Maya Beginners Overview: Polygon Basics: Modeling

Navigation: Holding down the ALT key allows for you to use the 3 buttons on the mouse to navigate quickly through the screen:

• ALT + LMB rotates the camera

• ALT+ MMM tracks the camera

• ALT + RMB Zooms into wherever the camera is currently pointed

Basic Hotkeys:

Numbers 4-7 (not on the number pad) allow you to switch quickly between the display options of your object.

• 4: Wireframe

• 5: Smooth shaded

• 6: Textured (imported textures, Maya colors are visible in 5)

• 7: Lighting (if available, if there are no lights in scene, all objects will appear black.)

Space Bar:

Pressing the space bar brings up your Hotbox, which is basically, every command in every menu set Maya has. Some find it easier to use the hotbox rather then the other menus. I find it confusing for the most part. However, tapping the spacebar while your mouse is in the 3D field of view, switches to the 4 screen orthographic view. (top, side, front, perspective) If you need to view your object from the top, tap the spacebar, click on the screen containing the top view and then tap the spacebar again. To switch back to perspective view, so the same thing again, only click on the “perspective” screen when in the 4 screen view.

Other Important Hotkeys:

• Ctrl + Z is undo

• Ctrl + X Deletes currently selected objects (delete and backspace do the same thing)

• Ctrl + G Groups all currently selected objects together

• Ctrl + D Duplicate: Very useful is you need lots of similar looking objects. Or if you have modeled half an object and don’t feel like modeling the other half, put a - in the X scale space on the Duplicate options menu, this duplicates a mirror image of your selected polygon.

• Home Key: allows you to move the pivot point of an object.

• INSERT returns modifier back to normal.

Basic Workflow: (menus I mention are all located under main “Polygon” menu set from the dropdown)First, creating your object: (I find the cube to be very versatile so I’ll use that)

Create > Polygon > Polygon Primitives > Cube (or whatever shape you choose)

Maya 7.0: Cube Primitive appears at 0.0 on Grid in3D space

Maya 8.0: Directions for creating your cube appear on screen: Click/Drag horizontally to create size, Click/Drag vertically to create height

*Note* NURBS Primitives cannot be exported out into VirTools, Converting a NURBS object to Polygons creates a messy, high-poly count model. So in other words, Mixing Polygons and NURBS is not advised. (at least by me)

Editing your shape: Right-click and hold on your polygon, a small menu will pop up with the following:

• Object Mode: Basic Shaded/Wireframe view, the “default” if you will.

• Edge: Wireframe turns blue; you can now select the edges of the polygon and move, resize and rotate. (MRR)

• Vertex: Blue Wireframe, Purple dots where edges meet. This allows you to MRR sections of a polygon object.

• Faces: Blue Wireframe with a dot in the center of flat faces. Allows you to select specific faces to extrude, move, resize rotate ect.

• UV: used for texturing, doesn’t do anything other then select a UV vertex in the 3D view. Looks similar to “vertex mode”

Using the polygon “modes” to create and modify primitives:

The menu that is mainly used for editing polygons is the “Edit

Polygons (main Menu)> Edit Mesh

• Linearly: Adds one division in the chosen direction (splits all or chosen faces into designated number of faces)

• Split Polygon tool: Allows you to manually split up a face into custom ‘pieces.’ Object must be in “object mode” to use this tool

• Extrude face: Very useful. The Extrude Face tool takes currently selected face(s) and allows you to “pull” another face out of the selected. (gets used a lot)

• Extrude Edge: Doesthe same thing as extrude face, except, the edge has a Plane that pulls out behind it. (good for closing up holes in a model)

• Bevel: Rounds out a selected edge (very finicky, doesn’t work sometimes)

• Wedge faces: Select a Face and an edge at the same time, creates a “wedge” shape between the two at a 0-90 degree angle. You have to have a face and connecting edge selected.

• Merge Vertices: Allows you to merge two vertices that occur on the same plane in literally the same place. (When extruding faces and edges, you often end up with double vertices in your model, take the time to check and merge any doubles)

• Merge Multiple Edges: Merges separate edges into one.

• Bridge: Creates a face between two Selected Edges

• Cut Faces: Similar to the Split Polygon tool in use, however, creates a division through the entire selected model.
  The best thing to do when designing a model: Imagine and Sketch out what your model would
  look like built out of simple shapes like cubes, cylinders and spheres. Then smooth and refine the model after you have the basic shape modeled out.

Polygons > Mesh

• Combine: Combines two separate selected polygons into one single polygon.

• Separate: Separates a selected polygon object from a combined set (not a group set)

• Transfer: Used in Texturing. If you have several of the same objects that will have the same/similar textures applied to them. You can transfer the UV setup of one mesh to another. (must be same polygonal mesh) select the polygon that has already been UV mapped, then select an unmapped mesh, click transfer.

• Smooth and Smooth Proxy: Smooths out a mesh by adding more polygons. It can have nice results but is difficult to control sometimes.

* Note * Booleans do not transfer well to Virtools if at all.