My first post - Hello!
 

I wonder just what I am getting myself into. I got the opportunity to spend some time with a program called Imagine on the Amiga about....my God...almost 10 years ago!! I never really got past the metal sphere on the checkerboard but I thought those were really cool! Several years later I spent about 4 months with Lightwave at my local college.

Now I would like to see what Maya is all about. I have the PLE but since I have 2 kids and home school them myself, I am just now getting around to diving into this.

What have I done? I have read some of the posts on this forum and the people here seem genuine and eager to lend a hand. I might need one every so often.

Looking forward to some nice communication,

-Hidalgo

Hi Hidalgo!

If you are completely unfamilliar to the maya interface, just keep those questions coming.

Here's some tips:

1) Holding shift while drawing curves, turns on a temporarily 90 degree snap, for making straight lines/curves.

2) Vertices can be moved with both the move tool AND the scale tool (when two or more vertices are picked).

3) The spacebar contains many "hidden" menues. With the spacebar you can access almost all the menu items (but not all).
In addition to menu access you can also set your view to ortho/persp or go to the hypershade (where you view/make your shaders/materials/textures). You can also change the screen layout with via the spacebar, although this is something I discovered two days ago ;)

4) I use some special menus, which came with the book Maya Fundamentals; example; Holding down Ctrl+X+LMB brings up a menu for creating poly-objects. You can make such menus yourself if needed.

5) Some tools are quite handy when put onto the shelf for easy access and execution. Example;
-Center pivot point
-Duplicate x axis (or y or z)
-Show last hidden
-Show selected
-Show all
-Delete history

Oh, and holding down Ctrl+Shift and picking a menu item creates a button on the shelf. Drag the button to the waste bin if you want to delete it.

But these are just my preferences.

Welcome to SM Hildalgo.. :p

Welcome Hildalgo!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the replies. And thanks undseth for those tips. I can see there are enough differences between Lightwave and Maya to make me go back to the very beginning...again.

:rolleyes: :yipee:

More tips:
1) All objects/things in maya have pivot points, which are both handles for moving AND a point which one say, can rotate/duplicate around. Sometimes the pivot points are set to the center of the grid. To change the pivot point do this;
Press the "insert" button on your keyboard once, this puts your manipulator into "alter pivot mode". Move it around, wildly or by the arrows, or snap it to lines/vertices as desired. Press "insert" again to go to "normal mode"

2) You can snap to gridpoints, vertices and lines/curves in maya.
press and hold "c" for snapping to curve
press and hold "x" for snapping to the grid
Press and hold "v" for snapping to vertice points or locators

You can also ues the curve-snap, to snap onto isoparms, which isn't an actual curve made by you. By pressing 3 on your keyboard you get more isoparms to snap on to. The level of detail on an object in your workspace is set either by pressing 1,2 or 3 on the keyboard (default settings) or press Ctrl+A for opening the attribute editor. You can then set curve "apparent accuracy" "apparent shading accuracy" and more.

3) For making curves off of shapes, select an isoparm and chose "duplicate surface curves" under "edit curves".

Welcome Hidalgo! I myself was once a homeschooler, so I know right where you're at! I really hope you're here to stay because we love to answer questions. People here literally pounce at the chance to help. So you had better watch out! lol.

woah!!...slow down undseth....LOL....his first post and your already goin nuts.....let the man breath :beer:

Welcome to simplymaya Hidalgo :banana: :banana:

As Darkware has pointed out we are here to help :D

Welcome Hidalgo

hey man --
thanks sethy i didnt even some of that stuuf yet :D
your gonna love this site you learn stuff without even asking anything

I used Imagine on my A4000 great programe :)

Welcome to sinplymaya

David :)

I had an Amiga 2000HD and I think I had about 16 or 32 megs of RAM and a 20 MB HD...

It took forever to render anything on that machine!! Days and days!

I even ran a BBS on it for about 2 years...

Hidalgo

I still have an Amiga 1200 sitting on my desk.
Dam....... it was a good machine in its day.

P.S. Welcome aboard

More Tips
 

Welcome Hidalgo,


Here are some more tips.


1) Always brush your teeth between meals

2) Never, ever use a blowdryer while in the tub!

3) When a woman asks "Do I look FAT and you love her...SAY 'NO'!!!!

4) Never play leapfrog with a porcupine!!

5) Always wear clean underwaer no matter where you go!!




I hope these help you on your quest


Welcome to the forum and good luck to you



-SuperDave71:banana:

weleome to SM Hidalgo,,, i am sure whatever problem you have with maya(or anything else for that matter), you will get it solved here....

Tariq