Hello there everyone in here....I am completely new to the Maya world here. And was wondering if anyone could give me a helping hand or any good advice to where to start learning the program. I am use to daz 3d stuff here, and wanted to make a change in the 3D world here. I have read about Maya and found out that it has a lot more to it in regards to creation and animation.

I am interested in organic modeling and vehicle modeling here at the moment and then into animation aspects of the program.(I do know it might take me a while to learn the program here.) I am currently running Maya2010 here and was wondering if anyone knew of any good beginner tutorials that I can use or where to get some good tuts on the net here. And was also wondering I if anyone got give some pointers in regards to getting the correct size of image reference images to use in Maya(so basically I can get everything lined up the right way so there will be no extra re work through out my modeling process)

Thanks

Michael

I’ll start given that I’m pretty new and still drinking from a firehose myself.  Best thing to do is just start drawing.  Something. Anything.  Do a pencil.  Then do pen.  Put them together on a table top.  Look at applying textures to all of them. Look at lighting them. Move the camera to get different animation angles.  Move the objects to see how to key frame.  The point is just start drawing.  Don’t do what I did and that is start with something too complicated.  Work simple so you get results fast.  The documentation that comes with Maya actually is quite good but it is a reference not a learning tool.  There are loads of good tutorials online. Both free and purchased.  I’ve found the free ones are pretty good about a specific topic like crating a metal look with a dgs shader but they tend to be week on covering a broad topic.  I subscribe to lynda.com as well as Digital Tutors (www.digitaltutors.com).  They both have excellent classes. Lynda.com classes are very good basic entry level classes.  George Maestri is the instructor and he does a good job for basic navigating and how specific tools work.  DT has more advanced classes and cover more specific issues such as modeling, animation and mental ray rendering.  I’m currently taking a class on Photorealistic Mental Ray rendering given by Boaz Livny on the CGSociety web page.  It is a paid for class but I will tell you it is worth every dime and then some.  I’ve learned more in this class in the first 3 weeks than I did looking at things for months on my own.  Boaz is an excellent instructor.  The depth of knowledge he has on building shader trees and creating optimal render settings for the best result is pretty impressive.  I found all of these places just taking time, googling around the web, joining forums, reading forums, getting out there and doing things.  I’ve just barely scratched the surface and now I’d say I’m at that really dangerous stage.  I’ve been working with Maya just about a year now and I’m only just now really seeing and appreciating all that can be done with it.  It is huge and very deep.  Get into it.  See what you like to do.  Draw more things and figure out where you want to go with it.  It is quite difficult to know it all and be best at everything but you can be functional with most parts, good on others and excellent on a few different aspects.  You have to decide where you want to go with it.  I’ll post a few links I’ve found to help get you started.

Don’t be bashful but do your homework.  If you have questions, I would recommend first do a lot of searches to see if there are solutions out there.  If you can’t find any, then post a specific question.  There are a lot of very good talented people on this and other boards.  If you are respectful of their time you most likely will get some answer or a pointer to an answer.  If you look, I posted just earlier on getting a method to make good looking holes in polygon objects.  Sounds easy.  Try it.  I did a lot of looking around before I posted and came up pretty empty.  Maybe there is a good tutorial on it but I’ve not found it.  I’ve spent considerable hours trying different things that are kinda ok but not really good.  Got a few more ideas I want to try and also see if someone else has some killer method they use that work.

Good luck, study hard, have fun.  Maya and 3D in general is a blast.

Phil

Here are some good links:

http://www.creativecrash.com/
http://www.cgsociety.org/
http://www.3dtotal.com/
http://3dcafe.com/
http://animationartist.digitalmedianet.com/
http://awn.com/
http://www.mymentalray.com/forum/index.php
http://www.binaryalchemy.de/forum/index.php
http://forums.creativecow.net/forum/maya
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/
http://www.simplymaya.com/
http://www.freedomofteach.com/
http://www.melscripting.com/
http://3drender.com/
http://vimeo.com/tag:maya
http://www.cgtutorials.com/
http://filmmakeriq.com/general/featured/606-maya-tutorials.html
http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/
http://i3dtutorials.com/

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