Contents at a Glance
C H A P T E R 1 Understanding the Maya Interface
C H A P T E R 2 Creating Your First Animation
C H A P T E R 3 Modeling with Polygons, Part 1
C H A P T E R 4 Modeling with Polygons, Part 2
C H A P T E R 5 Modeling with Polygons, Part 3
C H A P T E R 6 Surfacing Your Character
C H A P T E R 7 Getting Bent Out of Shape: Blend Shapes
C H A P T E R 8 Dem Bones: Setting Up Your Joint System
C H A P T E R 9 Weighting Your Joints
C H A P T E R 10 Rigging Your Character
C H A P T E R 11 Setting the Scene: Creating an Environment
C H A P T E R 12 Making It Move: Animating Your Character
C H A P T E R 13 Let There Be Light: Lighting Your Shot
C H A P T E R 14 Rendering and Compositing Your Scene
Exploring Interface Elements
On first glance, understanding Maya’s interface can seem to be a daunting task
(see Figure 1.1 ).
Fortunately, you don’t need to know what all those buttons and icons do
right now. In fact, you can spend years working in Maya and never touch some
of those buttons, depending on the kind of work you do. That said, you’ll use
several of these buttons, windows, and menus frequently and so you should be
familiar with them
One of the best ways to become familiar with the common tools in Maya is to
take a look at some of the extensive Help files Maya has available—specifically
the 1-Minute Startup Movies. Choose Help a 1-Minute Startup Movies, and
view the first five movies. We’ll get into the topics covered by movies 6 and 7
later. Go ahead, watch the movies; I’ll wait
Back already? Great—now you have a little information about some of the common tools, menus, and commands in Maya. Let’s explore them in a bit more detail