Objects And Components
Maya Modeling: Fundamentals Technical
In This Class You’ll Access…
Objects And Components are foundational for all disciplines within Maya. In this class, you’ll see how to interact with objects and learn Maya’s primary terminology.
The page covers navigation, creating objects, deleting and duplicate, how to move/rotate/scale and instancing.
You’ll see how objects relate to each other, the major elements such as pivots, world and object modes, and hierarchies.
Discover why `freeze transforms` is important and how it can affect scale and rotation.
Finally, we’ll look at components in detail. These are the vertices, edges, and faces. You’ll see how to enter and exit component modes, different selection methods, snapping, groups, soft-select, and the grab brush. All the must-know basics of Maya start here.
Running Time: 1:19 hrs
Software: Maya 2016
Instructor: Andrew Silke
Class Time: 1:19 hrs
1. Create, Place, View and Copy Primitive Objects (34 mins)
1.1 – Maya Navigation (4:12 mins)
1.2 – Viewport Layouts (2:52 mins)
1.3 – Creating Objects (4:38 mins)
1.4 – Viewport Display (6:17 mins)
1.5 – Clipping Plane Issues (2:08 mins)
1.6 – Moving Objects (8:00 mins)
1.7 – Duplicating Objects (3:30 mins)
1.8 – Instancing Objects (3:20 mins)
1.2 – Viewport Layouts (2:52 mins)
1.3 – Creating Objects (4:38 mins)
1.4 – Viewport Display (6:17 mins)
1.5 – Clipping Plane Issues (2:08 mins)
1.6 – Moving Objects (8:00 mins)
1.7 – Duplicating Objects (3:30 mins)
1.8 – Instancing Objects (3:20 mins)
2. Pivots, Hierarchies, World/Local Space, Freeze Transforms (23 mins)
2.1 – Changing Pivots (2:25 mins)
2.2 – Hierarchies (5:45 mins)
2.3 – Freeze Transforms (4:35 mins)
2.4 – Local/World Space (5:18 mins)
2.5 – Rotating Pivots Advanced (5:49 mins)
2.2 – Hierarchies (5:45 mins)
2.3 – Freeze Transforms (4:35 mins)
2.4 – Local/World Space (5:18 mins)
2.5 – Rotating Pivots Advanced (5:49 mins)
3. Verts, Edges, Faces: Object Mode vs Component Modes (20 mins)
3.1 – Component Mode (1:39 mins)
3.2 – Selection Methods (2:36 mins)
3.3 – Selecting Areas (1:43 mins)
3.4 – Selection Bug (1:15 mins)
3.5 – Snapping (4:07 mins)
3.6 – Snapping Groups (2:23 mins)
3.7 – Soft Select (3:01 mins)
3.8 – Grab Brush (3:57 mins)
3.2 – Selection Methods (2:36 mins)
3.3 – Selecting Areas (1:43 mins)
3.4 – Selection Bug (1:15 mins)
3.5 – Snapping (4:07 mins)
3.6 – Snapping Groups (2:23 mins)
3.7 – Soft Select (3:01 mins)
3.8 – Grab Brush (3:57 mins)
11 Comments
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As for ‘center of interest’ of perspective camera – one does not have to imagine the point around which camera rotates. While explaining this it is beneficial to show other views, unhide persp camera, go to (with persp camera selected) to display > transform display and turn on ‘rotate pivots’ or ‘local rotation axes’. This way in other views center of interest is clearly visible. BTW at the beginning (for the beginners) nobody said how vertex selection mode was ‘reached/turned on’ after being in object selection mode.
Thanks for your input ojkoorde, transform display > ‘rotate pivots’ or ‘local rotation axes’ both don’t show the center of interest of the camera, they are for other things. Though there could be another way, I’ve never found one?
I could have demoed it with the camera in “Camera and Aim”. That aim object is similar but not the same. For others, you can find that in attribute editor > perspShape > controls > Camera And Aim. Though I don’t recommend using that mode for cameras generally and it could be confusing as an introduction.
Entering Vertex mode is clearly explained in 3.1, though next time I do the video I’ll probably spend more time on the right click modes. Though since this is an intermediate course I move pretty quickly there and focus more on the hotkeys assuming that you know the right-click modes. In a beginner course, I’d move much slower and show how the buttons in the top bar work too. Perhaps I’m using vertex mode in an earlier video, is that what you’re saying?
Regarding movie 2.5 (time ~4m56s) – actually when it happens that we have our object pivot not aligned as we want – after freeze for example – we might align it to one of components and to make it permanent – go to Modify menu and click ‘Bake Pivot’.
Yes, good tip.
Hi, On View port display it’s written like this.
“Here you’ll see the main viewport modes.
Shaded Mode Toggle (1)
Texture Mode Toggle (2)
Shadow Mode Toggle (shft 1)
Wireframe On Shaded Toggle (shft 2)
Lights Display Mode Toggle (ctrl 1)
XRay Mode Toggle (shft 1)”
“shift 1” toggles xRay. So, can you put right keys for Shadow mode please?
Yes that note has been changed, that’s a mistake there is no shadow toggle at the moment, I’ll see if I can throw it in. I usually use the icon in the viewport shelf for shadows now. I set it once for the scene depending what I want and forget about it. XRay usually toggles more. But I can see if I can add the shadow hotkey somewhere. Thanks for reporting.
Hey, I’m new to Maya and I’m trying to follow along with the videos but I’m running into issues. At video 1.4 (viewport display modes), pressing Shift + 2 doesn’t work for me. When I click it the first time, Maya lags for a moment and then opens the Clip Library on the right hand side menu. When I click it a second time, I get this error message:
# Error: line 1: RuntimeError: file C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2018\Python\lib\site-packages\maya\app\general\mayaMixin.py line 339: Object’s name ‘Clip LibraryWorkspaceControl’ is not unique.
Also, if I toggle lights with Ctrl + 1 and then hold ‘L’, nothing happens. The menu doesn’t appear.
Is there any way for me to manually fix these issues?
I’ve installed Maya 2018 and the C3dC Maya 2018 Prefs (1.3.2). I tried uninstalling everything Autodesk (including deleting the ‘maya’ folder in Documents) and reinstalling everything from scratch, but I get the exact same issue. Win 10.
Nevermind the remark about holding ‘L’ for the manipulator. I didn’t realize you also have to click with your mouse.
Hi Joakim, apologies for the late reply. Are you still having the issue with shift 2? That should not happen. It could be related to your keyboard layout, shift 2 is the @ symbol on the American keyboard (Australian also). The clip library hotkey is “, or on my layout shift ‘, could that be it? If so look up the American keyboard if any of the hotkeys go out to see what’s not working.
US Keyboard Layout…
http://kbd-intl.narod.ru/images/en.png
The second error is fine, and is just that you can’t have two clip libraries open, though we should catch that error for you, and will when we release Zoo 2 later in the year.
Just a quick question, do you use two hands when the hotkeys are too spreadout?
Because it seems that you`re still using the mouse when clicking something like ctrl+shift+u for example, and that its kinda impossible to do with one hand in my keyboard.
Yeah good question, I have guitar hands, so yeah I can do ctrl shift u with one hand. But yes, I understand, you may want to change that hotkey!
For the cube, cylinder and plane I do use two hands for those though.
I’d like to move these to a marking-menu as they are really handy as they snap to selected objects on creation. Unlike Maya’s shift-right-click menu, but you can use those too, or change the hotkeys.