fluency

Fluency means the ability to write or speak a language with ease. Just as that allows us to communicate easily, being fluent in the basics of Maya will allow you to create with less difficulty, which will build your confidence in the software - thus leading you to more advanced techniques earlier- thus making you a better Maya artist in less time. In other words, the basics are critical to your accelerated comprehension of advanced techniques - make sure you master them!

By this time in the course, you should be able to do the following with a good degree of familiarity. Remember - all of the skills we will develop in class will be grounded on these techniques, so it's important to be fluent with them as early as possible.

Opening and saving files
Navigating the interface
Orbiting, moving and zooming in different views
Creating polygon primitives
Selecting, deselecting and deleting node(s)
Transformations - Moving, Rotating, and Scaling
undo'ing and redo'ing
Creating lights
Adjusting light color and intensity
Light linking and shadows
using the attribute editor and channel box to edit various attributes
rendering and setting basic render attributes.


You first assignment is due at the beginning of class this Wednesday, Feb. 4. Use the time you have left to put the finishing polish on your work, and make sure you have a solid grasp of the above skills. Best of luck!