Wiley Mastering Autodesk Maya 2012 978-0-470-91977-4 Manuel D’Utilisation

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 presents tools, controls, and 
data in an organized fashion to easily allow you to bring your fantastic creations to life. Maya’s 
interface is made up of four views: the perspective, front, side, and top. Each camera can be cus-
tomized. Additional cameras can also be created. In each camera view or viewport is a viewing 
cube located in the upper right corner. The cube allows you to quickly set the current camera to 
a specific view by clicking on a highlighted area of the cube.

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, known as nodes, and how they affect each other. 
Any single element of a Maya scene consists of multiple nodes connected in a web, and each one of 
these nodes is dependent on another. Maya’s interface consists of editing windows that allow you 
to connect these nodes in an intuitive way and edit the information contained within each node. 

There is usually more than one way to accomplish a task in Maya. As you grow comfortable 

with the interface, you’ll discover which editing windows best suit your working style. 

This chapter is a brief overview of what professionals need to understand when working in 

Maya. You’ll learn what types of nodes you’ll be working with and how they can be created and 
edited in Maya. You’ll also learn how to work with projects and scene data as well as the various 
windows, panels, and controls that make up the interface. This will help you whether you are 
working alone or as part of a team of artists.

If you’ve never used Maya before, we strongly encourage you to read the Maya documenta-

tion as well as Introducing Maya 2012 by Dariush Derakhshani (Sybex, 2011). This chapter is 
about working with nodes, but it is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to each and every 
control within Maya. That information is contained within the Maya documentation.

In this chapter, you will learn to:

Understand transform and shape nodes

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Create a project

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Use assets

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Create file references

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A Maya scene is a system of interconnected nodes that are packets of data. The data within a 
node tells the software about what exists within the world of a Maya scene. The nodes are the 

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