Maya Tutorial for Beginners | Basic Maya Tutorial



Hi, you want to Learn Maya fast. No problem! In the

tutorial I’ll show you how to go from this to this without any prior knowledge or

experience using Maya. I promised this would be fast so let’s get started then shall we?!

Modeling the base

Ok, so this is Maya. What you need to know right away is that this is your viewport,

you have some common tools and view presets on the left-hand side, shelf along the top

which contains shortcuts to commonly used tools and the channel box to the right where you can

change some of the properties of your 3D meshes. We’ll cover these in more detail as we move along.

Now it’s time to create your first shape. Click on the cube icon from the poly modeling shelf.

As if by magic a cube appears at the centre of the grid. Let’s resize it. On the left of the

screen I’ll click on the scale tool which brings up these manipulators. Click and drag on these

to resize the cube to be about the same size as the grid. First on the x-axis and then the same

on the z-axis. Now if you look in the channel box, you can see the name of the mesh - let’s

just click here and rename it to base - and you can also see the size of the mesh under scale x,

y and z. Let’s neaten this up by setting the size to exactly 24 on scale x and z and we’ll

leave it at one on the y-axis. Now I just want to adjust my view a little so we’ll cover movement

in Maya. You need a 3-button mouse to be able to use Maya properly because 3D movement is handled

by holding the ALT key and by pressing one of the 3 mouse buttons. Alt and left button for the tumble,

Alt and middle button for tracking and Alt and right button for dolly. So I’ll just

use a combination of these three camera controls to position my view so it looks like this. Make

sure you’re comfortable with movement before moving on to the next part of the exercise.

Creating the floorboards

Okay, we’re off to a good start. Let's add a little more detail with some floorboards.

Let’s create another cube, name it floorboard and we’ll need to move the base down so we

can see the new cube. Click on the base to select it and then click on the move tool.

You’ll see 3 arrows showing which directions you can move the mesh in,

I’m going to grab the green one to move the base down below our new cube.

It is a little difficult to see the new cube so I’ll just click up here to show the wireframe

and also click here to hide the grid. That’s better! Now let’s edit our floorboard. Select it,

resize it, and then move it down a little so it's just about flush with the base.

Then move it across to the near edge like this. To make this look a little less boxy, we’re going

to bevel the edges. With the floorboard still selected, click on this icon here to bevel it.

A little settings box appears. I don’t think we need to change the fraction for this one but we

will add another segment, by changing this number to 2. Finally, we’ll duplicate the floorboard

across the whole of the base. Make sure it’s selected, press ctrl and D on your keyboard,

you see by the naming of the mesh that it has been duplicated. Use the move tool to move it

across so that it’s just about touching the original floorboard. Now I’ll show you some

witchcraft! Press Shift and D to do a duplicate special, this will create another duplicate but

also, move it based on what we just did with the previous one. Press shift and d until you have

covered the base in floorboards. One final thing before we move on, select the base, bevel it

and then set the segments to 2 and the fraction to 0.2 to keep the overall look consistent.

Creating the walls

Next up we need to create our walls. For this,  we’ll also need to start with a cube and rename

it to walls. Then we’ll resize and move it to be something like this and finally, we need to

move it over to the far corner of the room. Now we need to turn this into walls by selecting some of

the faces. To do that we can open the modeling toolkit, and then click here for face selection.

Now we select these two faces by clicking on this one and then whilst holding the shift key clicking

on the other and we’re going to extend them by extruding them. To extrude we click this icon here

on the shelf and we’ll see the settings for the extrusion pop up. If we try just try to pull

the new faces out on the z-axis, it goes a little bit weird so let’s undo that by pressing ctrl and

Z. And this time, we’ll turn to keep faces together off and then pull the faces out.

That's better! Now we just want to make this wall a little more interesting to look at

and to do that we first need to add a couple of edge loops. To do that you’ll need the multicut

tool which can be found here in order to add a whole edge loop, you need to hold the ctrl key

and mouse over one of the vertical edges. Then use the left click to add the edges.

I’ll put one here and one more here. Perfect. I’ll just turn off the multi-cut tool by selecting

the arrow tool like this Now let's finish this off by Selecting all of the faces on the top and

bottom sections like this. Remember to hold the shift key to add more faces to your selection.

Once they are selected, extrude them. I’ll press ctrl and E this time to extrude and then,

increase the thickness by clicking on the word thickness here and dragging it to the right.

To round out this step, we need to move to edge mode which is over here in our modeling toolkit

and I am going to double-click on the edges to get the whole edge loop

for these edges running horizontally and then these ones on the corners. Remember

to hold shift to add to your selection. Now I will press ctrl and B to bevel these edges and

set the fraction to 0.15 and the sections to 2. And that’s looking pretty fantabulous!

Add a window

To make the walls even more interesting, we will now add a window. The first thing we need to do

for that is to make a hole in the wall. First, make sure you are in face selection mode. Then

select this face on the inside of the room and the corresponding face on the outside of the room.

Check you have both selected and then Extrude them. Now change to the scale tool and resize

the new faces like this. And then move them over to the side using the move tool. Once you’re happy

with the size and position, hit the delete key to remove the selected faces and create the hole.

We can now see that the wall is hollow so we’ll cover that over with a window frame.

For the window frame we’re going to take another cube, click the channel box tab over here to the

right and then name the cube frame. I can then move it over to be within the window opening.

I’ll then click on the modeling Tool kit tab so I can put it into face selection mode to resize it

so I can line it up with the window opening more precisely. I’ll move each of the outer

faces like this so that they fall just inside the opening we created. Next, I’ll get the front face

and pull it out in front of the wall a little and then do the same with the face on the back.

Now, to turn it into a frame we will select the front and back faces and then delete them. Now

we’ll put the remaining faces back into object selection mode, perform an extrusion with ctrl

and e and then increase the thickness until we get a nice thick frame. For the finishing touch,

we'll go back to object selection mode, use ctrl and b to add a bevel to all the edges,

increase the segments to 2 and then set the fraction down to something like 0.3.

To add a little more detail, we’ll separate the window into 4 panes. So let’s grab another cube,

rename it to the separator, move it over to the center of the window opening, and just make

it is a tiny bit smaller. Now comes the clever bit, put the new cube into face selection mode

and select the 4 outer faces like this. Then hit ctrl and e to perform an extrude,

turn to keep faces together off and then drag out on the z-axis. Make sure you’re happy with the

positioning and then bang a bevel on it. Et voila! We have ourselves a sexy-looking window!

Bookcase & Desk

The room is now complete but the exposed floorboards and lack of furniture make it

look like a drug den so let's add some furniture shall we? We’ll start with a bookcase. You know

the drill by now, create a new cube - we’ll wait until we’ve finished before we rename this one.

Resize it so you get a shape like this, bevel it, up the segments to two, and then hit ctrl

and d to duplicate it and then move it up. And then let’s make one more shelf.

Now we need the sides so let's take a shelf, duplicate it, and now I’ll introduce you to the

rotate tool which is accessed by clicking this icon here. You can click any of the circles to

rotate the shelf. I recommend only using one at a time otherwise you’ll end up with a wonky

bookshelf. So I’ll rotate on the z-axis which is the blue one and a little top tip here is to

hold J on your keyboard as you do this to snap the rotation to 15-degree increments like this.

And then I’ll just rotate it by 90 degrees like so. All you need to do then is move it off to the

side, make sure you’re happy with the height,  and then duplicate it over to the other side.

To finish this off we will select all 5 pieces, and then go to mesh,

combine to make it behave as one object. All we need to do now is name it a bookcase,

dial in the size and move it into place. Next, we’ll create a desk in much the same way.

First, we take a cube, get it to a good desktop size, and hit it with a bevel. Let’s mix things

up for the legs and create them from a shape that isn’t a cube. Make a cylinder and then you can

make it thinner by scaling on the x and z axes at the same time by clicking and dragging this green

square like so. Once you’re happy with the girth of the leg, get the height right and then move it

into place. Once you’ve got the height dialed in, duplicate it and move it over to the back corner.

Now select both legs, duplicate, and move over to the other side. To finish it off, select all

the pieces, combine them, and name it desk. Move it into position and that’s the desk complete.

Painting, monitor & rug

Now we’ll add some more details to the room starting with a painting for the wall.

Let’s make a cube, call it a painting and get it into a nice thin, rectangular shape. Now

go to face selection mode and select the front face. Extrude it and add an offset of about 0.2.

That gives us the frame and now we can extrude again and move the face back a little.

We’ll save the bevelling for now and just put it into object selection mode and move it into place.

That’s the painting done for now, but we’re not really finished with it because it will make a

the great starting point for our monitor. So let's duplicate the painting and move it out into the

open so it’s easier to work on. We’ll rotate it 90 degrees, remember to hold J to turn it on

rotation snapping and then we’ll make it a touch smaller and a little wider. I’ll just

move it a little more out into the open as we will now be working around the back of the mesh.

We now need to go into face selection mode and select the face on the back of the monitor.

Using ctrl and e I’ll extrude it and use the scale tool to turn the new face into

a little square and move it towards the bottom like this. Make sure it’s not too

wide. With the same face still selected, we will extrude again and pull the face out a little.

Next, we need to select this face here on the underside and extrude it down by about this much.

We just need to do one more little extrusion going down like this so we can make the base.

Let’s select these smaller faces we just created on the two sides and extrude them out a little.

The bit we need to do now is select these three faces on the front and extrude them out a little.

Now you can put it into object mode, give it a cheeky little bevel and then move it into place.

And now is also a good time to go back and bevel the painting. One final thing before we move onto

the chair, let’s make a rug. So it’s a cube, call it a rug, make it a rug shape, and put it in

a rug place. To give it a more interesting shape, we’ll go into edge selection mode,

select these 4 edges on the corners and then use bevel. We’ll move the segments up to 10 and the

fraction to 0.9. Now go to face selection, select this big face on top, extrude it and

increase the offset. This will allow us to add two colors when we add materials later on.

To finish the rug, go to edge selection, double click on one of these edges to select the whole

edge loop and bevel it. Set the segments to 2 and the fraction to whatever you think looks good.

Put it back into object selection mode and we’re done. I’ve just realized that I have

forgotten to rename the monitor so I’ll just get that done too.

Chair

Now that we have a desk, we will create a chair. The trickiest part of the chair is

the base but I have a cool trick to make it easy. First, we will need a cylinder. We need

to change the properties of this cylinder in the channel box by clicking here under INPUTS

and changing the subdivision's axis to 5. Now we need to resize the cylinder to be about

this size and shape. Then, in face selection mode select the faces around the outside of the shape.

Now, you can extrude them, make sure keeping faces together is turned off, and pull the new faces

out on the z-axis. Add an offset of about 0.1 and then you can change to the move tool

and lower these faces a little. Now we need to select these faces on the top, extrude them,

add an offset, extrude again, and then move up. Now we can pop this back into object mode.

For the seat, we will take a cube, move it up and scale it into shape. Next, we can select this face

at the back and extrude it back a little. Then we can select this new face on top, extrude that

up and then move it back a little to make it look like a backrest. Now we can go back to the object

selection mode and bevel are the two pieces we have made. The final part is to create a new cylinder,

scale it down, rotate it by 90 degrees, and then position and duplicate it to create the wheels.

With that done you can select all pieces of the chair, combine them

and then put the chair in place. Don't forget to rename it before you move on.

Keyboard, book & mug

For the last of the modeling, we will create some small details for the room beginning with

a keyboard for the computer. We’ll keep this simple so we can make it quickly beginning with

a new cube, rename it to a keyboard, and then move it over to the desk and resize it into a good

size for a keyboard. Now select this edge on the front and move it down to make the shape a little

more interesting. Now we’ll use the multi-cut tool and holding the ctrl key, we will add an edge loop

over to the far side. Now we need to move into face selection mode so we can select the two top

faces, extrude them, turn to keep faces together off,  and then add an offset of about 0.2. Now we’ll

extrude one more time, increase the thickness a little, and then add another small offset. Move back

to object selection mode, add a bevel, and make sure you’re happy with the position. Nice one.

Now we’ll quickly create a book. Make a new cube and call it a book. Now use the scale tool to make

it looks nice and has books. Now select these three faces and extrude. We’ll add an offset of about

0.06 to make a cover and then extrude again and set the thickness to something like -0.05.

To finish it off we’ll pop it back into object mode and then bevel it up real nice.

Then stick it over on the bookcase for later. Okay, we’re nearly done with the modeling now,

let’s just add an empty mug to the desk. Create a new cylinder, go to face selection mode and

then select all of the faces on the top. Here’s a tip, if you hold the tab key you

can click and drag to select multiple faces as I am doing here. With the top faces selected,

extrude, add an offset, and then extrude again and move down. Now go to edge selection mode,

double click on these edges making sure to hold shift to get all 3 edge loops and then you can

bevel them. To finish this off, we need a handle. Go to create, polygon primitives, and choose pipe.

Move and rotate it so it’s alongside the rest of the mug like this. It’s a little too chunky so to

fix that, make sure you have the channel box open,  and then click on polyPipe1 under inputs. Here

are some additional settings for the shape and we’ll change Thickness to 0.3. That’s perfect.

We just need to scale the shape a little too so that the thickness is a little more consistent.

Now, move to face selection mode, select half of the faces like this, and then press the delete key

to remove them. Change back to object selection mode, move and scale it so it looks like a handle

and then hit it with a bevel. The last thing we need to do is combine the two pieces and then

move and scale the mug into place on the desk. That’s all of the modelings complete - well done!

Create & add materials

With the modeling complete, it’s now time to make this look a little less 50 Shades of Grey

by adding some colored materials. In order to do that the first thing we will need to

do is open the Hypershade which is where we make materials in Maya. You can access the Hypershade

by clicking on this icon up here. Here’s what it looks like. Here’s where our completed materials

live, here’s a list of materials we can create, if I just select Lambert1 you can see over here

is a preview of the material and down here can change the properties of materials. This bit

here is the workspace and you can also use this to edit the materials. I am also going to add a

viewport by clicking on Window and then viewport and then you can click and drag it to dock it in

the Hypershade. I’m going to dock it here. Then I’ll just press 5 on my keyboard to put it into

shaded mode. I’ll also hide the grid in this view so it’s not in my way. Okay, let’s create

our first material then, we’ll click Lambert over here to create a new Lambert material.

I will rename it to LightBrown over here. And then I’ll click on this grey rectangle here

for the color picker. I’ll set the color to a yellowy brown like this. Now we can assign this to

objects in the scene which is done by clicking and dragging using the middle mouse button like this.

You can add the material to multiple meshes at once by selecting them and then holding the right

mouse button the material and choose to Add Material To selection. Now let’s make another

one. Start by clearing the workspace by clicking this icon. Make a new Lambert, call it DarkBrown

and then click on the color picker and choose a shade of brown you like. Then you can add the

new material to these meshes. Now repeat this process to create a couple more materials - I

create a white and a dark grey - and assign them to these meshes. We’ll do the other materials in

the next step because all of the remaining objects have more than one material that we need to apply.

So once you have gotten to this stage, you can move on to the next part of the tutorial

Create & add 2 or more materials

Now that you have applied materials to some of the objects in the room, it’s time to add some

color to the remaining objects but this time we want to add 2 or more materials to the objects,

instead of just one. We’ll start with the rug and for this and we’ll begin with the yellow color.

So we’ll make a new Lambert, Call it yellow, make it yellow, and finally assign it to the rug. Now,

for the second color, we’ll clear the workspace and make another new Lambert, this one will be

named red and we’ll set the color to red. Now we need to put the rug into face selection mode.

I’ll do this by holding the right mouse button over the rug mesh and then choosing a face from

the menu that appears. I can then select the face in the center and then hold the right mouse button

down over the red material and choose to assign the material to selection. And there you have it, one

object with two different materials. Let’s do it one more time to make sure you’ve got it sorted.

Let’s do the book. First, we’ll clear the workspace and then make a new Lambert,

name it green and we’ll make it a nice green color. Now, we’ll move the book off of the

shelf so we can see all the way around it and then we can add the green material. Now I need to get

it into face selection mode and then select the faces that represent the pages. It can be a little

tricky around the bevels but once you're done, you can assign the white material you should have made

for the mug to those faces. Then you can put it back on the shelf. All that’s left to do now is

make and apply the following materials to the rest of the room, including the walls. Once you’ve got

everything colored in you’ll be ready to move on and we’ll get the lighting set up.

Lighting & rendering

Now everything has a material applied, we need to light our scene. Right now we’re viewing the scene

using default lighting. This is pretty flat and boring so we will create our own sexy lighting.

Let’s start by closing the Hypershade and then we can turn off the wireframe in the view panel.

Now I want you to press 7 on your keyboard to go into lighting mode and you’ll see it

all goes black because we don't have any lights in the scene. Let’s create our first light then.

From the top menu, go to Arnold, Lights, and then choose a Physical sky. This creates a big black

sphere around the level but it hasn’t really made things any easier to see. Unfortunately,

this light doesn’t really help until we start rendering the scene. So let’s get rendering.

We’ll go to Renderer from the panel menu and change from Viewport 2.0 to Arnold. This little

the window will appear and then we can click on the red play button to start the scene rendering.

As you can see, the light now appears but I want it to look like it is streaming

through the window so I will rotate the skydome light like this. Perfect,

we now have some light coming through the window. The light seems a little dark to me though so I

will open the attribute editor by clicking on the tab to the right of the screen where I can change

the intensity of the light to 5. I’d also like the shadows to be a little softer so I’ll just move to

the aiPhysicalSky tab in the attribute editor and set the sun size to 3. If we deselect the skydome,

you’ll see we also get a nice-looking background color. This is a nice start then but other than

the bit of light coming through the window, the rest of the room looks too dark and gloomy.

Let’s fix that by adding another light. We’ll go back to Arnold and Lights but this time we

will create an area of light. I will move it up and rotate it with the single line facing down so it

will be going in the right direction and finally I will make it bigger to fill more of the room.

It’s not really doing much so I’ll go over to the attribute editor and set the intensity to

something like 300. That’s looking better. I just want to add one final touch and that's to make

it looks like light is coming from the monitor. To do that we’ll make another area light, rotate it,

move it and scale it so that it’s about the same size and same position as the screen.

Now so I can actually see what the light is doing I’ll set the intensity to 100 and I’ll click on

the color picker so I can give the light a slight blue tinge. Just for one final flourish, I’ll

duplicate this light, and rotate it around 180 degrees so the monitor really looks nice and bright.

Okay, that looks nice, that’ll do it for the lighting. Let’s move on to setting up the camera.

Set up the camera

For the final part of this quick introduction to Maya, we will create a new camera and set

it's up like a 2.5d view. In order to do that, let’s first click on Create,

go to cameras and choose the camera. Next, we’ll make it an orthographic camera which will give it that

2.5d quality I am looking for so in the attribute editor, I’ll scroll down to Orthographic Views

and then tick the box for orthographic. Now we want to actually look through the new camera

so I’ll go to panels, orthographic and choose the new camera. Here’s what the camera can currently see.

Not exactly what we’re looking for so we’ll make a few more changes. Open the channel box and then

set the rotate y value to 45 and then set the rotate x to -20. This is now at the right angle

but for me, it’s chopping everything in half. This just means we need to move the camera back. I’ll

go to panels and then perspective and then choose person to select the original 3D camera. Now I

can move our new camera back so that it is not intersecting the geometry of the scene anymore.

Now if I go back to viewing the scene with the new orthographic camera, nothing is being

chopped in half and the last thing to do is to position the camera so I can see everything.

Conclusion

And that’s everything. You can if you want add some more details like filling the bookshelf

or adding another painting or you can even create some new models of your own.

This was only intended to be a quick introduction to Maya and if you found that this went a little

too quickly for you or you want a more detailed introduction to Maya then click on the link on

screen or in the video description to check out my in-depth Maya for Beginners tutorial which

is available both on YouTube and SkillShare. If you found this tutorial helpful and want to help

I to make more videos like this then definitely smash the hell out of the like button but you

could also consider supporting the channel over on Patreon - the link is in the description. I am also

working on another video which will be a quick introduction to Blender much like this one was

for Maya so make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss that one when it drops.

Thanks so much for watching