With regards to the original question, after you go to view > image plane > import image and load in your image. You can easily rotate it by going back into the same area except this time you'll have another option:

view > image plane > image plane attributes > imagePlane1

or you can go into the camera attribute editor and select the imageplane tab there

View > Camera Attribute editor (then choose the imagePlane1 tab)

If you look in the image plane attributes down where it says "placement", there is a field for "rotate." This is how you rotate.


The other method—mapping an image to a nurbs/poly plane—is popular because it bogs down the machine less on larger projects. Learn how to do it manually but if you want a quick and easy way to set this up, look into kbrown's refplanes mel script in SM's modeling download area:

https://www.simplymaya.com/download_p...peid=4&catid=8

Once you install the script, you type 'refplanes;' (w/out the quotes) in the cmd line and you can browse to your various images for the various views, click "go" and the script will set everything up for you. Saves time. It's still good to know how to do this manually. Any of Kurt's modeling tuts go through this before the modeling begins.