Hello!

Its good to have a place like this to get thoughts out of your head to share-The people here seem very cool and helpful.

As for me, I am also very new to Maya and I have come here from Carrara 8- its great entry level software and I learned many of the basic principles of animation on it but has limited capabilities. I also managed to make a 70 min feature length film on C8 which is a whole other story in itself....,

As for Maya, I have been struggling to learn what I need to know in order to make my next project. This has meant countless hours of tutorials that seem to go in directions I don't want to go into. I do 8 hours of video tutorials 5 days a week for the last 6 months and seemed to be making little progress. The tutorials are very specific as well so I just get confused since there is usually more than one way to accomplish a single task in Maya. Then there are accepted ways of doing things that may not match how you would do them. In my cas, I know that people look down on animators who use Poser models but they suit my needs perfectly so why should I follow conventional thinking?

Just because everyone does things a certain way doesn't mean you have to.

Then about two weeks ago things finally started coming into sync and I could see answers for many of the questions I had- Then I could also ask better questions so it became easier to get direct answers. It turns out you have to go though a lot of sh*te you don't understand initially until you get that vital piece of info that makes everything else make sense.

Just keep pushing and listening/reading what other people have to say. Reading other threads is also a great way to pick up info on stuff you may not have realized about this amazing software.