I've been lurking and posting a little here for the last few days, and I thought it might be about time for me to introduce myself!
I'm a total noob to Maya, hadn't touched it before last week. I took a class last semester in 3ds MAX, and was pretty happy with how quickly I picked up modeling and lighting (but not animation, stupid MAX!), and decided that this is the kind of thing I want to do with my life. Since I just graduated from college, I wish I'd figured this out a little earlier, but hey. There's always grad school. So I'm taking this year off to earn up some money and learn me some Maya, before hopefully attending RIT next year.
I have to say, to any of the other newbies out there, that the Maya 4.5 Fundamentals book is an absolute must-have. Despite the class I took, I pretty much learned MAX on my own, through a lot of trial-and-error and hunting questions down on the web. Not a fun way to learn! After all that struggling, having everything laid out for me in the book feels like cheating. I'm sitting here waiting for my first little boat animation to render, and I know I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near this far if I was doing this on my own. So drop the $45 on the book, it's worth every penny.
So yeah! That's about it. I hope to pick up enough in the next few weeks to compete in the August challenge! I love this forum, the challenges especially, and I'm looking forward to seeing what y'all create!
-Ayelar
