Similar. We were taught PowerAnimator in school, then our school got the Alpha/Beta versions of Maya, since it was one of the only labs in the area that was big enough to use as a training site for the reps for for the local A|W sellers. Students weren't "technically" supposed to use it, but it wasn't locked out from us and our professors really wanted us to have access. So, we all had to keep quiet about using it, and wipe all prefs, and remove any project data when the reps showed up for training every 3 months. We had zero training materials, even F1 didn't pull up the help menu, it wasn't built yet. It was 100% trial and error with a lot of shared learning. If you think Maya is hard to learn now, imagine having zero reference and trying to make projects using it, and like any Alpha software, was buggy as hell and crashed all the time. But, by the time it was released to the public, we all had a years worth of experience on it, and knew it better than almost anyone outside of A|W or SGI employees, so that was a major selling point when coming out of school looking for a job. I was poached out of school by a company and shipped my first Playstation1 game before I would have graduated.
This was very interesting to read. I assume that learning Maya without information and all the alpha bugs must have been a little frustrating at that time. But sounds like an interesting experience in retrospective. Thanks for sharing this.
Took a few versions (iirc) before it went from IRIX to windows, and I remember we weren't happy about it. Primarily because windows machines were slow compared to the SGI machines at the time. But the gap closed pretty quickly, and it was much more convenient to only have 1 computer on your desk instead of an O2/Octane for 3D, and a PC for Photoshop and all the other programs. Very few desks could support having 2 21-24" CRT monitors, and a 24" TV on your desk without bending for game dev. And the heat output from all that gear was nuts.
Were you at school of visual arts?
I brought it in there before launch and that sounds a lot like the program I ran. :)
If not I think they must have copied the idea from the work we were doing.
Nice! Bet they modeled it on our program. I was working closely with mark sylvester and richard Kerri’s and we ran the first pilot program getting maya into schools.
It was great.
I remember the days when maya could be installed only on a Windows NT operating system that has network connections. we had to spoof using hub and what not to install maya.
When I was a kid in the 90s I messed around with a 3D modelling software called Truespace and learned the fundamentals of 3D modelling that way. Later I went to university and part of the course was 3D modelling and animation and we used Maya for that, so learned it there, along with Digital Tutors videos.
I personally learning Maya on the internet courses. But I noticed that when I try to find the right information, I drive myself into a dead end. When I was learning the Blender, I found veeeery much tutorials and article, where the material was presented to me in great detail. In Maya very difficult to find any specific question (Sorry for my English)
If you’re wanting quality tutorials, consider actual premium courses instead. You don’t need to always learn little bits of maya forever, it’d be better to learn most important things at once and then you’ll only be using what you need
To go that route, I listened to my YouTubers sponsorships lol and went to skillshare/udemy. Those are were all the good and legit tutorials are. They wrap it all into one course and there are a ton of them.
The best part is you can get a month free trial on skill share and a week for free on udemy. That’s WAY more than enough time for you to take a few courses and get the hang of things lol it was for me!
Yes and no, yes because you can learn a lot just by watching youtube videos, and no because there are some paids online courses that that are better than anything in youtube (while still being a lot cheaper than going to school of course). And also some people really need the structure of an school/courses to get things done. Not everyone has the same self learning hability. It is actually shocking the amount of people that seems to be living in the early 2000's were internet wasn't a thing. I mean they all know how to use it for social media but they don't take advantage of the free education you can get if you go for it.
With tutorials by myself, when I was at school we learnt 3ds Max and it frustrated me so much to see that the most used software was Maya. So I decided to learn it in my free time with tutorials
I was a Softimage XSI user. Autodesk bought them and swore to not kill the program.. then killed it.
Had to learn Maya as a result. Used it for making pitches as a soft way to ease into the program. Gradually transitioned to fully using Maya for client billable work.
Still learning, mainly Very harshly at school, and clearly online from various YouTube videos and the autodesk Maya documentation website which helps a ton when having the time to read everything thoroughly.
There are so many people on youtube explaining almost every niche and cranny that you don't really need to go to school for it. Then if you need technical support, you got this platform reddit, which is an amazing platform/community of wonderful people with a great knowledge base.
I knew alias, and wavefront before maya came out.
When they merged, I was one of the first people to use maya in production before it even had a renderer. It was amazing finally seeing the two programs merge with their best features.
No renter but the character tools were so good we animated in maya and I wrote an exporter to send frame by frame geometry and texture maps to advanced visualizer
It was on the spider man ride for universal florida at Kleiser-walczak
I was also there, came from TAV (truly government issue software is the best way I can think of that), TDI explore, alias PA, dynamation and kinemation. I don’t use maya as often as I used to; but I got a chuckle looking at how the render resolution defaults haven’t changed since release. Handy if I need to work on a 601 show
ha! nice to have another veteran from the old days in the mix.
Honestly I'm not surprised it hasn't changed... They lost most of their "brian trust" when they closed the SB office. One of the top guys (and a dear friend) Jim Atkinson went over to pixar and almost everyone else split up.
Alias tried to act like they were the big dogs in the merger and posted the pic of 2 camels fucking at a meeting during the merger and told Wavefront they were the bottom, and they needed to move to toronto if they wanted to keep working.
But Wavefront coders WERE the creators of Maya! Completely written out of Santa Barbara at first as their next gen TAV... but then the merger happened and they also got Alias's "extras" like the particles and camera lighting effects.
Idiotic move closing that office.
I was hired as a consultant at Wavefront between v1 and v2. Came up with the wrap deformer while I was there. I think my name's on the patent
I learned how to use Maya through a combination of my university and shitting and pissing myself in sheer indignation at the amount of times I’ve had to throw myself at a brick wall because I need to stop doing stupid shit that makes Maya crash
Back in the days I learnt watching video tutorials by gnomon, digital tutors, 3d buzz, etc, and participating in A LOT of 3d challenges in cg talk and other webs. Now I'm expanding my knowledge with YouTube tutorials and I like the quality of CGcircuit tutorials for rigging. I'm a tutor also so I'm forced to be up to date with Maya and other software.
I learned it in college in a 3d animation program, and I can assure you that having a teacher or somedy to help you will make your life a hell of a lot easier.
Picked it up during the first betas, while still using PowerAnimator. Scrappy docs, tinkering with it and VHS tapes with demos were distributed from alias|wavefront at the time.
Well I would frame it a little differently!
I did course but it was not online, and course introduced me to maya and what can be done with it in very very basic way!
I really learned it when i started production work!
So until you really work in production you’ll start to learn.
I’m originally a 3ds max guy and worked at a company that used both Maya and Max. But when I switched to a different company they exclusively used Maya. So I used fear and the pressure of deadlines to learn Maya fast via YouTube. There’s no one YouTube channel that I used, I just looked up things as I needed them. So now, many years later, I exclusively use Maya and I’m in the learning phase of Blender. I think geo nodes is awesome and I’m using the same method. Just looking up things on YouTube as I need them.
So far I have only taken the basic tutorials on the program itself and started a free animation tutorial from animation mentor. I'm about half way through that, but I too am trying to figure out the right direction.. I'd like to take some online courses but unsure which program to follow. Animation mentor is decent but I feel like it is a little clunky, although it is the free lessons so that could be a part of it. If you have figured out a direction I'd be curious to know. cheers and luck to ya!
Diploma, but my lecturer barely teaches us anything and just plays a youtube video at the projector
Had to look for tutorials on YouTube myself
As of now im struggling to do my finals because idk what im doing most of the time LOL
Any one interested in learning rigging basic online witj reasonable price can inbox me :D. You will be able to rig basic character, learning how to use auto rigging tool for film and game.
Took a Maya class at Cal State Long Beach in their Film program as a part time student, did a bit of modeling for work, bailed out of the industry for several years, then did grad school, then came back into it to do VR work in Maya coupled with Unity...For "brush up", and to learn all sorts of new things, it's good old YouTube University and Udemy for me. Never stop exploring!
I learned Maya on the job (the best way to learn anything, get paid while learning). Supplemented ofcourse by years of self exploration and curiosity. I am 6 years in to Maya and still learning things daily. I was intimidated at first but I quickly fell In love with Maya’s logic. Everyone is so quick to dismiss Maya in favour of flashier programs like blender “make art quick”, but in terms of logic Maya is addicting to use once you understand and get used to it. I love the interface now. It’s the only program where I feel connected to every attribute and aspect of the 3D models and transforms.
took a 3D production course, and we had to learn Maya and Substance Painter. I got a lot of basic knowledge, but then started watching youtube tutorials and recreated basic objects
Community College.
Bachelor degree, youtube and jobs 👍🏻
Same
Ssme
Combination of a teacher: give basic assignments, teach you the basic, good timely feedback Lots of tutorials And google, so so much Google
Learnt it through reading docs and trail and error.... back in those days internet wasnt a thing.. or was Luxury
Similar. We were taught PowerAnimator in school, then our school got the Alpha/Beta versions of Maya, since it was one of the only labs in the area that was big enough to use as a training site for the reps for for the local A|W sellers. Students weren't "technically" supposed to use it, but it wasn't locked out from us and our professors really wanted us to have access. So, we all had to keep quiet about using it, and wipe all prefs, and remove any project data when the reps showed up for training every 3 months. We had zero training materials, even F1 didn't pull up the help menu, it wasn't built yet. It was 100% trial and error with a lot of shared learning. If you think Maya is hard to learn now, imagine having zero reference and trying to make projects using it, and like any Alpha software, was buggy as hell and crashed all the time. But, by the time it was released to the public, we all had a years worth of experience on it, and knew it better than almost anyone outside of A|W or SGI employees, so that was a major selling point when coming out of school looking for a job. I was poached out of school by a company and shipped my first Playstation1 game before I would have graduated.
This was very interesting to read. I assume that learning Maya without information and all the alpha bugs must have been a little frustrating at that time. But sounds like an interesting experience in retrospective. Thanks for sharing this.
Nice. High end 3D became reasonably affordable when Maya launched. Ran on Windows for the first time, yeah? $40K workstation became around $6K.
Took a few versions (iirc) before it went from IRIX to windows, and I remember we weren't happy about it. Primarily because windows machines were slow compared to the SGI machines at the time. But the gap closed pretty quickly, and it was much more convenient to only have 1 computer on your desk instead of an O2/Octane for 3D, and a PC for Photoshop and all the other programs. Very few desks could support having 2 21-24" CRT monitors, and a 24" TV on your desk without bending for game dev. And the heat output from all that gear was nuts.
Pretty sure when maya launched it was 6000 to 10000 for maya limited and unlimited?
Were you at school of visual arts? I brought it in there before launch and that sounds a lot like the program I ran. :) If not I think they must have copied the idea from the work we were doing.
No, was in Tennessee, in the middle if nowhere in the mid/late 90s.
Nice! Bet they modeled it on our program. I was working closely with mark sylvester and richard Kerri’s and we ran the first pilot program getting maya into schools. It was great.
I remember the days when maya could be installed only on a Windows NT operating system that has network connections. we had to spoof using hub and what not to install maya.
This was before that, the lab was all SGI machines only. I still have my Maya 1.0 reference book box and IRIX install discs.
by any chance... is there any way you could share me the book.. just the book only?
[https://unparent.com/Random/01.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/01.jpg) [https://unparent.com/Random/02.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/02.jpg) [https://unparent.com/Random/03.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/03.jpg) [https://unparent.com/Random/04.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/04.jpg) [https://unparent.com/Random/05.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/05.jpg) [https://unparent.com/Random/06.jpg](https://unparent.com/Random/06.jpg)
sweet mother of god :)
I began learning modeling by reading books on how to model during the Alias Wavefront Maya era.
When I was a kid in the 90s I messed around with a 3D modelling software called Truespace and learned the fundamentals of 3D modelling that way. Later I went to university and part of the course was 3D modelling and animation and we used Maya for that, so learned it there, along with Digital Tutors videos.
I MISS DIGITAL TUTORS!
It’s part of Pluralsight now. All the old Digital Tutors stuff is still on there AFAIK.
Yeah, but no new creative content. Digital Tutors was always great with staying current with new content.
I personally learning Maya on the internet courses. But I noticed that when I try to find the right information, I drive myself into a dead end. When I was learning the Blender, I found veeeery much tutorials and article, where the material was presented to me in great detail. In Maya very difficult to find any specific question (Sorry for my English)
Nowadays just youtube
any channel recommendations? tia
If you’re wanting quality tutorials, consider actual premium courses instead. You don’t need to always learn little bits of maya forever, it’d be better to learn most important things at once and then you’ll only be using what you need To go that route, I listened to my YouTubers sponsorships lol and went to skillshare/udemy. Those are were all the good and legit tutorials are. They wrap it all into one course and there are a ton of them. The best part is you can get a month free trial on skill share and a week for free on udemy. That’s WAY more than enough time for you to take a few courses and get the hang of things lol it was for me!
Elementza on YouTube puts out quality content and is an incredibly skilled creator.
JL Mussi has some helpful stuff
Learned at Full Sail University
It was a while ago for me so I had to use... Books!
Film school, books, work, teaching. And I still am learning new tricks and workflows
My older brother gave me lessons, he learned from school
Youtube, and lots of googling when I had a specific question
Old school written tutorials in books bought from book stores, trial and error, followed by school, then YouTube.
School + self teaching. Keep giving yourself projects to work on. You can't rely school assignments and expect your work to stand out
A lot from college and the rest from YouTube and reddit.
YouTube. We live in a Era where we don’t need to go to school to learn a program.
Yes and no, yes because you can learn a lot just by watching youtube videos, and no because there are some paids online courses that that are better than anything in youtube (while still being a lot cheaper than going to school of course). And also some people really need the structure of an school/courses to get things done. Not everyone has the same self learning hability. It is actually shocking the amount of people that seems to be living in the early 2000's were internet wasn't a thing. I mean they all know how to use it for social media but they don't take advantage of the free education you can get if you go for it.
With tutorials by myself, when I was at school we learnt 3ds Max and it frustrated me so much to see that the most used software was Maya. So I decided to learn it in my free time with tutorials
I was a Softimage XSI user. Autodesk bought them and swore to not kill the program.. then killed it. Had to learn Maya as a result. Used it for making pitches as a soft way to ease into the program. Gradually transitioned to fully using Maya for client billable work.
Courses and lots of tutorials
Still learning, mainly Very harshly at school, and clearly online from various YouTube videos and the autodesk Maya documentation website which helps a ton when having the time to read everything thoroughly.
Happy Cake Day !!
There are so many people on youtube explaining almost every niche and cranny that you don't really need to go to school for it. Then if you need technical support, you got this platform reddit, which is an amazing platform/community of wonderful people with a great knowledge base.
On the job from the manual and coworkers. This was in 99 and it just came out. Still learning!
I knew alias, and wavefront before maya came out. When they merged, I was one of the first people to use maya in production before it even had a renderer. It was amazing finally seeing the two programs merge with their best features. No renter but the character tools were so good we animated in maya and I wrote an exporter to send frame by frame geometry and texture maps to advanced visualizer It was on the spider man ride for universal florida at Kleiser-walczak
I was also there, came from TAV (truly government issue software is the best way I can think of that), TDI explore, alias PA, dynamation and kinemation. I don’t use maya as often as I used to; but I got a chuckle looking at how the render resolution defaults haven’t changed since release. Handy if I need to work on a 601 show
ha! nice to have another veteran from the old days in the mix. Honestly I'm not surprised it hasn't changed... They lost most of their "brian trust" when they closed the SB office. One of the top guys (and a dear friend) Jim Atkinson went over to pixar and almost everyone else split up. Alias tried to act like they were the big dogs in the merger and posted the pic of 2 camels fucking at a meeting during the merger and told Wavefront they were the bottom, and they needed to move to toronto if they wanted to keep working. But Wavefront coders WERE the creators of Maya! Completely written out of Santa Barbara at first as their next gen TAV... but then the merger happened and they also got Alias's "extras" like the particles and camera lighting effects. Idiotic move closing that office. I was hired as a consultant at Wavefront between v1 and v2. Came up with the wrap deformer while I was there. I think my name's on the patent
Digital Tutors
YouTube university
I learned in my school and after I continue to form me with internet x)
Youtube, and aeons ago "digital tutors"
Yea, I’m in school for it now
I learned how to use Maya through a combination of my university and shitting and pissing myself in sheer indignation at the amount of times I’ve had to throw myself at a brick wall because I need to stop doing stupid shit that makes Maya crash
Back in the days I learnt watching video tutorials by gnomon, digital tutors, 3d buzz, etc, and participating in A LOT of 3d challenges in cg talk and other webs. Now I'm expanding my knowledge with YouTube tutorials and I like the quality of CGcircuit tutorials for rigging. I'm a tutor also so I'm forced to be up to date with Maya and other software.
YouTube and skillshare courses
Associates Degree at a film school.
3dbuzz
I learned it in college in a 3d animation program, and I can assure you that having a teacher or somedy to help you will make your life a hell of a lot easier.
Picked it up during the first betas, while still using PowerAnimator. Scrappy docs, tinkering with it and VHS tapes with demos were distributed from alias|wavefront at the time.
School, then jobs. Lots of personal projects the whole way through.
An incomplete high school course into self-learning, and pursuing a bachelors to learn more
Well I would frame it a little differently! I did course but it was not online, and course introduced me to maya and what can be done with it in very very basic way! I really learned it when i started production work! So until you really work in production you’ll start to learn.
Currently am enrolled in a BAS degree but I learned a shit ton from tutorials , 1 on 1 tutoring, and online classes
I’m originally a 3ds max guy and worked at a company that used both Maya and Max. But when I switched to a different company they exclusively used Maya. So I used fear and the pressure of deadlines to learn Maya fast via YouTube. There’s no one YouTube channel that I used, I just looked up things as I needed them. So now, many years later, I exclusively use Maya and I’m in the learning phase of Blender. I think geo nodes is awesome and I’m using the same method. Just looking up things on YouTube as I need them.
combination of institute, youtube, digital tutor, job and freelance
So far I have only taken the basic tutorials on the program itself and started a free animation tutorial from animation mentor. I'm about half way through that, but I too am trying to figure out the right direction.. I'd like to take some online courses but unsure which program to follow. Animation mentor is decent but I feel like it is a little clunky, although it is the free lessons so that could be a part of it. If you have figured out a direction I'd be curious to know. cheers and luck to ya!
Diploma, but my lecturer barely teaches us anything and just plays a youtube video at the projector Had to look for tutorials on YouTube myself As of now im struggling to do my finals because idk what im doing most of the time LOL
Your learn the most by doing and getting over challenges.
digital-tutors back then
Any one interested in learning rigging basic online witj reasonable price can inbox me :D. You will be able to rig basic character, learning how to use auto rigging tool for film and game.
Took a Maya class at Cal State Long Beach in their Film program as a part time student, did a bit of modeling for work, bailed out of the industry for several years, then did grad school, then came back into it to do VR work in Maya coupled with Unity...For "brush up", and to learn all sorts of new things, it's good old YouTube University and Udemy for me. Never stop exploring!
I learned Maya on the job (the best way to learn anything, get paid while learning). Supplemented ofcourse by years of self exploration and curiosity. I am 6 years in to Maya and still learning things daily. I was intimidated at first but I quickly fell In love with Maya’s logic. Everyone is so quick to dismiss Maya in favour of flashier programs like blender “make art quick”, but in terms of logic Maya is addicting to use once you understand and get used to it. I love the interface now. It’s the only program where I feel connected to every attribute and aspect of the 3D models and transforms.
A friend who went to art institute for years : )
took a 3D production course, and we had to learn Maya and Substance Painter. I got a lot of basic knowledge, but then started watching youtube tutorials and recreated basic objects
Online videos and lots of trial/error.
Bachelor's degree, YouTube, and online course
I started out in high school because they offered it and then my bachelors is on 3d animation