Introduction to Maya 2015
This in-depth Maya 2015 tutorial is designed to help you get a solid understanding of the core features found in Maya and help you to ease your transition into this very powerful program. Software required: Maya 2015, Photoshop. EM>Note: This course is free for the duration of A href="http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?839-Final-Contest-on-the-DT-Forums!">October's training contest in the forums/A>./EM>
What you'll learn
This in-depth Maya 2015 tutorial is designed to help you get a solid understanding of the core features found in Maya and help you to ease your transition into this very powerful program. During the course of these lessons, you'll have a chance to learn about different aspects of Maya from several of our instructors here at Digital-Tutors. Digital-Tutors is the world's largest resource for Autodesk training, and over the years, we've had the honor and the privilege of teaching some of the top artists and studios all around the world. And for the next several hours, we'll be giving you the most structured, well-rounded and easiest-to-follow Maya training that you'll be able to find anywhere. In the first portion of this tutorial, we'll be getting you familiar with some of the vocabulary and foundational skills that you'll need in order to begin moving around and working in Maya. From there, we'll move into exploring some of the modeling features found in Maya, and we'll begin building the mech that will be our central project for the remainder of this course. We'll take you through the entire process of adding textures and materials to the mech, adding animated movement and animation controls, adding dynamics, and finally, we'll learn how to add lights, shadows and output our final animated sequence. This training is designed for new Maya users, so our goal is not to weigh you down with a lot of technical information. Instead, we want you to form some really good habits and workflows, allowing you to see the entire start-to-finish pipeline for this project, and by the end of this tutorial, we want you to be at a point where you can feel very comfortable using Maya. Software required: Maya 2015, Photoshop. EM>Note: This course is free for the duration of A href="http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?839-Final-Contest-on-the-DT-Forums!">October's training contest in the forums/A>./EM>
Table of contents
- Navigating the Viewport 8m
- Working with the Maya Interface 9m
- Creating Maya Projects 5m
- Working with Scene Files in Maya 5m
- Viewport Shading and Selection Modes 8m
- Transforming Objects in Maya 8m
- Using Component Mode 7m
- Using the Attribute Editor 5m
- Grouping and Parenting 6m
- Using the Maya Hotbox 5m
- Writing a MEL Script 9m
- Creating Custom Shelves 6m
- Modeling Overview 1m
- Adding Image Planes 6m
- Creating a Blank for the Body 8m
- Using Quad Draw to Create the Body 9m
- Finishing the Main Body Topology 8m
- Cleaning up the Main Body 8m
- Modeling the Thrusters 11m
- Adding Edges for Smoothing 6m
- Adding Tubes Using Curves 9m
- Adding Ribs to the Tubes 4m
- Modeling the Shoulder Guards 6m
- Building the Upper Arm 9m
- Beginning the Lower Arm 7m
- Adding the Extending Gun 7m
- Adding the Claws 8m
- Modeling the Front Detail on the Body 5m
- Modeling the Underside of the Body 7m
- Building the Upper Leg 4m
- Modeling the Lower Leg 7m
- Adding the Shade 8m
- Hierarchy and Model Prep 10m
- Materials and Texturing Overview 1m
- Applying Simple Materials 6m
- Using Ramps to Drive Material Channels 7m
- Adding Multiple Materials to Objects 4m
- Working with Procedural Textures 4m
- UV Basics 8m
- Using Substance to Add Metal Detail 8m
- Using the Ramp Shader 4m
- Adding File Textures 9m
- Adding a Bump Map 7m
- Rigging Overview 0m
- Cleaning up Our Scene 6m
- Building a Control Object for the Mech's Center-of-mass 8m
- Finishing the Mech's Center-of-gravity Control 8m
- Rigging with Driven Keys 8m
- Building Your First Joint Chain 8m
- Completing the Setup of Our Initial Joint Chain 4m
- Mirroring Joints in Maya 5m
- Connecting Our Leg Joints to Follow the Mech's Root 4m
- Binding Geometry 7m
- Creating Joint Chains for the Mech's Arms 7m
- Controlling the Mech's Arms 5m
- Adding Inverse Kinematics to the Limbs 4m
- Limb Controls 8m
- Connecting Attributes with the Connection Editor 2m
- Controlling the Mech's Toes 8m
- Wrapping up Our Foot Controls 6m
- Rigging the Mech's Weapon 6m
- Finishing the Initial Setup Process of the Mech's Weapons 5m
- Controlling the Guns 6m
- Adding a Global Control 4m
- Making Our Scene Animator-friendly 6m
- Animation Overview 1m
- How to Create and Edit Keyframes in Maya 7m
- Managing Keyframes in the Graph Editor and Cycling Animation Infinitely 8m
- Working with Auto Key and Creating Simple Expressions in the Graph Editor 6m
- Working with Expressions 6m
- Path Animation 9m
- Starting on the Mech's Sequence 7m
- Animating the Mech's Platform 10m
- Blocking in the Mech's Performance 7m
- Finalizing Our Blocking Pass 6m
- Working on the Mech's Polishing Pass 8m
- Finishing the Mech's Polishing Pass 11m
- Adding a Shot Camera 4m
- Finalizing the Shot and Previewing Animations in Real-time with Playblasts 9m
- Dynamics Overview 0m
- Key Concepts of Dynamics in Maya 7m
- Emitting nParticles from a Mesh 8m
- Editing nParticle Properties, Using the Correct Space Scale for Particle Simulations, and Setting up Collisions 7m
- Finalizing Our nParticle Settings 6m
- Shading nParticles 8m
- Animating nParticle Attributes 7m
- Adding More Particles to Enhance Our Simulation 7m
- Animating Our New nParticle Object 6m
- Adding Wind Effects to nParticles and Improving the Quality of Your Simulation via the Nucleus Solver 5m
- Finalizing Our nParticle Simulation and Working with the nCache Tools 7m
- Rendering Overview 1m
- Understanding Various Light Types 10m
- Controlling Light Color and Intensity 8m
- Adjusting Light Decay and Specular Contribution 8m
- Altering the Render Stats of Maya Objects 8m
- Using Images to Generate Realistic Lighting 9m
- Adding Secondary Illumination Sources to Our Scene 10m
- Baking Substance Textures for mental ray Rendering 9m
- Fine-tuning the Rendered Appearance of Materials 10m
- Fine-tuning the Rendered Appearance of Particles 10m
- Adding Final Quality Adjustments to Our Render 10m
- Preparing Render Settings for Final Output 9m
- Rendering the Final Sequence from Maya 10m
About the authors
Justin thrives as a lead modeling author at Pluralsight. Growing up, Justin found a deep interest for the computer graphics industry after watching movies like Jurassic Park, Toy Story, and The Abyss. His ambition would lead him to work at Sony Imageworks in Los Angeles on movies like Monster House and Surf's Up. Justin has also had numerous articles, tutorials, and images published in 3D World and 3D Artist. As an author, Justin enjoys collaborating with fellow authors, especially on project... more
Delano works avidly as an animation author at Pluralsight. Starting his career at animation studios like Shilo, Delano has developed a strong passion for his talents. His animation and rigging background help him teach and create some of the most-watched training on Pluralsight. A few of his favorite projects that he has contributed to include: Character Interaction in Maya and in Softimage, Rigging the Human Face in Maya, Rigging Sea Creatures in Maya, and Rigging and Animating Transforming... more
Kyle was one of the first authors for Digital-Tutors, now a Pluralsight company. and has been a part of the team for over 10 years. Kyle began his career in computer graphics education as a college instructor and worked as a Digital-Tutors rendering tutor and curriculum manager since 2002. Kyle has contributed to many of the most popular projects and helped the Digital-Tutors team win awards throughout the company's history. Kyle has had the honor of having his art exhibited at the New York ... more