Mirroring objects..
 

Is there a way to mirror an object with out duplicating it? Also, is there a free tutorial that shows me how to make a basic character shape and animate it? I've tried using... Kevins simple man tutorial(not the exact name.. but... yeah..), and I finished it. Though, a few things didn't work right for me, so I had to do a few things on my own. When I try to bend the leg and try to make him look like he's walking, it bends over wrong. Its stretching it, rather then just moving it. If that doesn't make any sense, I'll post a picture. Anyway, back to the question, Is there a tutorial that shows how to create and then animate a simple character? A free tutorial at that. Any help would be nice.. thanks.

hey White tiger,
I usually scale the object to a - depending on what axis you're using, but say you want to mirror in the x axis, then you'd want to do
scale:
x -1
y 1
z 1

Hope that helps.
As for your other question, you should really look into the vip tutorials, some really great stuff in there. Also check the tutorial forum here, there's a few links in there. I'm not sure if this one is in there, but this place has some free tuts for newbies *********************************/digital_tutors/maya/

Enjoy,
George

Mirroring depends on what type of modeling method you're using (all can be found in Maya's help files):

If you're using polys: Polygons >Mirror geometry

If you're using sub-d: Subdiv Surfaces > Mirror

With NURBS, just duplicate the object and scale along the axis the original object lies on in an equal amount. For example, if I drew a curve and revolved it around the z-axis and it's 1 in z-axis (in the channel box). Duplicate the revolved item, and scale it to -1 in the z-axis to mirror it.

As far as the other question goes. Take a look at Kevin's "skellington" tutorial (skeleton) and try to apply that to your simple man shape. Otherwise, fork out the $22 for membership and download some of the vip tuts...the mech is easy enough and has a modeling and rigging movie.

Cool, thanks for the help. That site has some usefull things on it that I could learn from. I think I'll go look for that video on "skellington" now.