Current member status:

[Noak]

So I finally got maya learning edition working after paying like 100 dollars to send it to a computer fixing place, and I finally turn it on, and after all the problems i've had getting it working, guess what? IT CAN BARELY EVEN ****ING ROTATE AROUND THE SCREEN!

JESUS!

I am so annoyed! It's like god doesnt want me to be able use maya! I've been trying to get it working for the past 3 months, and now I open it and it goes frame by frame when I try to move around the screen! :headbang: :headbang:
The reason this is so annoying, is that I have a Vaio! They're like really good computers!
Specs:
Windows XP
1022MB RAM
Radeon 9700
Approx. total memory: 64.0 MB
Can someone help me? I'll try and get a video trying to work in maya soon
EDIT: Wtf, I just tried it again and I can work just fine! this
is awesome! Never mind then :p

[mirek03]

get a good book as soon as you can download as many free tuts as you can. Spend more time on them than the chat sites. Ask any question no matter how stupid.
careful of your object history, lights in scene, static channels, ect, keep the geometry clean as you can (I can't yet but trying). The free tuts are important. I would be buying tuts but I'm still trying to work out how from Australia with no credit card. I sent an e-mail to Levin today and waiing for a reply on that.

have fun but remember to turn off the computer from time to time and go visit the real wotld (occasionally ).

[Noak]

yep, visiting the real world won't be a problem even though Maya IS addicting, I still have baseball, homework, B&G club, chores, all that other crap.
Anyway, I have a question: when I make a new primitive, like a cube or a sphere or something, it comes in wireframe mode.. How do I change it to a shaded mode like in most of the tuts and images I see?
Also, maya sometimes goes back to that "mode" where everything I try to do in it is slow as hell, and then it [usually] goes back to normal after 5 or 10 minutes. anyone have a solution to that?
it's like that again right now and I just got a "do you want to end this nonresponsive program now" thing.

Thanks

[magicsy]

press 5 and also when u eventually begin texturing ure models to show the textures from photoshop as an example ud hit 6, to show the texture.(u have to hit 5 or 6 in each view to get them to show)
As for the slow down hmmm thats a weird one as the memory of 1024 is good enough to run maya fine.
Try getting the latest drivers off the net for ure card and the latest Directx from Windows site. not sure how these might help but they could.

[mirek03]

you can see people are eager to help, I just wrotre out a huge text for you and my f...g computer crashed??
anyway I'll do it in a simpler way

By default, objects appear in wireframe display. To view objects with shaded
surfaces, choose a shade mode from the Shading menu on the view panel. The
hotkeys for these options are shown in the following table:
For NURBS objects (objects created from NURBS curves), you can also control how
smooth the surface appears using the items under Display > NURBS Smoothness.
This affects display only, not how the object renders. The hotkeys are in the
following table:

4; Wireframe
5; SmoothShade
6; Smooth Shade with Hardware Texturing
Object mode Component mode

1; Rough
2; Medium
3; Fine

7; will make your objects black until you create lights into your scene.

the reason its slow??? might be the computer sorting directories if its new?? unlikely though, just wishful thinking.

[Noak]

ok, thanks man you guys are a real help

[mirek03]

have you edited the project directory?? I guess you know each project needs to be set and created from the project editor so the various bits of data are stored in their correct folders.

have you been playing around with the playback parameters. When I started in Maya I thought the thing was broken but every time it was me and the more i tried to correct it the more I made it worse, god knows how many times I repaired it unnessasarily and how many times I created a new 'prefs' folder. When you do any tuts read every line and try not to preempt the text. A left click or a right click, order of selection, stuff like that is extremely important.

[Noak]

I haven't done any of that yet, right now i'm just getting used to the interface, like moving around inside of it and where all the buttons are and stuff like that. I haven't had much time to use it since I got it because I was on vacation some of the time and i had a bunch of homework to do yesterday so I couldn't use it all. But today i'm at my dad's house where I usually have more free time, so i'll be able to use it more often once I get my computer back and learn some of the more complicated techniques. On the "Cartoon Dog" tutorial (which I just barely started on) I accidentally pressed the right button instead of the left and messed it up completely, so I know what you mean.
I also have another question. Is there a hotkey that I can use to set up the channels/layer palette and the basic tools, like scale, move, rotate, etc?

[mirek03]

A quick answer is
Q; select
W; move
E; royate
R; scale.., but..,

there should be quick time movies in the help menu to get you past this.., but..,

Hotkeys
Hotkeys are also known as keyboard shortcuts. There are several default hotkeys, and they appear on the menu label next to the corresponding menu command. You can change these hotkeys and assign new ones using the Hotkey Editor

You can show or hide any of the UI elements in the main window using the Display > UI Elements menu.

Assigning hotkeys to standard commands
Use the top half of the Hotkey Editor to assign hotkeys to a menu selection or standard command. To help you choose hotkeys, you can also view a list of mapped
and unmapped keys.
To assign a hotkey:
1 Choose Window > Settings/Preferences > Hotkeys.
2 Select the category and command.
There are categories for all of the main menus and for several other commands.
Menu commands for plug-ins, including Live and Fur, are under the User category.
If you have trouble finding a command, click Search (see "Example—creating a hotkey for a view menu option:" on page 362).
3 In the Assign New Hotkey area, specify the key combination and other settings. You can see a list of which keys are unmapped by clicking List All.
Key Enter the key you want to assign to the selected command. Enter a letter fromAto Z (upper and lower case are different keys) or a number from 0 to 9. You cannot use more than one letter or
number.
Or, choose a special key from the pull-down list. For example, if
you want the right arrow key to act as the trigger, assign it here.
Modifier Select either Alt or Ctrl for the hotkey modifier.
Direction Use Press or Release to associate a command with the press or a release of a key. For example, you can create a hotkey to instruct Maya to snap to a curve when you press a key, then turn off the snapping when you release it.
If you added a key to an operation ending with (Press) or
(Release), add the same key to the corresponding (Release) or
(Press) operation.
Add to Recent Command List Turn on so that this hotkey can appear in the Edit > Recent Commands window.
Query Click Query to determine whether the specified key settings have lready been assigned to a command.
Find Click Find to highlight the category and command for the key you enter in the Key field.
4 Click Assign. The new hotkey appears in the Current Hotkeys list.

Viewing hotkey lists;

Click List All to view a list of mapped and unmapped keys. This opens the List Hotkeys window that allows you to sort the keys in various ways.
To print the hotkeys list to a file, click Save to File and specify a destination directory.