...making maya happy

Yes!! I finally get to play with MAYA!!

I've had a fiddle with things like trial versions of 3DSMax and the like but there's just so many buttons! It looks really daunting and scary.

This first lecture made me so happy, Maya can be tamed! Basically, we first of all went over a generic list of things to do before you get started. These little things make Maya happy, and run smoothly - it essentially restores all settings to default (or where necessary, to the most appropriate setting as the dashboard can be customised as can the way actions are performed)

Introducing - The Graph Editor

I love you! Math + Art = Win.. It essentially is a graph with wiggly lines for all paths of movement - XYZ(+/-), rotation and scale too. I found that it just clicked with this. I don't think I'm arty at all to be honest, but I can look at 3 coloured arcs and just 'see' what the motion would be. I found it a lot easier to edit motion by moving graph points than actually moving the 3D object - I don't know if this is really the way to do it though.

Having said that, that was only for the bouncing ball we played with - Things might change as it gets more complicated... we shall see.