Introduction to Maya 2016
This in-depth Maya 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 2016.
What you'll learn
This in-depth Maya 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. We are 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 spacecraft that will be our central project for the remainder of this course. From there, we'll take you through the entire process of adding textures and materials to the spacecraft, 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 course 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 Maya tutorial, we want you to be at a point where you can feel very comfortable using the software. Software required: Maya 2016.
Table of contents
- Modeling Section Overview 1m
- Adding Reference Images 7m
- Creating the Basic Body Shape 10m
- Extruding out the Wings 8m
- Finishing the Wings 13m
- Extruding up the Top Section 8m
- Creating the Canopy 8m
- Extruding the Thruster Compartment 6m
- Starting the Front Guard 9m
- Finishing the Guard Piece 8m
- Modeling Pieces Between the Wings 6m
- Creating the Back Vents 7m
- Creating Pipes with Curves 7m
- Creating Shapes with Closed Curves 5m
- Modeling the Thrusters 6m
- Adding Support Edges for Smoothing 8m
- Creating the Gun Base 4m
- Modeling the Main Gun Body 7m
- Creating Radial Gun Barrels 9m
- Hierarchy and Model Prep 9m
- Sculpting in Maya 7m
- Rigging Overview 1m
- Cleaning up the Scene 7m
- Control Objects and Groups 10m
- Modifying an Object's Pivot and Orientation 4m
- Orientation Continued 10m
- Creating Custom Channels 6m
- Connecting Channels in Maya 4m
- Building Joints 8m
- Skinning Geometry in Maya 7m
- Adding Spline IK Control to Our Joint System 9m
- Setting up an Auto-idle System 11m
- Making the Rig Animator-friendly 5m
- Animation Overview 1m
- Setting Your Animation Preferences 8m
- Keyframing in Maya 8m
- Managing Animation in the Graph Editor 9m
- Cycling Animation Infinitely 10m
- Path Animation 13m
- Starting on the Flight Sequence 8m
- Finalizing Our Blocking Pass 7m
- Polishing the Animation 9m
- Animating a Shot Camera 13m
- Finishing the Flight Sequence 8m
- Dynamics Overview 1m
- Bringing Back the Fueling Line and Getting Ready for Our First Simulation 2m
- Simulating the Fueling Line with nDynamics 9m
- Setting up Collisions for an nDynamics Solve 6m
- Baking the Animation of the Fueling Line 7m
- Using a Fluid Emitter to Add Dust Particles 6m
- Enhancing the Look of Our Dust Particles 10m
- Repositioning Our Emitter and Enhancing the Behavior of Our Particles 5m
- Animating Our Fluid Emitter 6m
- Duplicating Particle Emitters 7m
- Creating a Low-resolution Collision Object 7m
- Rendering Overview 1m
- Understanding Various Light Types 12m
- Controlling Light Color and Intensity 11m
- Adjusting Light Decay and Specular Contribution 10m
- Altering the Render Stats of Maya Objects 10m
- Creating Lights to Match Environment 11m
- Adjusting Attributes for the Physical Sun and Sky 10m
- Fine-tuning Ship Materials for Rendering 14m
- Fine-tuning Environment Materials for Rendering 13m
- Fine-tuning the Look of the Particles 12m
- Preparing Particles for Batch Rendering 5m
- Adding Final Adjustments for Lighting and Quality 8m
- Configuring Output Settings and Rendering the Final Sequence 15m
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
Eddie began teaching creative professionals over ten years ago for Digital Tutors. In 2014 Digital Tutors was acquired by Pluralsight and he continued his focus on creating high quality training for artists in both the film and games industries. With a background in graphic design and illustration Eddie has always been focused on visual appeal. This can be seen through his courses in which he shares secrets for achieving production level quality for concept art, illustrations, textures, mater... more