Here is a collation of useful shortcuts and information to use is the Maya software

Q – selection tool

W – move tool

E – rotate tool

R– scale tool

cmd + Z – undo

F – Frames the selected object. This is especially helpful for when you have multiple polygons in your scene.

A – Resets the view and frames all

H – You can hide selected polygons using this in the outliner.

1 – Shows the polygonal version.

2 – Shows a combination of the smoothed preview and polygonal version.

3 – Displays a smoothed preview of the polygon.

4 – Displays wireframe mode

5 – Displays shaded mode

6 – Displays shaded mode with textures

7 – Displays the lighting

Mesh tools > Insert Edge Loop – this can be used to insert manual sub-divisions without using the extrude tool.

Tap spacebar – this brings up the top (y), front (z), side (x) using the cartesian grid system which brings the shape to the centre 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.

Bevel

Bevels expand a selected edge into a new face, rounding the edges of a polygon mesh.

Mirroring

Hold down the shift key to select either side of the shape. Anything you do to one of the selected faces will occur on the other that is selected. You can also go to modelling toolkit > symmetry and select the correct axis before choosing a side to extrude. The opposing face will do the same thing.

To duplicate a shape, you can go to Mesh > Mirror.

Texturing

To apply simple materials, there are some key things that you need to do first:

In the channel box, you’ll be able to see input nodes from extrusions. To make it easier for the software to work with the polygon, you would delete those input nodes. With the spaceship selected, go to Edit > Delete by Type > History. The poly count will also decrease. After this, go to Modify > Freeze Transformations. This will centre the polygon and set it’s current position to its default position. If you were to lose the shape, you would be able to go to Modify > Reset Transformations and the object would go to back to the position you set at the frozen transformation stage.

There are 3 types of materials, Lambert, Phong and Blinn. Each material has its own properties that are used depending on the material type. Hold down the right mouse button and scroll down Assign New Materials > Lambert. Choose a colour it will be accessible when you hold down the right mouse button and go to Assign Existing Material. You can select specific faces and apply colour like this.

Lambert is the default material that all shapes within Maya have when first placed into the scene and is used for matte surfaces as it has no specular highlights.

Blinn simulates diffuse reflection and soft specular highlights and is typical for creating metallic objects.

Phong simulates reflection and hard specular highlights. It is used for shiny surfaces.