Resources for learning Maya?

jpgourley

Hi everyone,

I've been using 3DS Max for the last two years, but had used Maya off and on before that. I have an interview with a developer who only uses Maya, and so far it's sounding really good. So I wanted to get a jump on getting back into Maya, but find that I'm a bit rusty. Does anyone have any suggestions for books, websites, tutorials or videos that I can find to give myself a crash course in Maya? Thanks.

Edit: I will really only be working with low poly environments, at least immediately. So being proficient with the polygon tools and uv editing are really my main concern.

Mark Dygert

For modeling look into a plug-in called Nex. It costs but its worth it, especially if you're coming from 3dsMax, it will have a lot of features you'd miss otherwise.

www.highend3d.com is the scriptspot.com of the Maya world.

jpgourley

Nex looks so great. My only worry would be that if I was used to it on my machine but unable to use it at the studio I might end up worse off. It definitely looks like it's worth it though.

I downloaded the bonus tools for Maya and it seems like some of the functionality I'm looking for is there, ie. target weld. I think I find the thing about Maya so frustrating is that I have to dig through all of these menus for a simple function like target weld, and then have to repeat it again without the option of keeping the tool up. Is there a way to bind a key to the bonus tools? I've been trying to but I can't seem to find a way, none of those functions appear in the hotkey editor.

MoP

If you want to bind a hotkey to a function that doesn't exist (yet) in the hotkey editor, you will have to open the Script Editor window (the little button in the very bottom right of Maya), and then click the command you want, and see if it shows up in the Scrip Editor window (you might have to turn on "History -> Echo All Commands" in the Script Editor window before it shows up).

Then you can go to the hotkey editor, scroll down to the "User" section, and click "New" - enter the name and description of your hotkey, and paste the command you found in the Script Editor, into the Command area of the hotkey. Then you can Accept that to store the new hotkey, and assign whatever key you want, then save the preferences.

pior

Yay! G'luck with the app. You'll see it has some elegant sides, but also some very bad ones :P You'll love the viewport navigation tho.

Another way to setup UI and shortcuts, maybe more visual : If you can locate the tool you want in one of the top menus, just click that tool while pressing down shift+ctrl+alt (I can never remember which one works so I press them all haha). This will create an shortcut icon of the tool you clicked, in the current shelf. So you can neatly store all these deep-buried tools up there.

Once you realize that a specific tool would work better as a kb shortcut (instead of a shelf button) you can middlemouse-drag the button from your shelf to the Script Editor. This will show the code behind it. You can now copy-paste this code and create a keyboard shortcut in the User section just like Mopy described it.

Note that the shift+ctrl+alt thing won't work from the hotbox nor from the shift-click and ctrl-click quick menus.

Also - after a while you might want to put some of these shortcuts inside a marking menu, kindof like the Quad menus from Max. There is an editor for that. Beware tho, the marking menus will work fine but the marking menu editor is BUGGED TO DEATH ! (Maya2008)

Hope this helps

Edit - HO! Also. On the far left of the hotbox (the spacebar thing) you'll find a list of recent commands that you can launch again. Handy.

CheeseOnToast

Just a quick one....hitting "g" will repeat the last action, bring up the last used tool etc. If you hit "y" when using a tool (say the split edge tool), it'll finish the current operation and leave the tool open and ready to use again.

jpgourley

Wow thanks for all of the help guys. I can't wait to get home to try these out. It sounds like the tips you have given me are going to solve most of the frustrations I've been having trying to switch over.

Edit: Just had a chance to try these suggestions out. Thank you so much for the help, just these simple things have really sped up my work flow in Maya and I can see with a little practice that I shouldn't have any trouble switching over. Especially after finding some great mel scripts that help to bridge some of the functionality of Max that I was missing.