When I got Unreal Engine 4 and I started tinkering around, I was so amped. Love the program, it’s really incredibly put together.
As we’re all aware, 3D modeling and static mesh creation goes down in the 3rd party apps like Maya and Blender.
Now I’m totally chill with using either one, but from what I’ve seen Maya is a little more complex and has more tools to be utilized due to it being a paid program
Now I won’t lie, when I was dropped in front of Maya for the first time I felt like a 2nd grade child staring down adobe photoshop Cs6 for the first time, I was monumentally confused. However, I really want to learn Maya, and I want to become as good as I possibly can be at 3D modeling because, well, if you’re going to be populating a virtual world with buildings, tables, weapons, people, trees, bushes, etc you better be pretty decent at making them! And I know in order to do that it is going to take some time, and some serious practice.
But with that being said, looking online it’s reeeeally hard to find good Maya tutorials. I don’t need any of the beginner overview stuff, as with enough tinkering it’s pretty easy to get a feel for the application, but if you feel there is a crucial video that really opened the gate of creativity to you and Maya, please do share it, I’d love to give it a view
So my final question is, how did you guys learn Maya? And what videos/methodology of learning did you use?
Digital Tutors has a ton of Maya tutorials, and it’s very cheap, you pay like $30 or something and for a month you get access to all of their tutorials.
Looking at the spec geared to game design in general
If the need is for the notepad of editors as to simple environment editing with out having to take on the entire learning curve of the AAA applications there is this.
I used Lynda.com, they’re in the same vein but only $25 a month and in my opinion the presenters are more professional and have less annoying voices, heh. Not to mention better audio and video quality and they’re older.
Not to say DT isn’t great. They’ll definitely give you what you need and tend to have more in-depth and specific tutorials.
I feel like it’s a lot more important to practice a lot, rather than worrying about finding good tutorials. Watch a few to get started, then just start modeling things and asking for feedback on appropriate forums. If you can’t do something, look up a tutorial on that in particular, do it, and get back to modeling again.
I would recommend Digital Tutors as well. They are great for beginner courses and you can supplement specific videos when you search online with the right Maya terminology… such as searching for Maya blendshape tutorials… ect. At least that is what I found. Good luck! =)