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.
