view port and that's this big window here, in the centre of the screen . Now view ports are really where most of the work happens in Mayas. Where we can see our 3D scene and manipulate it. Now view ports can be changed to your liking. So this view port here has a menu as well as a number of iconic buttons along the top. Now this happens for every single view port. If I press this four view button here, you'll see that every single view port has this menu.
So, I'm going to go ahead back into my main view here by just selecting this button. And let's take a look at what some of these menus and buttons do. Probably the most important one is the shading menu. And this allows us to choose between wire frame. Smooth shaded. Flat shaded. As well as turn on or off texturing. Now the easier way to do this is to just use keyboard shortcuts.
So, the number 4, gives us wire frame. 5, gives us shaded. And 6 gives us shaded with textures. Now we can also turn lighting on or off. If I want to I could use all the lights in the scene. Now if I want, I can also turn shadows on or off. Now the hot key for use all lights is 7.
So, that goes in sequence with 4,5,6, and 7 adds in lighting. Some other options here, such as use selected lights. So, if I were to navigate out just a little bit, you'll see that I have some lights here and all I have to do is click on one of those to select it. So, I'm left clicking on it. And then if I use selective lights, it will only show the effect of that light or this light.
Or I could, again, use all lights. Now in addition to this, we have a show menu. Which allows us to turn objects on or off. And if I want to, I can turn objects on or off by type. So, if I turn off NURBS surfaces, hides anything made out of NURBS .
And if we want to, we can turn that back on. So, we can actually isolate certain types of objects in the scene to make it easier to select. Now, in addition to this, we also have different types of renderers. Now this may depend upon how you have Maya configured and right now we have what's called the view port 2.0 renderer and that's what's creating this image. If we click on this little box at the side of viewport 2.0, it brings up a menu that allows us to change the technical parameters of this and add in things such as motion blur, we can change the anti-aliasing.
We can also add in things such fog or used what's called ambient occlusion. If I turn that on, you can see we get a little bit of extra shadow in there. Now, a lot of this is duplicated along these icons underneath the menus. So, I've got a number of icons here. I'm going to go ahead and hit six and go back into just shaded mode, without lighting. And if we want to we can turn on or off the grid and notice how that's under the table.
We also have a number of gates, we have our film gate, we have our resolution gate. We also have a field guide, as well as action and title-safe. Now over here to the right, we have some more buttons that are duplicated. So we have wire frame mode again. We could do smooth shade all. We can do wire frame on shaded, which can be very useful when you're modeling. So, we can turn that on or off. We can also turn on or off textures here.
And, we can turn on or off lighting here, as well. And then we have this one here, which is use default material. Now in addition to this, we also have ambient occlusion, motion blur, as well as anti-aliasing. So, as you can see there's a lot of different ways to configure a view port in Maya. So go ahead and play with the settings and understand them, so that way you can get the most out of your view ports.
Maya has a lot of functionality that's hidden that you can actually access from under the mouse. Now, probably the most important ones of these are called the hotbox as well as marking menus. Now, the hotbox happens when you hold the space bar down. And when I do, notice how this menu comes up. And this menu is basically all of the menus for Maya, so you notice we have our file, edit, create, which are here, but we also have our mesh commands here as well as rigging, animation, and others.
So just by holding down the space bar, you can access a lot of different menus. Now, another nice thing in here is a recent commands menu,which shows you all the commands that you just executed. So if you want to do something that's repetitive, this might be a way to make that go easier. Now, the marking menu can also change your viewport. So if I click in the middle here, I'm on a perspective view, but if I wanted to, I could go into top view and view that from the top.
Again, space bar, left click, go to a front view, or I can go back into my perspective view. Now, when you work with Maya, you can actually start to get pretty fast with this, so you can, say, just press the space bar, left click, and go to the top view, or go up to the perspective view.So you can actually go very quickly from one function to another. And you'll see, a lot of times, people in Maya will start to use these shortcuts very quickly, and you kind of can't see what's happening, so that's how you know that you're actually getting pretty fast in Maya.
Now, the hotbox also has some controls as to what is being shown, so if I don't want to see, say, my FX menu, I can hide it and it won't show up or I can show it. Now, in addition to the hotbox, we also have context-sensitive menus called marking menus. Now, these will change depending upon the type of object that you have. So if I select this couch and right click over it, you'll notice that we have this long menu here as well as this radial menu.
Now, the radial menu depends upon the type of geometry that you have, so in this case, this is a polygonal object, so I have vertices, edges, and faces. So if I select vertex here, it'll show all of the vertices. If I select faces, it will allow me to select individual faces or edges. And if I want to go back into the object itself, I can just go into object mode. Now, if I go over this fireplace here and select on one or more of these objects, you'll see that we have different types of objects here in the radial menu.
We have a control vertex, we have what are called hulls, and isoparms. Now, these are NURBS specific, and again, we can go back into object mode to get into that object. Now, these are important when you are modeling, so we'll be using this as we get into the modeling chapters. Now, other types of objects may also have other types of marking menus.
Now, notice how the marking menus also have a bunch of other types of commands. We can select objects, we can select all or deselectjust by right clicking. And then we also can do things such as add or apply new materials to our objects, so if we want to, we can just right click and assign a color or a texture. So, marking menus and the hotbox are great ways to speed your productivity in Maya. So, as you start to work in Maya, go ahead and make sure that you understand how to use the hotbox, and make sure you check for marking menus as you work with different types of objects.
Maya is a very customizable program and that includes the interface. Now, we can change the interface by going into Preferences. So, if I want to, I can go into Windows, Settings Preferences, Preferences, and that brings up my Preferences menu. I can also get into this menu from the interface by just clicking here on Animation Preferences. Now, however you get into this window, you need to go up to the top to Interface, and this is where we start changing what the interface looks like.
Now, the first option here is really just your main menu set. So, if I wanted to, I can change from Modeling, to Rigging, to Animation, and that's mirrored here. But I also can turn off major parts of the interface. So, if I wanted to, I could turn off the main menu and that gives you a little bit more real estate. So, if you're used to using the hotbox or something, you might not need that top menu. We can also turn off the menu in our panels. So, if you don't really need that in your viewport, you can turn that off and you can also turn off the panel toolbar.
So, that's a really nice way to get yourself a little bit more screen real estate. I'm going to go ahead and turn those back on. We can also remember the size and position of all of these windows and we can also turn on or off highlight what's new in release. So, notice how some little green boxes come up here and that's because we've got some new features. So, if you have a new version of Maya, you might want to turn that on just to see what's new. Now, if we go down to the bottom, we have an important one for people who are using high DPI displaysand that's these interface scaling.
By default, it's scale the interface using the system setting, but, if you want, you can use a custom scaling. So, you can zoom into Maya, if you want, and make the interface bigger on a higher DPI display and that'll basically make your menus bigger. I'm going to go ahead and leave this on the default. Now, if we go over here to UI Elements, we could turn on or off major parts of the interface. So, I could turn off, say, the status line or the shelf or the time slider, or the range slider.
Notice how I'm kind of reducing all of the different things in my interface so I have more screen real estate in which to work. So, just depending upon what you're doing or not doing, you may want to turn things off. If you're not animating, you really don't need the time slider.And then, at the bottom here, we could save all of these panel layouts with the file. So, if you have a specific layout that works for that particular scene, you can go ahead and save it. Now, another one that's really important is Help.
Now, at the beginning, when you're first using Maya, Help is very important, but as you start to get more familiar with it, you may want to turn off certain parts of the Help system. Probably the most important one is the in-view messages. So, if I were to, say, left click over here and highlight this viewport and say change to wireframe by hitting four, notice how this big menu comes up. Now, sometimes that can get in your way. It's a little bit distracting, you might not want it, so you can turn that off here.
So, if I turn that off, then when I change my view style again by clicking five or six, you don't see it. And typically I like to keep that off.Another one is Popup Help and that's called Display ToolClips. So, if you hover over an option, it will bring up a little tiny help option and you can turn that on or off. So, these are some of the ways to customize how Maya looks. So, as you start working in Maya, you'll understand what you need and what you don't need.
So, just understand that you can turn off those things that you don't need.
Another way to customize your interface is to use what are called workspaces. Now workspaces exist in the top right-hand corner of the interface, so we have this little workspace pull-down, and right now we're using what's called the Maya Classic workspace, and that's really what we have here. Now if we want we can change this to any number of standard layouts here, so for example we have Modeling Standard, and what that does is it gets rid of all the extraneous animation tools such as the time slider and the range slider, and it gives you a little bit more space to work.
Now if you're really good with hotkeys, you can go to Modeling Expert which takes away almost all the menus, and allows you a big space to work in. We also have a number of other ones. We have one for, say Motion Graphics, which brings up motion graphics tools. We have another one for rendering, which brings up all of the rendering tools. Now I'm going to go back to Maya Classic here. Now if we change the interface, let's go back into Windows, Settings/Preferences, Preferences, and let's go over to UI Elements, and let's say turn off the Time Slider and the Range Slider, as well as maybe the Status Line to give ourselves some more space here.
And if we do that we can actually save that out as our own custom workspace. Now you'll notice here that Maya Classic now has a little asterisk next to it and that means something has changed. Now if we want, we could go into Save Current Workspace As, and we can give it a name, so let's just call it Custom_01, and hit OK, and when we do we're now in the Custom_01 interface, and that actually shows up on the menu, so I would go back to Maya Classic, there it is, and I can go now to Custom_01, which is my own custom interface.
So as you can see, you can very quickly switch between different types of workspaces and menu settings in Maya. This is just one more productivity enhancement for the program.