Go to file > project window and press new on the dialogue box that shows up.

 

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Name it ‘maya_tuts_2019’ and press the yellow folder next to the location box before navigating to the ‘digital design yr 2 2020’ folder.

 

Then go to file > set project, select the maya_tuts_2019 folder and press set.

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Go to file > save scene as. There are two formats to save the project in: Maya ASCII (MA) is a larger file that saves everything but can be edited easily. Maya Binary (MB) is a version that is optimised by stripping out information and cannot be edited easily. Select the Maya ASCII format and save it into the scenes folder.

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Go to the bottom right corner of the page and select the running man icon to open preferences.

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Then navigate to the ‘Files/Projects’ tab. Under the autosave section, check the enable option to ensure that your work is being continuously saved so that you don’t lose any work should something go wrong with your machine.

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Then, in the same dialogue box, find the selection tab and under ‘Polygon Selection’ select ‘center’ and press save.

Here are the hotkeys for the most frequently used tools in Maya.

Screen Shot 2019-06-10 at 13.45.46 q – selection tool

Screen Shot 2019-06-10 at 13.46.04 w – move tool

Screen Shot 2019-06-10 at 13.46.24 e – rotate tool

Screen Shot 2019-06-10 at 13.46.43 r – scale tool

cmd + z – undo

3 – this smooths the shape and bends the vertices

1 – this will return the vertices to normal

tap spacebar – this brings up the top (y), front (z), side (x) using the cartesian grid system which brings the shape to the center at 0.

to rotate the view, hold down and drag using the left mouse button.

to pan across the scene, hold down alt and push in the middle mouse button before clicking and dragging.

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Select the polygon modelling tab on the shelf to begin modelling and click on the cube.

The modelling toolkit allows you to isolate what you are editing. For instance, if you wanted to select only edges, you can select the option so that when you hover over the shape, only the edges highlight, making it a lot easier to navigate and edit the shape.

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Go to Mesh Tools and find the ‘Insert Edge Loop Tool’ – click the box next to this option.

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In the dialogue box, select multiple edge loops and set the number of edge loops to 2.

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Select an edge and press r before pulling the blue cube and drag to where you want the legs to be. Repeat this with by electing the other edge and drag the lines out so that when they intersect, 4 cubes are made at the corners of the table.

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In the modelling toolkit, select the faces option, hold shift and select the four squares – they should turn orange if selected.

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Now scroll down to the components section and select ‘Extrude’. Then pull the blue handle down to extend the legs out to how you want.

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This is my finished table.

I found that the process was fairly simple as I progressed through the task and my table has a basic but nicely finished design.