Photoshop etc.
 

Hello everyone,

Do you have to buy photoshop to use Maya, or is there anything else which can be used? Also, I've downloaded a couple of tutorials, and I'm wondering how to get started. Can anyone tell me how they got started? Just need a few helpful tips!

Thanks.

Just do as many tutorials as possible... Start out with the easiest and basic tutorials(it's all pretty frustrating at first). I would recommend buying the book Introducing Maya. It's very basic yet very thorough. Also, be honest with yourself with what you are really capable of doing. You dont need photoshop to use maya.

Photoshop's great to make your own textures, but you dont need it. You can use any painting of photo adjusting software. (You can download GIMP its a free paint/photo software with great online support, well it think its free)

If you just gettting started i would reccoment downloading the free tutorials from here and using the buit in textrues for starting off (wood, granite, fractual, ramp etc) as this will build up your understanding how the nodes in the hypershade work together.

Also looking at the help files gives you lots of tutorials for each part of maya.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Also try:

Learning Maya

and

Digital Tutors Maya Tutorials

but I started on the Cartoon Dog one first from here.

Big tip is dint be put off by Maya it is a complex beast but worth the uphill struggle that is learning it. Remember there is no 100% correct way to do anything in Maya, its all preference and no one person knows everything about this "game". Everyone is always learning. Pay attention to the Senior members here, they do know there stuff.


Any Image manipulation software will work, Photoshop is mentioned a lot as its the standard app used in the majority of the 3D Industry and its integration is has with Maya 7.