Maya folder confusion!

Taylor Hood

Hello, I'm a bit confused as this is my first time using Maya over from 4 years in MAX.
All I'm asking for is for somone to explain why there is no Maya folder in program folders? How come the loads of files for Maya are scattered in my C drive and the last thing is how come I have a Maya folder in my documents? (As you can tell, I'm not a fan of untidy ness and I'd like somone to explain why its set up like this ) I assume the my documents folder is for scenes and such?

Thanks.


-Edit- nothing to do with 3D but how come my damn Nvidia card keeps re setting to default options after rebooting?

MoP

The My Documents maya folder is not "untidy", it's set up so that multiple users can all have different settings. The oldschool way of having everything in one folder means settings don't get saved per user.

The main program should by in Program Files/Autodesk/Maya<version>
Maybe in Program Files (x86) if you've installed 32-bit Maya on a 64-bit system.

Taylor Hood

Okay, well, I still have all the maya folders and files apart from the My doc ones in C:/ (directly on it)
I may have installed it wrong?

Taylor Hood

It loads up okay and all. I take it would should all still work?

Krypteia

Regarding where your scenes go, do you know about creating and setting your project folder and everything for a new project?

Taylor Hood

I have no idea how to use Maya apart from the understanding of what I'm supposed to look for due to years of Max.

Anyways, luckly I realised I sent my install to C:\ - clumsey me.
Re installed and all is good.

Krypteia

Project folders will go wonderfully with your desire for tidyness :-)

Whenever you open up a new scene and want to start a new project:

1) Go to File>Project>New



2) Here you can give a name for your project folder (let's use "My Project" for this example), as well as where it will be saved to. So if you make a folder called "Maya Projects" on your desktop, you would hit browse and navigate to that folder - that's where the project folder would be saved to.





3) I just hit "Use Defaults" - which auto fills in the names for your scenes, texture, etc. folders.




4) Hit "Accept"


5) Now, if you go to where you saved your project folder ("Maya Projects") - you'll find that you now have a folder called "My Project" in there. Inside that you have a folder for scenes, texture, images, etc. That's your project folder.




6) Back in Maya, go ahead and hit File>Save. You'll notice it automatically goes to the "scenes" folder inside of your project folder. That's where you'll save your ma's or mb's.




7) What I do is have a folder on my desktop called "Maya", inside of that I have folders indicating what category it is (Environment, Weapons, etc) - and then inside of those are different project folders. Organize however best works for you.

Taylor Hood

Thank you my man! : )