Maya Basics

Description

Autodesk Maya Unlimited 2009 is a state-of-the-art 3D modeling, animation, and visual effects package. It has exceptional modeling, animation, rendering, particles, hair and fur, cloth, fluids capabilities and more. It can be used interactively with its graphical user interface, programs can be written in MEL (Maya Embedded Language) scripting language as well as Python and batch rendering jobs can be run on the Katana Cluster.

Maya is flexible and can be used any time 3D modeling and/or animation is required for either scientific or artistic work. There are a variety of output forms - fully animated and rendered mono or stereoscopic movies; single still frame images; 3D animated geometry sequences may be imported into a DAFFIE virtual environment and viewed on SCV's Deep Vision Display Wall.

Highlights: Maya is a professional quality package for doing computer graphics and animation interactively. The learning curve is steep and you will need to devote a significant time to learning the package but the high-quality results you can achieve make this worth doing.

Availability and Setup

Maya Unlimited 2009 is available on the workstations in the Computer Graphics Lab (Room 203, 111 Cummington Street, lab hours and access).

Using Maya

To run Maya interactively on a Linux workstation, type maya at the prompt.

Batch rendering jobs may be submitted to the Katana Cluster using the command Render in a batch script. Type Render -h on the command line for a complete listing of the arguments. For more information on setting up a project and getting an account on Katana, please see the account application pages. For more information on writing a batch script for Katana, send email to maya@scv.bu.edu

Additional Help/Documentation

Full documentation is available within Maya Help.

There are two extensive tutorials under Help->Maya Help->Learning Resources->Tutorials. Getting Started with Maya and Getting Started with Maya Unlimited.

Online, the Autodesk Maya site has many resources. Of special interest are the AREA and the Learning Path

Questions or problems (for Boston University Maya users)? Mail maya@scv.bu.edu