Maya Modeling Tutorial For Beginners: Step by Step Tutorial

[@jlmussi]

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[@malgash1demi907]

After 2 years in Maya, I didn't know about CTRL in Edit Pivot Mode to Orient the pivot. Very useful trick, my life will be easier than ever haha thanks ! Great tuto

[@jlmussi]

Mayas a deep software. I've been working with Maya since 04 and still learning things.

[@leecaste]

Shift and Ctrl+Shift give you some additional options if I recall correctly.

[@vengadorsky]

@@rsboy7065 no

[@Harsh_Trip]

SAME!

[@nurashams4093]

Try..modo.. things r more in case of modeling

[@krickkraft1672]

While this doesn't necessarily feel like a bare bones beginner course, you have given me a wealth of knowledge that I can work with. I'm excited to give Maya a try. Thank you.

[@igorkoskin5214]

Hey, thanks for nice tutorial! One tip that might be useful though. While staying in an orthographic view (let's say, front) you actually can scale model in a perpendicular plane without switching views. All you need to do is to hold ctrl key and grab an axis that is perpendicular to that plane. In our case, if we'll grab y-axis and hold ctrl we could scale width without changing height and without changing view to perspective.

[@TimMcGames]

3 mins in and this guy lost me, "expand the front without telling anyone how"

[@yte5021]

Let your mouse hover over the front and press spacebar

[@kathk7439]

@@yte5021 holy shit thanks man,

[@705Link]

As YTE Gaming said, when your hovering over the planes with your cursor (Front, Persp, Side, Top.) Click "SpaceBar" to go into a full perspective, or click space bar again to open all 4 planes. basically letting you view as 4 different camera angles haha

[@705Link]

Or 4:05 he says how to do so.

[@vukmilosevic3810]

YEEAA

[@fals3420]

dude vid is awesome it helped me a lot. by the way, I think it would be much easier for newbies if you explain what keys are using for every action. im a newbie so I struggled a little bit :D

[@nicetrayyy]

Would be very useful to have his keyboard on the side too see what he uses

[@Harsh_Trip]

Amazing tutorial! I watched this to knock some rust off my Maya skills and ended up learning a lot of new tricks I never knew about!

[@samuelavila4342]

Lots of thing left unexplained for a real beginner

[@flaggerify]

If you're a real beginner you shouldn't be using Maya. If you're not you should understand him.

[@sythys_]

@@flaggerify this is the most useless comment i've seen so far. If someone puts up a beginner tutorial he should at least not use hotkeys without explaning them.

[@oxACEo]

flaggerify what’s your suggestion? Wouldn’t it be be best to learn with the software you plan to use in the end?

[@mmproud4399]

@@flaggerify What a rubbish comment. As you can see in the title "For beginners: step-by-step Tutorial" and if your saying that real beginner shouldn't use Maya, then why you are watching this video for beginners? Don't tell me you didn't go through being a beginner and instantly became a pro in using Maya even before it was published?

[@flaggerify]

MMProud Get stuffed.

[@vishnurk3107]

Hi, (this comment was actually a reply to another comment but i am posting it here so others cud see it too) so i am using maya for about 1-2 months now, and i can say i am following this guys tutorials like these without much problems. What i did was learn basic (and some advanced tools) before, practiced those for like 2 weeks and it helped me to understand tutorials like these. Also, if i don't understand any tools, i just note that down and watch it later, sometimes i even come back to watch this again. So thats my way, imo its very effective.

[@rowanwiggill]

This is a good tutorial in general but bad for beginners. When you use the "Modeling - Expert" workspace it removes the ability for beginners to follow you, especially if you don't explain what you're doing while using that workspace and also suddenly cutting out steps of the tutorial doesn't help (I thought this was a "Step by Step Tutorial") how do you expect beginners to follow you if you cut out a step of a tutorial? I was luckily able to follow cause I did do a few tutorials before this one so I have an understanding of what you are doing but total newbies that haven't even touch Maya before won't be able to follow you.

[@chagalo3717]

Bro, what do you have for beginners? I am just starting school and my teacher sent me your video but have no idea what you just did. But I give you mad props, you know your stuff and I need help.

[@RexGalilae]

I think there's recording software that registers and displays your keystrokes so we don't have to ask you about them in the comments

[@ctbram0627]

Yeah, I like how you just get to the most tricky part then switch to hyperspeed which was impossible to follow, and then like magic have a finished top. LOL

[@EliaForce1984ita]

I could follow along in Blender as well! Very nice tutorial, dude! Theory can really be applied on any program :D

[@cesardelcastillo6446]

Very good tutorial it is very helpful but some very important points must be mention like the shortcut keys in action, so that beginner could follow what keys to press and tools to use on each every part of object.

[@thescatterpiratesquarepant7935]

git gud

[@blootooth00]

@TheScatterPirate squarepants if you're a beginner, you don't know the shortcut keys, and he opens a lot of windows using the shortcut keys meaning it is not obvious how to get to those windows. Don't be a jerk about getting good when people are trying to learn. You can't git gud if the instructions aren't clear.

[@hayax]

@@blootooth00 Beginner's aren't only those who haven't learnt the shortcuts. This video is more towards those who've learnt the basic shortcuts of Maya so that you can actually do the tutorial. It would be counterintuitive to making a tutorial like this if he had to spend 20 minutes explaining simple shortcuts when you could easily go to a video that is specifically meant to teach you them. The shortcuts in this video are actually available in the tutorials built into Maya, you should be doing those first anyway.

[@garyhergest779]

As someone just starting 3D modelling this was amazing thank you

[@johnsonpang7117]

in 21min, i was complete lost and confuse what you try to said... my friend just said use the fastest way, company don't want you to use 30min to modeling a can. but... i still learn something, thanks for the video.

[@martinezac1]

Can you do a vans shoe? step by step? thank you sir . love your stuff

[@EmreNurbeyler]

please. announce. your. keystrokes. I have no idea how to do half of the shortcuts which you don't even mention. 10:29 how did you even make that transparent? 15:24 wow that box just magically appeared on the screen!

[@Para1122]

THIS

[@charansriram4037]

It’s been a while since I opened up Maya, but I believe at 10:29 he went into Wireframe mode (you can search up the shortcut). I’m not sure what box you mentioned but if you have a different time stamp I’d be happy to try and help

[@klarnorbert]

This isn't a beginner tutorial. If you don't know what's happening, you should watch some beginner tuts.

[@EmreNurbeyler]

@@klarnorbert Literally in the title.

[@sid_m3298]

press 4 for wireframe mode

[@tomsquad1979]

Is this really the way you model in Maya? Holy Shit. This was the most incomprehensible and convoluted tutorial I've ever tried to follow.

[@ipi223]

THE modeling BEAST his really bright you're way of modeling change my vision of object in a way................................ more precise,logic and clean! espically clean thx man!

[@wocitna]

I tried. I just couldn't follow this.

[@adedejiefunkoya3358]

I just enrol for maya training and i believe going through beginners tutorial will be a great help for me. Thanks

[@navin.thamindu]

This is the first I'm time doing maya. FYI, I cant follow through this, even though it is said "Tutorial For Beginners". Shortcuts and button locations are missing.

[@67steinip]

I am going to check this tutorial myself, see if it's something I can actually follow while grabbing some techniques along the way. I can see the concensus in your comment section that the "Beginners" is misleading, mostly because you hotkey through the video.. When making a tutorial for a beginner, you should either type on screen what hot key is being pressed everytime you use one, or for your tutorial sake no hotkeys and utilize the menu bar even if it extends your video by some minutes not hotkeying all over the place.. I am going to see if i can follow this along.. Im trying to just hobby around, im a coder first..

[@nickpucci5586]

Nice tutorial but waay too many jump-cuts and not enough explanation on the hotkeys you are using, ex: MergeVert and Smooth Preview. For some reason when I pressed 2 and activated Cage+SmoothMesh I was unable to undo it. I would've like to see the time-lapses slowed down just a little bit so that way if someone were still stuck they could set the playback speed to like .5 or .25 and still follow. The part that really confused me is 51:56 because it was hard to tell if you had fixed the tris and n-gons. Other than that, this was a great tutorial for beginners. Also, do you think you could show us how to make those renders like the one with the Arnold material and lighting?

[@enochlin5888]

I got completely lost at 22:32. Bridge does not combine the edges for me and I have tried various fixes/workarounds but it still doesn't work properly

[@enochlin5888]

Actually I found a working workaround. If you run into this problem too you can extrude one side of the edges to the other, then combine corresponding vertices.

[@diaassada]

He didn't make it clear in the video, though at 22:02 he said "we'll go ahead and start out by *Combining* this" and used a hotkey to combine the 2 objects before the bridging step. So before trying to bridge the edges you needed to select the 2 objects and go to Edit Mesh > Combine.

[@matthewpulls441]

What an amazing informative video. Im just starting in Maya and I learned more from this video then I did in a course I bought...

[@TheMiszla]

Thank you very much for the tutorial! That's exactly what I was looking for. I saw the proper workflow with no time wasted on explaining all the little details.

[@demonsagars.s4041]

hollo JL i like ur videos it help me so much and time has been save thanks a lot for ur videos. Now I need a video of Hard surface modeling step by step please uplode this video as soon as possible....

[@manasraut2172]

U r skipping methods man. Not able to follow at your pace.

[@NymezWoW]

Manas Raut I would still consider myself a beginner and had no problems following. If you need an explanation for the absolute basics in maya there are a ton of videos out there that cover that. For someone that did the first steps in maya and wants to learn how to model something thats a bit more complex than just some simple box things this video is perfect. If you explain every single click you do things get way too long. Thats what you do in a video where you explain the tools themselves. This is about modeling the can not a guide about lets say the multi-cut tool. You cant really expect a video like this to explain everything because you probably would end up with explaining half of mayas modeling tools then. Learn the basic tools/shortcuts and you will be able to follow this with no problems. I get that "beginner" maybe is a bit misleading tho. But modeling let's say a human face is on a whole different level than this soda can in difficulty so this is indeed quite a beginner tutorial considering the whole complexity of maya.

[@dessmunyiva3744]

very true

[@BusinessWolf1]

He explains what you need to know as he goes along, this is a very good tutorial.

[@manasraut2172]

@@BusinessWolf1 no, he missed out some key methods.

[@GO.......]

Maya is beautiful

[@harshaldeshmukh4231]

How do you get the dialogue box with for the cylinder with the divisions?

[@MaxNewberg-r4l]

maya is a commercial grade software, I worked a bit with open source and see some potential in it.

[@buffwarriors]

Thank you very much for the free lesson

[@Lync1111]

Requested video. a. City layout with road ways and high ways added and ramps. b. Car Model and how to set up the car to roll for animation. Car (Zonda) Pagani or a Mustang Shelby.

[@adriandeveraaa]

Please for tutorials show the keyboard keys displayed on screen. I think there is an addon in maya to do it. That would help so much newbies / viewers

[@garethscott418]

Seeing this is a lot to take in and some parts really make me question why I chose my university course.

[@elia-eo3bf]

Great tutorial but you should explain the keyboard shortcuts better.

[@omerkoc8100]

Thank you very much for the video, the part of determining the center point confused me a lot. It was very difficult for me to understand that you were using the Snap tool and observe how its direction changed. Other than that, thank you for everything.

[@joshlewis6490]

THANK YOU for uploading such a detailed video!!! Please continue this! You're an amazing artist btw Your videos and personality are really easy and satisfying to watch

[@jlmussi]

Thanks Josh! Glad you are enjoying my content and thanks for your positive feedback. I try to make these videos as fun and digestible as possible.

[@jelasco3775]

At first I was confused as why you speed up the rest of the soda can tab but if you slow it down and keep using the techniques JL showed like using a cylinder to create curves it became do able

[@klockradio30]

Hi there. Could you make a tutorial video on creating an explosion that’s very simple to understand please?

[@normietwiceremoved]

FANTASTIC TUTORIAL! Learnt a lot and enjoyed it. You sometimes skip necessary parts so I have to guess what you did... ps. you gotta stop saying "what we COULD do", it kind of gets grating after a while

[@hyuntae94]

It was the best tutorial for hard surface beginner!!!

[@sebastianmaggio9657]

amazing tutorials, ty so much... you'r the guru of maya, keep this please. Big like.

[@kailed]

i got lost in many places such as how you show the image through the cilinder and the spacebar hotkey

[@grimioficial]

Hi bro! I have a big question about the views (1: polygons and 3: smooth (I don't know what these are called), but Which one do I have to use to export my render? and when I'm modeling which one do I use as reference? I hope that you read this. Thank you and regards from Argentina!

[@sourcekings]

I'm getting back into modeling so I'm learning everything again but hey im a student now get Maya for free. I have experience but I need to learn the new way of thinking on it.

[@akenney1234]

Great tutorial! I'm a 3D modeller in the automotive industry using bezier based freeform software. I am tacking the lockdown time to learn Maya and ploy based modelling and have to say your chanel looks packed with great videos to help. I've chosen this one to start with and so far, so good. I have an issue with the face invert selection around 11:10 in as I get an error message "No object matches name: polyCylinder 3.f[*]".. have you any idea what is causing this and what the fix may be? Also I have created the first two shapes of the top and they are at different heights. What is the best way to make sure that they are at the exact same Y value in height? I have aligned the pivot to each object however when I entered the same values into each "Y" box they were at different heights.. very odd. Thanks & keep up the great work!

[@ariannadealessandri6548]

Plz help! At 34:26 how can I create full geometry from only half of that? He use some button on keyboard that no one can see! Otherwise the video is great for beginners, but not for those who don't even have the basic knowledge of Maya. It helped me a lot, but just a caption with the keys and shortcuts would be useful.

[@joeltaylor3189]

select the object, go to the top menu and click Mesh, under that there should be a command called Mirror which does the trick. to do it properly though you'll need to make sure the object is in the middle of the x axis (i.e. it should be at the 0 coordinate). i made the mistake of mirroring the object without doing that

[@joeltaylor3189]

oh and the tutorial is good but he skips too many steps. i can just barely follow along with my very limited knowledge and even then a lot of stuff i have to wing

[@FLY-ec5cs]

this dude´s kahled´s brother and nobody knows lol , they way he speaks man so similar . Loved the tuorial thanks and never stop bro !

[@jlmussi]

Who told you! We the best....lol

[@himanshucreator7367]

sir please make a simple video for beginners

[@pashoo231]

If someone lost it when the cylinder suddenly diseaper in the front-z window just click the wireframe icon to follow

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

Bro, as soon as I get home. I'm working on this. I'm mad rusty dude.

[@jlmussi]

Work= Improvement. Go get it!

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

@@jlmussi Good advice.

[@rainbow28a35]

thank you for this tutorial! I really appreciate how you explain stuff. just that it takes me a bit of time to realize how you hid the cylinder after min 10.:00 and started making the top.

[@mohith_v]

bro..tell me how🤔🤔..i am struck

[@melinamuhl6411]

yes, please tell us how you did that. I am stuck, too! :(

[@MimiGunz]

Select the object you want to hide, then press the "h" key to hide it. (Incase future ppl come to this comment)

[@andrewadams9924]

Thanks for this! If possible, would you be able to show how to model a highly detailed couch? I'm really struggling - just don't know how to approach it. That, and a coffee machine!

[@qyutotube]

Lear a lot from you, Thanks

[@3D_artist07]

Really awesome talk 😁😁😁 and thanks for this tutorial it's very very use full

[@dominiquebonnett5933]

Dude just completely left out the modeling of the end half of the cap :( the rest of it was tricky to follow and I had to do some googling to figure out what was left out but it was good none the less but now I'm just stuck. Been trying to problem solve the rest of it but I'm too much of a noob to really understand putting together the rest of it. I too was here as a complete beginner.

[@dominiquebonnett5933]

I was able to work through it using the same techniques thought in the class earlier ! So happy to have done this one! Learned a ton of stuff!

[@CLOUD940-69]

thx for the tutorial helped me by alot!

[@programmervp]

Even if You have expiriense, this type videos can bee useful! Thank you a lot for easy vertex flat trick.

[@MegaOperadores]

Mussi You just got a new fan. I had some skills on Maya but I need some help to improve it, and this video it's that. I'm training modeling and any help to do that is good .

[@jlmussi]

That's what I'm here for. Glad to have you on board Jose!

[@captainprice8756]

For 3d modelling which cpu is best, Intel or AMD Which one is best i7 11th gen or AMD ryzen 7 4800h

[@arlenaugusto693]

thank you very much for tutorial good result and detail . but too fast explanation for the absolute beginners, sometimes i can't keep up along tutorial.

[@CrusaderGabriel]

Most people: want to model a car Me, a motorcycle rider: can't wait to be good enough to model that Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade 😍

[@Boy99655]

thank you, amazing tutorial. How the hell do you only have 5k subs

[@gauravjain4249]

Great bro thanks, cool to start.

[@rawkstar952]

i love the way how he talks like bro imma bout to drop some sick verses

[@jlmussi]

Maya: The Mixtape dropping soon.

[@sheikhtahmid3857]

i need the blueprint. can't access the site u given earlier. can u please provide again?

[@chloeconner8381]

i cont follow this because i dont know half the things you are telling us to do.

[@rob_meade]

Thank you for putting this video together JL. I have spent around 6 hours following it today, start/stop etc, this is my second model using Maya. I've not got to the end of the video yet, but I started running into problems trying to select the edge loops when you were adding the external bevels at the bottom of the can. I received warnings about non-manifold vertices. I've tried cleaning the mesh and, to be honest, it made things worse. I'm tempted to start over, but I want to avoid whatever I did wrong the first time round - any suggestions as to what I may have done which caused these non-manifold vertices? I'm kinda shattered now so calling it a night, hope to hear from you, and thanks again for the video, if I don't get to finish the model I have learnt a lot of other very useful stuff during this which has been great. :)

[@jlmussi]

You can try going under Mesh> Cleanup and tell maya weather you want to select or clean up that problem geometry. That could help.

[@rob_meade]

Thanks for this, and yes, on my second attempt I found this and did use it a few times. I had varying levels of success with it but it did help. Most of my problems were caused by giving Maya a command and then deciding to do something else, but not undoing the command. For example, extruding, but then not moving anything, clicking away, but the extrude is still in place.

[@jeanpierre4474]

you should put the shortcuts on screen like how u scale only the top of the cylinder without symmetry

[@spacefreak8863]

Simple and sweet video. Thanks, bro! :)

[@jlmussi]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@raideng.5054]

This video is so great for the beginner! Thx!

[@jlmussi]

Glad you found value in this video.

[@klaasjong3077]

Hey man Question.My brigte function, it make s a X NOT a square. U have a idee how to fix this?

[@chaitanykhanase6649]

So Cool

[@jasroop_sandhu]

Your videos are so amazing - can you do a video tutorial on how to create blueprints please?

[@dekargaming8332]

sheesht tht was good ex but is it meant for animation or motion videpos or both just asking like madatory

[@hemanthsaji3606]

Where do you get references (with different views) to model from?

[@laneweatherbee2232]

is there some easy way to snap the gizmo to the view? when working on something small that goes all the way around the model like that dip by the rim, its very annoying to have to zoom out and move the gizmo then zoom in again to look at what youve moved.

[@bikalpsinghdura]

Really helped me a lot. Cheers!

[@sambryan02]

your skipping steps, you didn't say how to make the cylinder invisible on certain plains so now I cant do the lid

[@denizesame118]

what did you do on 28.55 you should put the keys that you push on the screen

[@Superbustr]

@JL Mussi I have imported your blueprints and tried to manually change the resolution and there is no effect as you showed at the beginning of the tutorial. I am working on a retina macbook. Do you know what else I could try and do to increase the resolution of the imported blueprints so that they aren't so pixelated?

[@sohrahim9847]

Awesome video. Please what software did you use to do the effect before the beginning of this awesome video. I mean the little slideshow that shows your name jl mussi and the little car that passes as well as the lightening.

[@mkluisart]

Nice tutorial.

[@jlmussi]

Thanks!

[@WillPreston3D]

great video JL! can you help me please? i've got a model with a lot of screw heads positioned all over the seams, all the screws are basically cylinders capped with points with 8 edges coming off them, ideally id like to cap these cylinders with quads/grids, i have tried triangulate + quadrangulate in the past but its not working in this instance, do you know a way to cap 100s of cylinders with quads without going through them one by one?

[@jlmussi]

If you work with instances the parent would control all the children copies. You could also just remodel the one asset and use the " match transformation to quickly reposition the updated copies into place, assuming you still have the transforms on those parts. Hope this helps.

[@WillPreston3D]

@@jlmussi no, sadly all the bolts are merged and their individual transforms are lost, it seems a similar tool is available in max and (probably) houdini, its a shame we don't have this in maya, if i was any good it scripting id write "look for verts with more than 5 edges, convert selection to polys, delete the polys and count the edges on the hole created, create a grid with matching number of perimeter points, snap trans and rot of grid to hole perimeter points, merge verts by proximity, transfer uvs from previous topology but sadly i cant script, thanks for your help JL, keep up the good work!

[@cpu64]

My first 3d model work was a fulgore from Killer Instinct... I don't think it's possible to come up with a more overly complicated process for making something as simple as a soda can.

[@vladimirkorneev4140]

Thanks! Great tutorial!

[@rushikeshmunde763]

thanks

[@Movman82]

Helpful

[@andyduarte8405]

Hi man, I just recently subscribed to your channel, cause I've come across some of your videos while searching and they helped me :). Do you have a video or can make one explaining how to solve n-gons issues in Maya while beveling edges. Greetings from Cuba

[@josearielgongoraromero8300]

very good tutorial, although sometimes you won't say how you open some of those windows

[@gamerzone7597]

hey, I need help if anyone can help, as Maya uses alt + MMB and alt + LMB for pan and zoom different from 3ds max, as I am 3ds max user now working on Maya so can anyone help me to find out how to change these hotkeys in Maya same as 3ds max. I want to change these pan and zoom hotkeys same as 3ds max as m comfortable with that only, thank you

[@anirbanmaji80]

is not it possible to just kind of extrude single vertex and trace the shape, instead of creating cylinder and delete all the faces.

[@kalakutablog7629]

can you please give beginners like us other step by step process on Maya

[@poll.r4153]

Boss! peace! one love!

[@ninyqin7086]

im already stuck in the first 5 minutes on how to make the image line up with the axis :( i tried google it but still dont understand, plz help me

[@alpeshdana5763]

Plss create a step by step video on character modelling and lightning and rendering effect