Art of illusion

From the Main Menu Bar, select Create > Polygon Primitives > Cube >.

Maya creates a 3D cube primitive object and places it at the center (origin)

of the Maya workspace.

The Status Line, located directly below the Main Menu bar, contains a variety

of items, most of which are used while modeling or working with objects

within Maya. Many of the Status Line items are represented by a graphical

icon. The icons save space in the Maya interface and allow for quick access to

tools used most often.

In this lesson, you learn about some of the Status Line areas.

You’ve already learned the first item on the Status line: the Menu Selector

used to select between menu sets.

The fifth group of icons are used to control the Snap Mode for objects and

components.

The last section comprise three buttons that are used to show or hide editors,

including the Attribute Editor, Channel Box, Layer Editor, and Tool Settings.

The default display shows the Channel Box and the Layer Editor. When you

create an object, like the cube for example, information about that object

displays in these editors. You will learn how to use these editors later in this

chapter.

For better organization on the Status Line, all of the icon buttons are broken

into groups that you can expand and collapse, as shown.