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[JRRT0lkien]

Hi,

I used to deal with Maya, and I would like to get into it again, as I now have the time to deal with it regularly and seriously.

I did lessons 1-6 from the first Maya Issue onwww.3dbuzz.com. I found them a good start so far, but what they really lack are practical examples like the "Cannon Exercise" (Issue 2, lesson 6). Still, these tutorials are very well-structured.

If you are familiar with Buzz, do you know a better start into Maya? What about the tutorials on the Buzz 3D Maya DVD? For those of you who know them, what do you think of them compared to the free tutorials that I did?

Apart from that, which tutorials do you think are the best of a beginner?

Thank you!

JRRT0lkien

[Perfecto]

I can only speak for free modeling tutorials. I'm really partial to Kurt's Basic Human tut and Cartoon Dog tut in the Simply Maya Free Tutorial Section. He really simplifies learning how to model with nurbs. Great teacher.

As far as non-organic, I really got alot out of doing the Dreadnaught tut from 3d-Palace.com. I didn't think it was the greatest modeling tut but I sure did get a good feel for extruding and beveling.

I'm sure there are other really great tuts out there, but these were more than sufficient for me. For the basics anyway.

[mastone]

try some books instead of tutorials prefferably from different authors.
The books i've written down below are some i've bought myself ,and are very happy with.
-Learning maya7 foundation
-learning maya7 the modeling and animation handbook
-learning maya unlimited features
-the game artist- and the gameanimators- guide to maya
- maya character creation
-advanced maya texturing and lighting
-mastering maya 7

if you only want videotutorials i suggest either buying points from this site, going to the gnomon website and i hear the mastering maya the fundamentals-video from 3dbuzz is very good.

hope this helped

Good luck in your search anyways

[publicFunction]

I have used Buzz for a while, but found the free tutorials very distracting as there is too much joking around in some of them. The SM free ones are far more professional imho. I have not seen the Buzz Maya DVD's so can't comment on them. The techniques on Buzz are similar to SM's, but SM's are better ihmo.

[Husam]

The Maya tutorials from Digital Tutors are really great, I've learned alot from them. They have a pretty big selection of tutorials, and the ones I have tried have had good quality. They also seem to avoid being as repetetive as many other video tutorials I've tried, which I thought was great.

[V00D00]

There is also Gnomon. They offer some very good indepth tutorials. Simply Maya has by far the best "How To's" that take you from begining to end of a composition.

VD

[Funky Bunnies]

everyone learns differently, but after you get the basics down I find books to be very helpful. The Learning Maya books can get you up to speed pretty fast if you have the patience for reading.