Chapter 1. Working in Maya

Maya's working environment has evolved to accommodate both the individual artist as well as a team of artists working in a production pipeline. The interface in Maya 2011 has changed significantly from previous versions of the program to reflect this evolution. The interface presents tools, controls, and data in an organized fashion to easily allow you to bring your fantastic creations to life.

Understanding the way Maya organizes data about the objects, animation, textures, lights, dynamics, and all the other elements contained within the 3D environment of a scene is essential to understanding how the interface is organized. Maya uses what's known as the Dependency Graph to keep track of the various packets of data, ...

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