Andy Coates Blog

Ever since I got my first computer I have always tinkered around with paint programs, 3D software and other such programs playing round and learning how to use them. Being brutally honest I really haven't spent the time to learn these programs to their full potential but have still being able to put out some nice artwork from Photoshop for friends and colleague's. Only a couple of days ago I was browsing the Autodesk website (looking for Autocad tips) and came across Maya one of the industries leading CG design tools, I hadent realised Autodesknow owned Maya and were now offering a special Personal Learning Edition of Maya (Maya PLW) free for download! So since then i have downloaded Maya PLE and started working my way through the tutorials, the whole thing is quite daunting as there are so many menus and command buttons to learn what they do and their location. I spent 20 minutes looking for the location of the "Edit Mesh" command only to discover that the command menu's chance depending what mode you are in, after changing the drop down box menu to Polygons I was back in business!

I have currently competed the first 2 tutorials in the "getting Started guide" which is fantastically well written and am slowly getting used to the location of things! What has blown me away is the actual capability's of this program, withing 4 hours of-using this and following the instructions i had gone from complete Maya novice to creating a 3D render of a motorcycle helmet shown here (the free edition stamps the Autodesk logo over your images so you cannot use them for commercial projects). The next step is to do the 2 tutorials again but without the instructions and see how long it takes!

If your even slightly interested in CG i highly recommend you try this free version of Maya.