Art test Maya unit

joe gracey

I'm doing an art test for EA and they are asking me that the hallway be 8 meters long. They said 1 Maya unit = 1 meter. How do I find out what a unit is?

Needles

1 maya unit = 1 meter?

Its just a generic measure,

joe gracey

So is one meter the size of the grid in perspective view or is it the size of a cube with the scale x,y, and z set to 1?

rooster

well, you can set the grid to be whatever you want..
start by going to the preferences and in settings make sure your units are meters, and yes if you set a cube to 1 then it will be 1 meter. make sure the grid setup matches

Ott

When you generate your geometry, there are generic units that show the size / scale of your object. I'm not a Maya guy, but it's under the attributes of the object. For your hallway you would want to generate a plane or a box 8 units long. Go into scale and change it to 8, and that will be considered 8 meters.

The test may also simply be a reference for both your scale as well as the actual physical size of each asset.

A lot of engines use grids and specific object size to ensure that everything fits properly and so the designers don't have to go in and resize everything all day.

rooster

yep but like I say, make sure you're in meters first otherwise you're going to give them an 8cm hallway
edit: as long as you stick to units of some kind of course you can always scale it by 10 or .1 so..

joe gracey

Thanks needles, rooster and Ott for the replies. I'm going to create a cube that is 8 long and use that. That seems to be the easiest way to do it. I've read on some websites that said if you mess with your preferences it can also screw up other things like your camera and lights making them really small or big.