Important modeling tips and tricks in Maya

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Autodesk Maya has been an industry standard for years in the field of modeling and animation. The complex package is an excellent collection of tools and techniques required to create stunning models from nothing. This beginner biased tutorial will lead you through the basic 3d modeling tips and tricks in Maya.

NURBS NURBS stands for Non Uniform Rational B-Spline. It is a mathematical model which represents curves and surfaces. If you are not in to sculpting aspects it


simply means curved surfaces. Designers work with polygons more often when compared with NURBS.

Maya Outliner The outliner in Maya is a useful tool for representation of model parts as a hierarchy. It helps you to quickly select associated parts of a prototype without individually selecting them. Outliner requires an ordered and named collection of objects to make things easy. Therefore it is important to name every single surface that you developed.

Duplicate Special Tool Maya consists of many slick features out of which using the Instance feature is one. It helps you to work on one half of the proposed clone while the software itself updates the other. You can also use Duplicate Special in the Edit menu to create copies of the half that you have already created.

Points or Control Vertices Detailed demonstrating requires proper use of control points. You can do that by right clicking over the NURBS surface and choosing any of the required option from the pop up context menu. Different options available include show, move, and scale and rotate.


Before moving forward with working on your project here are few tips that will greatly help you as a beginner. These tips are the basic ones and help you to save time, money and effort.

Save your document Always consider saving your hard work due to the simple reason that a power outage or a crash will surely drench hours of your work. This is one of the basic 3d modeling tips for beginners.

Give meaningful names There might be a chance that some models might have more than 100 pieces. Following an easier naming convention will surely help you later at a point when you revisit the folder.

Approach several perspectives Perspective wise demonstrating is a trick that every beginner should focus upon. If your model looks great from front view, it doesn’t mean that it is a great model from all views. As details are further added, it gets harder to make changes as and when necessary.


Approach bigger blocks first Crack bigger blocks first rather than working on smaller ones. Fine details can easily be merged with existing ones in this manner. In this way you can also focus on the entire prototype at the same time.

Autodesk Maya is an inevitable tool for numerous modeling professionals. It is used by some of the best 3D designing organizations. If you find it really confusing to move forward, a professional 3d modeling company is one of the better options available if you can find the proper one out there. Also read 3D Modelling tips and tricks that are really worthy to practice


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