From the course: Maya 2026 Essentials Training

Creating polygonal objects - Maya Tutorial

From the course: Maya 2026 Essentials Training

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Creating polygonal objects

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- [Instructor] Now, let's start modeling in Maya. When we model in Maya, we are usually using what are called polygons. And to model with polygons, we usually start with what's called a polygonal primitive, which is just a basic shape, and then we rework that into whatever object we want. So, let's start off by looking at some of the basic polygonal primitives we have available in Maya. Now, you can find these in one of two places. On our shelves we have a polymodeling shelf and it has a lot of the more common shapes here. We can also go into the Create Menu under Polygon Primitives, and then if we want, we can tear that off if we want to take a look at these. So we have a sphere, cube, cylinder, cone, basic shapes, and each one of these also has a little box to the right. And that just is the Tool Settings for that particular object. So if I were to create a basic sphere, it would have a radius of 1, divisions of 20 and 20. Now, if I were to turn off this Interactive Creation and press Sphere, that's exactly what I would get. So, if I have that sphere selected, go into the Attribute Editor. You'll see here under polySphere, we have that radius that we had of 1, as well as subdivisions of 20 and 20. Now if I want, in the Attribute Editor, I can dial any of these up or down or just type in a number. So if I wanted that to have a radius of 7 and maybe subdivisions of say, 16 and 32, I can do that. So, these primitives are kind of flexible. You can change them after the fact. Now, if you want to create things a little more interactively, you can do what's called Interactive Creation. So, I'm going to go ahead and select the sphere and delete it. Turn on Interactive Creation in the Polygon Primitives menu, select Sphere, and now when I left-click and drag, I'm basically just dragging out that sphere. So, the radius is determined by how I drag. And the actual subdivisions are determined by what's in Tool Settings. In this case, it would be 20 by 20. Now, we can do the same thing for the other primitives. So, here I have a cube, and if I look at the tool settings for that, the default is with height and depth, as well as the number of divisions. So, let's just go ahead and make a basic cube. Now, this is more of a box. It doesn't have to be a cube. You can have whatever dimensions you want. And if I go over to the Attribute Editor for this particular cube, you can see we have a polyCube1 tab, and this is the number of subdivisions in width, height, and depth. So again, you can change this after the fact. And we also have controls here for the actual width, height, and depth as well. So if you want a specific size, you can type those numbers in. Now, we do have additional types of primitives. We have a cylinder, and for that, you basically just create the initial circle and then drag up the height, a cone, which is very similar. You create the base, and then again, drag up the height. And for all of these, you can go into the Attribute Editor and change your subdivisions as well. We also have a Torus, which basically a donut shape. So, you drag out the initial radius and then the second left-click and drag basically determines that thickness. Now, I'm going to go ahead and select all of these. I'm just going to marquee select these and hit Delete. And then the next one is a plane, which pretty simple. It's just a flat plane. And if you want, you can go into the Attribute Editor or start with the Tool Settings and change your width and height. So, however much detail you want. And then, the last one is Disc. Now, this one, I'm going to go into polyDisc1 in the Attribute Editor. You can change the radius. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and move this up above that grid so you can see a little bit better. We can change number of sides so you can see how that is affected. We also have a pull-down for whether we want this to be quads, triangles, a pie shape, caps, which basically like the top of a cylinder or a circle. And then, you can change the number of subdivisions so that way you have as much detail as you want. Now in addition to these basic primitives, we have a couple of more. We have what's called a platonic solid, and that allows you to do anything from a cube to an octahedron, dodecahedron, all of those kind of fancy shapes. I'm going to go ahead and select that and hit Delete. Pyramids, very similar to the cone, but with a square base. A prism. Okay. A pipe, this can be very handy. So, basically it's kind of like the Torus tool. You drag out the base, drag the height, and then you drag the thickness. So, it's three drags for this. The pipe is the outside radius, the height, and then that inside radius or the thickness. And then, we have other ones such as helixes, gears, soccer balls, and so on. So, there's a lot of different primitives that you can use in Maya. And these can be the basis for modeling more complex objects.

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