Can anyone recommend the best book......

mojo77 · 22-12-2004

on learning about Maya. I am currently learning Maya using the New Riders Maya Fundamentals book, which is quite good as it you can follow modelling projects step by step. I've managed to model some fairly complex objects, more through luck and chance than anything. I'm almost half way through the book and I still don't think that I've grasped how to navigate my way around the scene. My main difficulty is in moving /transforming/rotating objects in relation to other objects. I am a CAD user and so I am used to having the option to rotate a line/object by selecting 2 or 3 points, rather than typing in an angle....so I am used to selecting an object, selecting a reference point (origin), then selecting the point at which I want to rotate it to. Snapping objects to objects is a nightmare. I can only select a CV snap to move one object against another. There are no options to snap to a middle point, end point, centre point (of an object), intersection point..........am I missing something? I still haven't grasped how to draw simple lines that I can then join up to make a continuous line. Everything seems to have to be a curve of some sort. Is there a book that will cover these simple questions?? I'm learning from Maya 6 at the moment, so if anyone could suggest a book I'd be grateful.

Well, about the rotating, just move the pivot (press INS to move the pivot and INS again to return to object) of the object/components you want to rotate and move it to the point you want to rotate it around...

Snapping... Well, there's Grid snapping, Point snapping and Curve snapping (or at least these are the only ones I know of)... Press and hold X, V or C (in the order mentioned above) to use them, and drag (just clicking isn't enough) with MMB to where you want to snap to...

Creating curves... Hmm... There are more ways to do this... You can create primitives (circles and so on) to create the curve you want and then intersecting them and deleting the obsolete parts and combining the rest into one curve... Probably a simpler way would be to just draw the curve using the CV or EP curve tool, and if you need a curve that is straight in someplaces and curved in others, you can change that in the tool options (when you use the tool is becomes availible just beneath the standard tool icons (move, rotate...) and you just double click the icon to open the options... BUT this will create a new curve (I think), but then you just use the Curve snap to start off where the last curve ended, and then in the end combine the curves into one...

Navigating is quite simple, you hold down the ALT key and then use the mouse buttons the zoom, pan and so on (can't remember which does what), and F focuses on the selected object/components if you get lost...

Hope this clears out a few things... user added image

Oh, BTW, and keys and so on are for Windows, don't know anything about Mac...

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