29 April 2024
Maya Beginners guide to 3D modelling

Maya: Beginners Guide to 3D Modelling

As a novice Maya learner, I was quite pleased with this Udemy Course. These lessons will show you how to create a pretty cool looking pirate ship, and a very cartoony-looking car in Maya. The instructor uses various Maya tools for modelling, great for newbies who have never used them before, but also great practice for people like me who have been a beginner for ages, and want to move forward.

About This Course

  • Course Title: 3D Modeling: Learn how to model 3D Cartoons in Maya
  • Instructor: Raffi Bedross, FX TD Artist

Current Specifications:

  • Lectures: 29
  • Video: 3.5 hours
  • Skill level: All Levels

Pros

The instructor speaks slowly and clearly as he explains each step that he makes in every lesson in the course. His accent sounds Arabic and his English is clear enough for any students whose second language is English. He doesn’t rush over instructions to leave anyone confused, but instead states everything he is doing in the software, as he is doing it.

The lessons seem planned out in advance. This is what I like about course like this one. It drives me crazy when instructors just want to ‘wing it’ with lessons instead of planning out the steps involved for each lesson that they create for the course.

Cons

I would have to say that it even though it states the course is for ‘All Levels’ I imagine I would be quite slow with these lessons if I was a complete beginner to Maya. However since I am already familiar with the Maya layout (somewhat), and how to manipulate the controls, I was able to follow along quickly with each lesson. I don’t want to scare off any complete beginners though, this is a great course to take. I would just suggest perhaps familiarising yourself with the Maya layout (which can be done on the Autodesk Maya website or YouTube probably), then easily jumping in to this course.

Once the pirate ship is complete, there is no mention of how to render out the model. A simple attempt at this would be nice. (It doesn’t need to be advanced stage rendering, just a basic image render would make sense as you’re sort of left hanging with the model still in Maya, without seeing how cool it can look when it’s finished).

Summary

A quick explanation on rendering would have been nice, but I managed to figure it out myself elsewhere. If you are expecting to start from complete scratch in Maya, this is one of the easier tutorials available, but I would suggest playing around at least in Maya to familiarise yourself with the controls that manipulate your 3D models. Other than that, a great course which I am quite happy to have bought from Udemy!

Link to Course Here