At Digital-Tutors, we've found that many students starting out in modeling have difficulty in creating the specific vision they have. In many cases it's not necessarily a lack of knowledge of the tools as much as it is a lack of confidence and experience. So, to give you a head start on your modeling, we've put together a number of tips collected from production and from teaching students that will help you build the best models you can with minimal frustration.

In Maya 2011 Essential Training, George Maestri demonstrates the tools and feature set in Maya, as well as the skills necessary to model, texture, animate, and render projects with this deep and robust piece of 3D animation software from Autodesk. This course takes an in-depth tour of Maya's interface, including navigating and manipulating objects in 3D and customizing the workspace. The course also covers object creation and modeling basics, shading and texturing, surface mapping techniques, character rigging, and lastly, rendering and final output. Exercise files accompany the course.