45+ Incredible Maya Tutorials Around
Autodesk Maya, or simply Maya, is a high-end 3D computer graphics and 3D modeling software package originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation, but now owned by Autodesk as part of the Media and Entertainment division. Maya is a powerful, 3-D modeling, texturing, and rendering application, with all of the tools needed to do nearly every type of animation imaginable, from simulations of real-world physics to character animation with a wide spectrum of emotive expressions.
In this article below, we’ll take a look at Various Maya Tutorials for your source of inspiration which help you to deal with high-end 3D computer graphics. However, they all have something in common: they all give you clean idea about latest techniques.
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Incredible Maya Tutorials Around
01. Making of Gladiator
This artwork created for CGArena 3d challenge where the Artist (Christopher ADAJAR, Paris) won the second prize. This is the first contest where he joined and his first published artwork since he started working as a 3D & Visual Effects Artist.
02. Making of the Joker
In this Tutorial Maya used for the base model, ZBrush for details, Photoshop for texturing and matte painting, shave and haircut for the hair and Mental ray for rendering.
03. Facial Animation Rig for Delgo
This Tutorial Created by Warren Grubb, Animation Director for Fathom Studios on the film Delgo. When They R&D for the feature film Delgo, he was Technical Director and he knew that they would need a facial rig for their characters that was more powerful and flexible than standard multi-targeted blendshape rigs. The solution they came up with, described in the tutorial.
04. Making of Varga In MAYA
This Tutorial created for a characters which is Artist’s entry for theDominance War II Competition. The main theme of the competition was to design a game (low-poly) character while adhering to some rules (limitations) about the specs that we could use for geometry and textures. He used Maya/Mudbox/Photoshop, etc . for the project.
05. Creating an Old Farm
This tutorial is targeted at those with an intermediate level of modeling and texturing experience. Artist took as an inspiration the typical American farm house but the model has some European influences added to enhance the personality of the building and the surrounding objects. Even if the scene as a whole is meant to be photorealistic, some of the details, such as proportions, colors, object placement or volumes are e bit exaggerated to make the game look more spectacular. This of course depends of the type of game in which the asset will be included, as the location of the player will be very important. The level of details is dictated by how far the player will be from the object and how often / how much will the player look at it. These requirements usually translate into polygon and texture budgets. More details as the tutorial progresses.
06. High polygon realistic character creation
This is an overview of creating high polygon realistic 3D characters (with a particular leaning toward the creation of the above model). Artist’s inspiration for writing it, was that as a long time videogame artist used to working with real-time constraints, he wanted to learn high resolution modeling techniques, and he couldn’t really find all the info needed on the subject in one handy place. It’s a pretty barebones overview, since there is an entire books worth of material if everything were to be covered in serious detail. So He’s really talking about high level principles. It’s also geared toward capturing a likeness, since that makes up the vast majority of the work he do, but he won’t talk about rigging or lighting or rendering, since they’re really not his areas of expertise, and entire tutorials in themselves. He’s attempting to keep it as non software specific as possible, but forgive him If he lapse into occasional Maya terminologies.
07. Revolution
Artist’s (Zhang Yang, China) inspiration comes from a fiction story which tells a war between human beings and machines. Human beings were almost extinct. The survivors became stronger by aberrance. Can we win? He think it looks like Matrix
This image wants to express the rebellious spirits of human beings, foretelling that the victory finally will be coming. Therefore, He put the character into a obscure and repressive environment and wanted to express the human power through the gesture and body language of the character. What’s more, there is a big area light source in the background which stands for the victory. In order to make the whole image full of magnificence; He decided to make use of a huge city to be his background. The whole image is filled with chaos and destroys, but meanwhile He don’t want it to look too horrific and bloody.
08. Street Cop Workflow
Very Interesting Tutorial about how to built “Street Cop” with the help of Maya, Photoshop etc.
09. How to Build A Next-Gen Game Car
This tutorial is intended to present a method of creating a next gen vehicle asset. The difficulty level is medium, so to better understand and use this tutorial, the reader needs to have a basic understanding of the processes involved in modeling and texturing an object in Maya. The asset presented here will be a generic vehicle with a low polycount that has diffuse, specular and normal map textures.
10. Character Walk Through
It’s a character walk through of a character called Kreacher, a house elf character taken from the harry potter books.
11. Making of Sohrab
The character you seen in the picture is one of the most famous Iranian historical characters named Sohrab and he is the son of Rostam, the greatest Iranian hero. In the story Rostam (the father) kills sohrab (his son) as an unknown enemy and this is one of the most tragic legends of Iranian culture. The original tragedy belongs to 7000 years ago. Now, Here in this tutorial you can see how to make Sohrab in Maya.
12. How to create a model of a sport carNissan 350-Z
This is a step-by-step tutorial that explains how to create 350Z’s body using polygonal modeling in Maya environment, but you can apply this technique to other poly-modeling software.
13. Model a Rocket with Particle Trail in Maya
In this tutorial, Artist going to show you how to create a rocket using NURBS, and then animate its movement using path curve. He’ll also show how to make a simple smoke trail.
14. Rim Design Tutorial
In this tutorial you can Learn how to designing wheels, the tutorial is done in Maya 7, but Artist try and keep techniques as broad as possible so you can follow it in any other 3D applications.
15. How to model a screwdriver and render it with mental ray
This is a basic modelling tutorial that will teach you how to make a screw-driver and render it with FG (Final Gather) With global illumination, HDRI (High dynamic ranged imagery) And DoF (Depth of field, optional).
16. Creating optimized caustics in Maya Mray
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to make fast and optimized caustics effect with maya and mental Ray.
17. Making of Quiet Room
Here in this tutorial you can see the general process that Artist went through to create the “Quiet Room.” He used Autodesk Maya to model all of the objects and used Photoshop to do the texturing.
18. Realistic Eye Modeling for 3D Characters
It’s a very simple tutorial on how to model and apply shaders to get realistic eyes, the “windows of your character’s soul”. A lot of times, bad eyes can “kill” your character literally, even if it has the most perfect modeling of the world. The importance of the eyes is exactly this: give life to your character. Therefore, don’t underestimate this very important step of CG character construction… if not, you’ve only created “puppets”.
19. Growing Flowers in Maya
In this tutorial Artist will show you how to create growing flowers from surface, the flowers will gradually randomly grow up and will retain their original status when they reach to growing limit.
20. Making of Cheese Platter
This tutorial created using Autodesk Maya 8.5 and Adobe Photoshop. It is actually a photo concept derived partially from some images which you can see inside the tutorial. Originally, Artist was told to create this based on the original reference, but he feel the point of Shading and Lighting is to show off your texturing skills and give it better lighting if possible. As you can see, the lights are overblown in the original picture. So he added more stuff like blue cheese, cheese cubes, brie cheese, almonds and crackers to make it busier and at the same time, make it look like a painting.
21. Real Time Character Modeling Tutorial
This is a short tutorial showing the method Artist use when modelling a real time character. This approach can also be adopted when creating subdivision surface models. we hope some of you find it informative and useful.
22. Making of Portrait of a Troll
Jonas Persson, Sweden (Artist) made this picture as a school project at “Nackademin Digital Graphics” in Stockholm. It was not only their first individual project but also the first where they could choose subject themselves. So he decided to do something funny, a troll which you also can learn inside the tutorial.
23. Modeling Morgane
This tutorial created by a Artist name Cousigne Adrien. His first step was to find a great design for the character as it was suppose to be the main character of a short movie. Therefore He worked on several models and different graphic styles in order to find the best visual aspect. An interesting aspect about this character is its simplicity just a sphere and a cone. So he ended up with a very cute character which you also can learn by following this tutorial.
24. Falling leaves with nCloth and Paint Effects
With nCloth, Maya users finally have a simple method for handling falling leaves. One can also easily attach leaves to branches and have the attachments broken by windforces by using nCloth constraints with glue strength. you can find the basic workflow inside this amazing tutorial.
25. Tutorial Maya rounded Edges
In this tutorial you learn that how to make rounded Edges using Maya.
26. SpriteBased Particle Trees
Sprite – Based Particle Tree’s offer a much better looking tree in today’s real time games. I would personally not normally recommend these types of trees’ as ‘overall’ coverage in your real time game, but when used in conjunction with the normal cross-sectional type tree, can be used to great effect. These kinds of trees’ are highly recommended to be used in area’s of your game where you want most visual impact, on a corner of a track, lining a field nearby, etc
Let’s get straight into how you create these types of trees, first off, I’m using Maya, but the theory can be utilized in any 3D package available today.
27. Breaking Subsurface Scattering into Render Layers in Maya
This tutorial is more about the process of breaking the subsurface into render layers and compositing them in post, rather than how to use the miss_fast_skin_maya subsurface shader. There are several rather excellent subsurface tutorials out there on the internet, But I personally think this one is very simple and effective.
28. Instancer And Curve Flow Tutorial
This tutorial is created by Aziz Khan, In this tutorial he will show you how to use (Curve flow) with instancer to create flock of birds, insects, Fishes, sheep’s, cows and etc. Maya has wide range of powerful effects to create unbelievable animations and visual effects, that is why the most film industries are prefer to work with Maya.
29. Making of the Standing Beauty
— [Warning: this making contains the CG Nudity] —
This is a very Artistic Tutorial created by Asan Umerov, Ukraine. In this tutorial he tried to reproduce the style of classical black-and-white photographs.
30. LCD Monitor
In this tutorial you can learn the basic modeling in Maya version 6.0 using allot extrude, scale, move, and split polygon object to create a LCD Monitor.
31. Making of Ingrid Bergman
At the age of 17, Ingrid Bergman auditioned for and was accepted to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. During her first summer break, she was hired at a Swedish film studio, which consequently led to her leaving the Royal Dramatic Theater to work in films full time, after having attended for only one year. At the age of 21, she married a dentist, Petter Lindström (who would later become a neurosurgeon). In 1938, she gave birth to a daughter.
Finding good references is the key to making a good likeness, so in this tutorial you can learn how to Making of Ingrid Bergman.
32. Making of Tiger Zoo
It’s a very interesting tutorial about making of a tiger zoo from the Artist’s collection of photographs During his travel in the South East of Asia where he visited Sriracha Tiger Zoo in Thailand and He took many photos of all the animals living there.
33. Making of Skullhead Mobster
This tutorial created by a talented artist Harsh Borah, from Vancouver, Canada. He got inspired for this character when he saw a sketch somebody did in his life drawing teacher’s sketchbook. It just clicked him and he thought of making it in CG.
34. Making of The Last Elf
This Article created by Piotr Fox Wysocki, from Poland. The idea was to create exact models just like in a real life. That means no displacement, just pure geometry. And it was a modeling experiment, to see if it’s worth to suffer so much. he realized it would be too simple to create a character and he decided to create and write a making of The Last Elf in an interviewing way.
35. Making of the Fruit Tarts
This tutorial created by female artist Hau Ming (Jamie) Li. It is also a photo concept derived partially from some images which you can see inside the tutorial.
36. Create a gear and render it realisticly with Mental Ray
This tutorial is primarily focused on rendering. It will teach; Final gathers with metal ray, DGS shaders, basic polygon modelling methods, Depth of field. You will need; Mental Ray, an HDRI map, and Maya 6.0
37. Using Sun and Sky in Mental Ray with Maya
With Maya 8.5 mental ray’s got some new fancy options and modes. One of them is the Sun and Sky system. In this tutorial, Artist going to guide you through some of new features.
38. Modeling Tire
This sport car tire modeling tutorial created by Aziz Khan, from Afghanistan. In this tutorial he will show you how to create realistic looking sport car tire in Maya, He tried to explain every necessary things with visual screen shoots. We hope this could helps you to grasp it easily during modeling.
39. Secrets of Swimsuit Babe
This tutorial created by artist name Jimmy Chow, from Hong Kong. Making an attractive woman is always a goal for most CG enthusiasts. It’s also true to him. After a few years’ learning, He think it’s time to make one himself. Apart from attractiveness, He also want it to be a full body character, have long hairs; long legs, healthy skin tone, wearing high-heel shoes, and he want to avoid nudity as well. The costume of the character would need to show most of the body. The types to choose are lingerie and swimsuit. He decided for the latter after he came across some Jantzen’s swimsuits in a magazine. The one he adopted is its 2007 design and it can be found in its website www.jantzen.com
40. Model a Spitfire War Plane
This this (Spit Fire War Plane) tutorial created by Aziz Khan, from Afghanistan. In this tutorial he will show you how to model a spit fire war plane, this tutorial is pretty handy for those of you who are in love with old war planes. After reading this tutorial you will be able to model your own planes, the model will be kind of low poly and pretty suitable for game engines if you want to use.
41. Making eyelid rig with driven keys and expressions
In this tutorial we’re going to see the making of a eyelid rig with driven keys and expressions
42. Making of the Steam MasterNext-Gen Game Head
This tutorial will present the workflow used by the character artists working at AMC Studio when creating a Next Gen character. There are alternatives to this, but prior production experience has led me to believe that this method gives the best satisfactory results. The inspiration for the character comes from Asimov’s sci-fi novels, with a bit of Steam Punk, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, etc.
43. Mentalray studio lighting
This is a quick tutorial on how to achieve a basic studio lighting setup with maya and mental ray using a single HDR image and final gather.
44. 3d low character tutorial
In this tutorial we’re going to see the creation of a Low Poly character in 3D.
45. Creating dynamic mud effect in Maya using soft body
Our goal in this tutorial is to make effect that one dynamic sphere make trail on surface while moving over its surface, similar like some ball moving over mud.
46. Creating a tea cup in maya
In this tutorial you`ll going to learn how to model and texture a tea cup.
47. Basic Modeling and UV Mapping a Cigarette Box
In this tutorial you will learn basic modeling and UV mapping for a cigarette box.
Resources References worth Mentioning
Find Something Missing?
While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great Tutorials. Feel free to share it with us.
WOW!! What a amazing collection. Thanks DKumar.
Ohh Shit…This is TOTALLY AWESOME..!
hi matt i want your gravator, where could i get!
very good collection, soon i’m going to study maya by this inspirations!
thanks instantshift and DKumar
Great resource. Maya is the lord of all 3D graphics programs. I specially like 3DSMax coz it’s simple and the second reason is that I could not learn Maya. lol :)
Thanks man.
Nice round-up. Very useful. thanks!
Noupe did a 3dMax tutorial round up 2 days ago, and many of the readers asked for Maya tutorials. You acted pretty fast and made it. Good job man.
About #43. Mentalray studio lighting
I think that editor don’t know anything about Mental ray to select this tutorial. The creator of this tutorial is using tottally WRONG and not optimised settings for this type of scene. He’s shooting 500 FG rays for each frame to light a ball.. On a screenshot in this tutorial you can see a lot of splotchyness and this guy is saying that it’s a low settings. This FG rays can be lowered and splotchynes fixed by using higher interpolation.. He’s not using fallof.. Eh, there’s so much of error there. Next thing is that this guy is using 10 point depth of refraction.. And in this scene has 0 refraction. Another thing to waste time and computer memory. If anybody would render a simple animation with this crazy setup it will take too long to render and it will be bugged with Final Gather flickering, splotchyness… It’s a shame to promote someone who is teaching people doing things WRONG.
this list is good but i like video maya tutorial where i can follow along rather then just get a general overview
Awesome tuts. Thx Mr. Administrator
Really awesome yaar
can u send some tutorial
nice very nice thanks,
Oh at last i am at home…thanks to everybody
thanks this site if very helpfull for 3d learners
wow! great list of maya tutorials. most of them are very useful. but devianArt link are worst. I didn’t like them. I love 3ds max. Its very simple. but i am learning maya. so these are helpful.
Instantshift is great.
Incredible Maya Tutorials Around :: Reflex Stock Photo Blog
nice list check out some other maya tutorials at http://www.cgwhat.com1
Wee need more 3D Blogs! Thanks for this post.
dkumar u r jst rocking yaar
Greattttt Fitttttttttttttttttt Cooooooooooool !!!!!!!!!
face modeling is incomplete. plzz show the full method……….
this is a great place for those who are thirsty to know and create.
Awesome Tutorials …. Thanks
Very nice collections ..
real unselfish tutorials.
this all are awsome modaling.
i am work in maya , 3dmax and all multimedia software. adobe softwre………
nice collection…….
Great resources! way handy
Great collection of tutorials!!!! its really helpful!!! i was really searching for such tutorials…….lol!!! :)
thnx man!!!
I just started on this 3D modelling thing. This tutorials collection is both very helpful and inspiring. Thanks very to whoever posting this.
I especially like the screwdriver modelling
Hey Awesome collection you have here…
Though i’m still junior for this work… :PP
I started using maya and 3ds max is too hard for me to use and was able to make models from above…
THANKS!!! :DDD
really inspiring works thanks 4 sharing
kompresör
Nice list you have there :)
Maya is cool and its like magic softwear… i would like to learn about Maya and also 3Dmax….. turely its cool
nice tutorials
If there’s a better collection of free tutorial on the Net, I haven’t found it. Thanks!
great work !!! amazing advices !!
your collection is just too good !
Great! thank you very much for share!
very good collection, soon i’m going to study maya by this inspirations!
thanks instantshift… :)
hey u have nice collection of posts i’ve collected some of the pages of ur site which i like the most i’ve copied these postd in my site ,,,,,
Well, I can say that this list is great!
That’s one epic selection DKumar! Thanks for sharing these 45 tutorials with us!
Just one thing that I think is worth to be added: a tutorials that shows you how to make a Maya model 3D printable. In Maya you need some extra file preparation steps before you can send your files to the printers. This tutorial might help: http://i.materialise.com/blog/entry/3d-printing-with-maya-step-by-step-tutorial-on-how-to-turn-your-3d-model-into-a-3d-print
Cheers,
Fabian
nice very nice thanks,
you tutorials very nice thanks,
Magníficos tutoriales. Muchas gracias por crearlos.
awesome collection of Maya tutorials, but some links are broken, plz fix it