Learning Autodesk Maya 2015 - A Practical Hands On Course

Explore the Maya interface, including the large viewport and three dimensional workspace, main menus, shelves, and the channel box, layer editor, tool box, and timeline for animation.

Master Maya's hot box and marking menus to access tools, switch views and editors. Use context-sensitive marking menus for polygon operations.

Master camera control in Maya by switching between perspective and orthographic views, using alt plus mouse buttons to orbit, tumble, pan, and zoom, and framing with F and A.

Establish a Maya project directory to ensure external files, such as textures, load correctly by mapping scene and source images folders; create or reset the workspace to fix missing workspace.mel.

Maya's primitive objects include NURBS, polygon, and volume. The lecture demonstrates creating a NURBS sphere, explains creation nodes, subdivision surfaces via Catmull-Clark, and volume primitives for effects.

Master transforming objects in Maya with move, rotate, and scale using W, E, and R; navigate color-coded axes and channel box, and control pivot points with insert and center pivot.

Learn to build parent-child hierarchies in Maya 2015 by selecting objects, then parent them with P and unparent with Shift+P. Group to a null node with Control G to create a pivot at the world center, and move, rotate, and scale the whole group.

Explore Maya's hypergraph to visualize and manage the scene's node-based structure, including transform and shape nodes, input and output connections, and construction history.

Learn to use maya's outliner, a tool similar to hyper graph, to view nodes and their parent-child relationships, manage visibility with hide and reveal, duplicate objects, and isolate polygon objects.

master image planes in Maya 2015 by creating and loading background reference images, aligning them to front and side views, and adjusting transparency, scale, and camera distortion for precise modeling.

Create linear and cubic curves in Maya with the CV and EP curve tools, compare control vertices and edit points, and learn arc tool and pencil curve tool construction.

Learn polygon fundamentals in Maya 2015, including faces, edges, and vertices; select components, manipulate geometry, compare quads and triangles, and use the heads up display to monitor poly count.

Learn to select polygon components in Maya using marking menus and hot keys, including vertex/edge/face selection, loops and rings, border edges, and convert between components with paint select.

Create a basic building structure in Maya using polygons from a primitive cube, snap the pivot to the base, and extrude windows and roof.

Explore Maya 2015's extrude tool within box modeling, using symmetry and image planes to model a character torso, neck, head, legs, and toes through iterative extrusion, scaling, and alignment.

Enable symmetry, insert edge loops with edge flow, and adjust edge flow to shape the wing geometry; extrude and refine vertices to match the reference while maintaining symmetry.

Use Maya's mirror geometry tool to duplicate half a model across the y z plane, merging with the original for a seamless mesh. Adjust the merge threshold to fix gaps.

Learn how normals shape light on surfaces in Maya, covering face and vertex normals, reversing and smoothing or hardening, and using back face culling and two-sided lighting.

Explore sculpting geometry in Maya using the sculpt geometry tool. Adjust brush size and opacity, then push, pull, smooth, relax, pinch, and slide to shape organic forms.

Learn to create bridges in Maya by connecting edges on same surface, duplicating and combining posts, and adjusting bridge options like divisions, smooth path, and twists for an iron fence.

Learn to build detailed bridges in Maya by using the bridge tool with linear and blend curves, adjusting twist, divisions, taper, and graph-based keys to refine geometry.

Learn to extrude along a curve by creating and snapping a curve to a cube, then adjust divisions, reverse curve direction, and apply twist or taper for decorative fence details.

Use the mirror cut tool to extend geometry across a mirrored plane and merge with the original mesh, then clean history and preview the Lambert shader.

Explore beveling techniques in Maya 2015 to smooth edges, clean topology, add segments and roundness, and control auto fit and history for a refined post detail.

Explore booleans to create geometry by union, difference, and intersection of shapes. Use a cheese grater and cylinders to form holes, then manage history and duplicate with transform for efficiency.

Learn to use the quad draw tool to create quad geometry on live surfaces, extend loops, and relax borders for clean topology using the modeling toolkit.

Explore how materials, or shaders, define surface makeup in Maya by assigning and adjusting Lambert, Blinn, Phong, and anisotropic shaders, controlling color, transparency, ambient, incandescence, and specular highlights.

Learn to create readable UV maps by projecting planar and camera-based UV coordinates, clean up geometry, and separate front and back shells, while checking distortion with a checkered texture.

Master UV mapping in Maya by projecting the body with cylindrical maps, refining with unfold, detach and sew workflows, and aligning UV shells for clean texture space.

Learn to mirror a symmetrical model in Maya and lay out UVs, pack them into the 0 to 1 texture space, adjust spacing, and avoid overlaps for clean painting.

Apply custom textures in Maya by creating a 2048x2048 UV snapshot, painting on the UV layout in Photoshop, and assigning an anisotropic material with color and specular.

Explore hypershade in Maya to manage shader networks, view materials and textures, graph node connections, drag and drop nodes to materials, adjust connections, and generate render nodes for shading workflows.

Explore Maya rendering options by comparing hardware 2.0, software, and mental ray renderers, adjust ambient occlusion, gamma correction, and anti-aliasing, then render, save, and compare progressive and IPR results.

Explore how joints form a functional skeleton, create and connect joints with the joint tool, and manipulate rotation, translation, and scale while preserving local coordinates and orthographic alignment.

Learn to build a character skeleton in Maya 2015 by using the joint tool, enabling x-ray view, applying symmetry, snapping joints, and establishing parent-child connections to wings, body, and limbs.

binds geometry to a joint hierarchy in Maya using geodesic voxel skinning, dual quaternion, and weight normalization, with quick alternatives like closest distance and closest in hierarchy for faster results.

Master painting skin weights in Maya by selecting weighted geometry, using the Skin Weights tool, locking joints to limit influence, and painting with replace or zero values on the leg.

Refine joint placement and weight distribution in Maya using skin moved, weight hammer, and vertex weight tools; copy, paste, and average weights for clean skinning.

Mirror skin weights across the y z plane from positive to negative x, ensuring symmetrical wings and feet weights using closest point on surface and closest joint.

Explore IK handles in Maya to control a leg skeleton from end effector to root, comparing single chain and rotate plane solvers.

Master basic rigging in Maya by creating control handles with NURBS circles, configuring IK and parent constraints, maintaining offset, freezing transforms, and parenting joints for intuitive animation.

Navigate the Maya node editor to connect rotate X from a single joint to the entire wing, expanding levels and wiring ports for synchronized left-right wing movement.

Create and prep a Maya ball, set and key translate Y for a bouncing animation, using autokey, key selected, and a 60-frame playback range.

Animate a rigged crow from rest to flight in Maya using autokey, setting keyframes for translate and rotate, and refining wings, head, and legs with clean control handles.

Use the dope sheet to view and modify animation. Scale keyframes across animated nodes in the hyper graph to halve the duration from 120 to 60 frames while preserving sync.

Explore the graph editor to visualize animation curves and keyframes, edit frames and values, and adjust tangents, keys, and snap settings for precise, previewable motion.

Refine a Krogh animation in Maya 2015 by using the graph editor to adjust keyframes, extend wing flapping, and smooth translate and rotate tangents for a seamless takeoff.

Refine the crow's takeoff by editing the y channel in maya's graph editor, deleting and repositioning keyframes, breaking tangents, and retiming wing flaps with markers for a sharper liftoff.

learn batch rendering in maya by sending an animation to render in background with mental ray. set frame range, naming, and image size, then monitor progress in the script editor.

Learn image based lighting in Maya by importing HDR images, creating an IBL node, and using emit light to achieve photorealistic, environment-driven illumination.

Master final gather in Maya 2015 to simulate illumination via indirect lighting and inter-object light bounces. Fine-tune accuracy, point density, and IBL color gain to balance quality and render time.

Explore Maya's interface and tools, import images as image planes to light scenes, model with extrusion and bridge, build a skeleton to animate, and apply textures and lighting.