The article below was taken from: http://www.instantshift.com/2009/03/06/45-incredible-maya-tutorials-around/
All credits belong to instantshift.com. The article was repasted below as a mirror.
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
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
08. Street Cop Workflow
Very Interesting Tutorial about how to built ?Street Cop? with the help of Maya, Photoshop etc.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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).
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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?.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
25. Tutorial Maya rounded Edges
In this tutorial you learn that how to make rounded Edges using Maya.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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 Lindstr?m (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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
44. 3d low character tutorial
In this tutorial we?re going to see the creation of a Low Poly character in 3D.
Tutorial Link
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.
Tutorial Link
46. Creating a tea cup in maya
In this tutorial you`ll going to learn how to model and texture a tea cup.
Tutorial Link
47. Basic Modeling and UV Mapping a Cigarette Box
In this tutorial you will learn basic modeling and UV mapping for a cigarette box.
Tutorial Link
In a 3DSMAXhead. Should I be learning Maya? Lots of content on May is coming out. Should I be worried.
signed
Worried
Zappy: My opinion is as such, both apps have been around for over a decade and both have their own merits, its not what app you use its the results you get.. Use whatever feels comfortable to you and just create stuff and have fun doing it.. its like making a chair from wood, does it really matter what hammer you use to drive in the nails? As long as the chair functions properly and looks good everyone wins.. I suppose it would also be like asking should I use a PC or MAC..? :) Its only a tool. Just enjoy…
GREAT Nex!!!Thx a loooot
Does anyone want to be a hero and compile all these tutorials into a torrent so they can be viewed offline and downloaded at once?
It would be a shame to lose all this stuff due to dead links etc.
To my understanding, All these links lead to free content on direct pages. So it wouldn’t be comparable to lets say.. RS deleting files like they usually do. Also they’re all mostly web pages, So would have to rip all of those, which would be meh to get all the ads out and extra content D:
*Shrugs
Thanks for the comments Zeeds. I’m very happy with Max, but was starting to wonder… Cheers!
INCREDIBLE!
Hello guys, i will be very glad if someone will be kind enough to share his rapidshare premium account with me. You know how frustrating it is downloading from free account.Hey pls i will be very glad.Thanx u all. take care.
Regards Dexter.
Hey guys this is my email just incase you want to help me out.
Thanx again…
[email protected]
nice collections thanks dude
Good blog!
Best post!
Max post
Hey. I couldn’t get through to this page the other day. Anyone else had the problem?