I hate the WORLD

[LittleWoodenBoy]

I Have been trying to get down the basics of Maya 3D software, but for some reason I just don't know enough to use any of the online tutorials to advance my skills. And I cannot find any tutorials that have my "below basic" skill usage. Any tips for an inspiring 3D artist?

[ThePhobos]

As someone who is completely self-taught the best thing I can suggest would be to just start messing around. It's a slow way to start, but it at least worked for me.

One of the major issues I see with programs like Maya is how cryptic some of the commands can be to someone who is 100% unfamiliar with them. What's a "bevel"? What's "extruding"? They might as well be Greek if you're not used to them. What I did was just to mess around with things to see what happened. Tutorials are nice, but even as someone who is familiar with apps like Maya I see tutorials sometimes where it's obvious that the author left out key steps. Or they tell someone to "use the chamfer tool", except it can be frustrating to find that tool if you don't know where it is, and looking in the manual every two seconds for the button you need can be rough.

For me an my preferred modeling method, I find that I use the tools "bevel", "extrude", and the usual "move, rotate, scale" tools almost all the time. At least as a beginner it's helpful to know those tools since I personally find that I use them all the time. There will always be a situation that comes up when you start modeling complex objects where you think to yourself "How am I going to get THIS shape?" and in times like those you may need to learn new tools. But I personally would recommend, as a starting point, just going through and making a sphere, a cube, a cylinder, or whatever shape you feel like, and trying the tools such as bevel and extrude. Mess with the settings to see how it affects the outcome. Figure out how to switch between different selection types like vertices, polygons, and edges and then mess around with moving them around.

The best I can tell you at this point would be to practice making easy stuff and get familiar with the tools that Maya offers. Once you know how a certain tool works you'll be able to look at a situation in the future on a more complex shape and think "Ah, if I just bevel this edge I can round it off. Easy!"

Good luck!

[hyde]

sorry if this was posted too long ago, and hopefully you haven't given up on learning Maya. My suggestion is to pick up a beginners book on learning Maya basics.
http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Maya-Foundation-Alias-Tools/dp/1894893743/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201364330&sr=8-2

This book might be outdated as to the version of Maya, but al the concepts are still the same. Another thing is you could go to sites like cgtalk.com and ask questions from professionals they are always willing to help. Since Maya is such an enormous package you should just start with learning one part and continue from there. Obviously modeling would be a great place to start. Also in the documentation they give great examples of how to get started. It sounds like you have run into the same problem everyone runs into when they begin, you know what you want to create but like all things you have to keep practicing to get better at it. Goodluck, if you have any direct questions then just ask. I'd be happy to help. I have been workingi n Maya for ten years now and in the gaming industry for eight. So I might be able to help.