Autodesk Maya Basics.

Understanding Menus within Maya

Menus in Maya are actually the sub-menus of Menu Sets. Maya’s User Interface (UI) is quite difference than the UIs of other software applications. Maya’s Menu Sets are like diverse and special applications. In contrast of 3D Studio Max Maya has introduced a quite new style to approach appropriate Menus by selecting a particular Menu Set, for instance for the menus of Animation we can select the Animation Menu Set. Under the Animation Menu Set we’ll find all menus containing several commands and tools for animation purpose. Maya 2009 has Popular Menu Sets of Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Dynamics, nDynamics, Rendering, Fur, Hair, Cloth Menu Set. Therefore before Maya 2009 there were Animation, Modeling, Rendering, Dynamics and Fur Menu Sets in Maya.

General Introduction to Maya UI

UI stands for User Interface. Usually it is called GUI means Graphical User Interface. A GUI is the dashboard of any software contains almost all commands and tools in it. We operate software by using GUI or UI. Almost all software try to build user friendly UIs that’s why we find almost all software same in some menus such as file menu, edit menu, tools menu, view menu etc, but while working within Maya we see something different but not difficult. Maya is amazing in this aspect because it provides a realm of commands, tools, script editing and customizing software in one place at a time. We don’t change its user interface again and again or we don’t restart Maya again and again for changing the applications as we do in many of the software.

Understanding Hot Box

Hotbox is an amazing feature of Maya. You will have never seen such a quick command system in any software. Although the use of hotbox is for experts and it is not recommended for beginners, but it has been experimented that if you try to be familiar with hotbox in beginnings you will get a natural flow to access all of the Maya while working within it. Hotbox gives you the ability to work in a big room. Many people like to work in a big room. It has been observed that most of the users close the shelf menu or status line or time and framing preferences and sliders while modeling within some 3d software. You may see the expert mode in 3D Studio Max as well, but Maya’s Hotbox is gives astonishing results. Hotbox is the game of right and left clicks when you have pressed and hold the space bar with your one hand, you will have to click and hold right or left mouse button with the other hand . With Hotbox you can hide all of the UI elements of your software application. Only and only one Hotbox gives you the direct access to each and every menu, command, tool, feature, menu set, scripting and any of the Maya’s features.

Understanding Persp and Orthographic Views

Maya has four views for work. The main and most used view is perspective view of Maya, and shortly called persp. A view is actually a camera with which we see our objects and animations. The first and most used persp view gives you the workspace of perfect 3d environment. You may watch your elements and objects from south east, south west, north east and North West and you can also tumble, track and dolly your perspective camera within Maya. Other 3 views are used while checking the left, right, front, back, top and bottom of your objects or elements or animations. It’s important that you be familiar with these four views of Maya, because when you model an object within Maya in perspective view you often mistakenly think that you are modeling a very good item with specific values but when you observe it in some other view such as left view, right view, front view, back view, top view and bottom view you may find great errors in your model. So it’s strongly recommended that always use all of the views and switch always between all of the views again and again while working with Maya. In this way you can get the proper results of your efforts.

Using ChannelBox in Maya

Channel box is most used command panel of Maya. It controls all the attributes and channels of all types, such as of an object or its shapes or animation or dynamics etc. channelbox has easy access for user. It is recommended for new users of Maya that they should pay very proper attention to understand the channel box because without using channelbox they will never be able to model or animate something with accurate values. Suppose you start to model an object directly with your mouse pointer. It may be corrupted due to free style modeling because when we scale, rotate or translate our objects or their components within Maya with simple clicking and dragging we can never model or animate some object with its appropriate values or figures. And when we use the channel box especially for controlling the attributes of the objects or animations we get very accurate results and there is not a single corruption in our model or animation. We even can control the attributes of lights, cameras and much more things from channel box. The second portion of channel box is shape. This is the place from where we control the shapes and behavior of our channels, objects and their components. The third portion of channel box is called layer editor. It’s the best way to display or manage the items of your scene or workspace. Even you can control thousands of object with layer editor any time.

Understanding Status Line of Maya's UI

Status line of Maya’s User Interface is an element which gives you a very comprehensive approach to the most used tools and commands, especially to control the behavior of objects while working with them within Maya. But the most important characteristic of status line is giving the opportunity to control your software application any time as quickly as you can. In the start of status line you will find Menu Sets. You can choose the menu sets according to the requirement of you work. Let say you want to work within Dynamics, so for this purpose you will have to choose the dynamics menu from menu sets from status line. When you select a specific menu set the sub menus of that menu set appears in main menu bar. You also find the main famous menus such as file menu’s items i.e. save file or open a new file etc. A status line has arrow type pipe characters which can be closed and reopened with the passage of work’s needs. Status line provides you many of the same control commands which you can find from any other panel or toolbar also. Such as the render current scene is a command which you may find from main menu, from shelf menu, from hotbox menu and etc .

Understanding Main Toolbar

Main toolbar is located on left side of the workspace of Maya. It contains main tools that are most used during work. Move, rotate and scale tools are the most important and frequently used tools for everything in Maya, such as modeling, animation, working with graph editor, hypergraph, hypershade etc. other tools of toolbar are also repeatedly used during work. The top most tool of main toolbar is selection tools, but often benefits for de-selection of objects and other items. At the bottom of the toolbar we find the camera switching tools. Such as single perspective view or the four view and so on. A user of Maya must be habitual of using toolbar during work. In this movie you will learn, what the function of toolbar is? How do the tools of toolbar work, and for what. Although all of the tools of toolbar are available on some other panels or menus but the main toolbar has still significance. Most of the experts hide all of the toolbars and command panels but they never hide main toolbar because of its extreme need.

Understanding Animation Preference

Animation preference is the main setting area for controlling an animation. When Maya loads, we see the time slider and range slider for animation. At the end of the range slider you may find a button for animation preference. This can also be accessed from window menu and setting preferences. With animation preference you set the speed of frames per second, you can change the playback speed; you can change the numbers of frames. Actually whatsoever we see in an animation is a sequence of still images. We know that if we pass 16 images just in one second in front of our eyes, we feel the elements of images are moving. It’s an illusion in deed. The great philosopher Zeno of Great Greece claims that there is no movement in this world. Everything is still, we feel movement due to the sequence of images in front of us. He claims that an arrow in air is not moving. It is stopped at every point. Anyhow, with the beginning of cinema humans have come to know that if a sequence of still images passes swiftly in front of eyes it gives an illusion of motion. That is the basic principle of animation. We can change the ratio of frames from animation preference. Usually in film industry 24 frames per seconds are used but we can set our custom number of frames. With animation preference you may change the playback range, as well as you may change width of time slider for sound import purposes. Animation preference allows you to control you animation masterly within Maya. In this lesson you are going to introduce with animation preference.

Time Slider and Range Slider

Timeand range sliders are twins. Both of them are used for animations in Maya. By default Maya opens time and range slider at the same time but user can hide one or both of them according the needs of job. Time slider is actually a time line, right beneath the workspace of Maya.However the workspace of Maya is actually persp view or erspective camera. Time slider can be scrubbed with left mouse button as well as it can be played with playback controls. Playback controls are on the right side of the time slider and are very simple like media player controls. Range slider specifies the range of the time slider or time line. The values of both of them can be set from animation preference window. Video tutorial on animation preference can be watched from the same page, from where you got this video tutorial. The value of time slider can be typed in small text boxes of range slider. Range slider has one bar and 4 small text boxes. On the left most corner of the range slider, you will find tow small text boxes for entering the start frames for time slider or range and on the right most side of the range slider bar you may find two text boxes for entering the end frame values of time slider and range. Time slider and range slider are easy to use and easy to understand; even a very new user can make an animation easily by using the time and range slider of Maya .

Understanding Shelf Menu in Maya

Shelf menu or shelf toolbar or shelf is rich and very comprehensive tool plate. Although experts avoid using shelf because of its size which reduces the workspace or work area of Maya, but there are times when experts prefer to use shelf menu than every other tool menu or command panel, especially when modelers work on specific task such as human body modeling or clothing or specifically dynamics, they avoid to open up the main menus again and again and they use shelf bar. Often experts use custom shelf menu and they collect the necessary items for their specific work. Some users prefer to create their own commands through scripting and they also put them into shelf menu bar. But for new users the shelf command panel or tools plate is strongly recommended for use, because it is difficult to keep in mind a lot of tools and commands at a time, so they can see the image icons of specific primitives and commands on toolbar and this way they can model or animate an object easily.

Familiarizing with Maya's Workspace

Workspace is a word which illustrates the space for work in Maya. Whenever we first time load Maya, the first thing which appears is the workspace in front of us. We see a grid, which is used as the graph paper for drawing different 2D and 3D objects. By default the perspective camera is set as workspace. Actually workspace is the main working area where a Maya user spent most of his/her time. The most important point while understanding workspace is to be familiar with it. There are majorly 3 actions to manipulate our workspace Tumble, track, and dolly. All these 3 actions are used similarly in offline film industry. Tracking a camera in Maya is same like panning a camera in 3D Studio Max. Dolly in Maya is used as zooming a camera in 3D Studio Max. Tumbling a camera in Maya is same like rotating a camera in 3D Studio Max. These 3 camera moves are basic skills. If you can’t fluently manipulate the camera speedily, you can’t do anything because during working within a 3D software you will have to manipulate working cameras, workspaces or viewports hundreds times for making a single object or a simple animation.