Maya Basics

If you're looking to create video game artwork, look no farther than Autodesk Maya. Maya combines powerful tools for the major areas in 3D content creation: modeling, animation, texturing, and rendering. Many of today's top video games are created in Maya: from characters, to models, levels, and more.

Twenty to ten—it's time to learn Maya,

This 6-lesson course, developed by Maya maestro Nathaniel Stein, helps you unlock the mysteries of this challenging program. You'll develop a thorough understanding of the Maya toolset, learning how to create, edit, and refine polygon models, add textures and apply UV maps, develop basic animations, and export your artwork into a game engine. Class projects include working with primitives, complex inorganic models, character modeling, texturing, animation studies, and exporting a scene.

If you've been waiting to learn Maya to get into developing art for video games—or any other type of 3D project—this course will put you through your paces and launch you into the creative world of 3D at hyperspeed.

Nathaniel Stein is a 3D artist, writer, and Maya expert ... get bio

Develop an understanding of the main tools in the Maya interface and how 3D art is constructed.

Construct 3D models by creating and editing primitives through moving, rotating, scaling, and grouping them.

Manipulate objects by selecting components, and rotating, scaling, and transforming them and using Boolean objects to combine or extrude shapes.

Develop an understanding of how to calculate the size and complexity of 3D models during render.

Split polygons to create new vertices and faces and draw new polygons freehand.

Smoothen edges using gradients and bevels while minimizing the effect on the poly count of a model.

Set up a basic lighting rig including directional light, spotlight, key light, point light, and render it from different camera views.

Apply and edit basic shaders using the Hypershade Editor.

Add basic image maps and UV maps, cutting, sewing, folding, and unfolding them to apply textures to models.

Develop an understanding of basic principles of animation and create animations by adding and editing keyframes on a timeline.

Edit animations using the Graph Editor to smooth transitions and produce different kinds of interpolation.

Develop file structures and naming conventions that promote good workflow.

Render out frames and mask layers to preview scenes or characters for clients.

LESSON 1 Intro to Maya Lesson One kicks off your course with an orientation to the elements of the Maya interface: the view window, tools, buttons, and timeline. You'll learn how to customize your view, zooming in and out, and to navigate between different artwork displays through key commands and shortcuts. You'll create and adjust primitives to create basic 3D models, and using the Transform tools to move, rotate, and scale them in three dimensions. To help you organize your artwork, you'll learn how to group and parent objects and pivot them. In the exercise, you'll practice working with primitives by modeling basic shapes and figures.

LESSON 2 Modeling in Maya Lesson Two introduces you to ways of manipulating the shape of an object to begin creating realistic or complicated shapes. You'll learn how to select components and edit them, rotating, scaling, and transforming the elements in your model. Any face or edge can be deleted, extruded, poked, or cut to add details to your objects. When you get tired of that, you'll discover the delights of using Booleans to overlap objects to merge or extrude new shapes. The lesson wraps up with a section on how to duplicate or flip components and a focus on how to use object history to keep track of the complexity of your art. You'll apply this knowledge to a detailed inorganic model in the exercise.

LESSON 3 Poly Modeling II Lesson Three focuses on how to turn your complex polygons into smooth, polished models. First you'll examine how Maya calculates the number of triangles in your models when it renders. You'll learn how to split polygons by creating new vertices and faces and draw new polygons freehand. To round off all this complexity, you'll study how to use normals to create gradients and bevels to smoothen edges. A final section will explore approaches for modeling a character and reducing the poly count on your creations. In the exercise, you'll create (what else?) a smooth but efficient character model.

LESSON 4 Texturing and UV Mapping Lesson Four focuses on showing you how to add texture to your models, so you can control their color, shininess, transparency, and reflectivity. You'll learn how to set up a basic light rig including a directional light, spotlight, key light, and point light, and render it from different camera views. You'll explore how the different controls in the Hypershade Editor work and learn how to apply basic shaders. Then you'll examine how to add an image map and manipulate its attributes. In the exercise, one of your complex models will come alive with color, shading, and lighting.  

LESSON 5 UV Mapping UV mapping allows you to take a 2D texture image and place it properly on a 3D surface, and for game artists this technique is an absolute must. You'll learn how to create and apply UV maps of your models, cutting and sewing them, and folding and unfolding them. You'll walk through the UV mapping of simple and complex objects, and you'll work in Photoshop to produce texture images to apply to your maps. The lesson concludes with some rules of the road for working UV maps. In the exercise, you'll apply UVs and image maps to a detailed model.  

LESSON 6 Animation and Workflow Lesson Six unleashes Frankenstein's monster: animation, the art of bringing life to the unliving. You'll start by learning how animating in Maya works, creating, moving, and editing keyframes on a timeline. Then you'll move on to another key topic: What to do with all this great art and animation you've made in Maya. You'll explore workflow techniques, naming conventions, and file structures, and look rendering techniques so that you can provide clients previews of scenes. In the final two-part project, you'll work on a classic animation study, animating two bouncing balls with different properties, before producing an environment/scene, including animations, and exporting it from Maya with different views.