Autodesk Maya is an application which used for animation, modeling, rendering and compositing. It offers you to create a project using these applications on same track.
Although Maya has many versions available in market or online but now mostly and current Maya version available is Autodesk 2010. It has complete version and having all features of animation. You can not learn Maya in 1 or 2 month. We can say that Maya is like a world which has many topics inside it, and these are complicated more and more with your requirement. There are menus animation, rendering, polygon, dynamic, surfaces.
First of all we begin our task with animation.
There are two main things that are important too,
Camera manipulating
Object manipulating,
Both are necessary for each other and it takes much time to learn camera manipulating as well as object manipulating.
Today we shall learn about time slider and range slider along with key setter. You can set key when and where you need. Keys are not specific, it maybe 100 maybe 1000 and 10000 etc, its all depend on your need. There are a small box in which you can set key on time line. And it also helps you to find key without any difficulties. Animated project can be played with the help of player on time line slider. Here is play, reverse, forward, step by step forward and reverse button are available.
There is range slider also to show range of animation. You can minimize or maximize the range either to click its sides. Another way for this its boxes. You can set range using these boxes. When you set key. Red color line appears on time slider. It means key is set now. You can set key with the help of animate and set key option. You can see it in below image.
Suppose we want to make Volleyball ground. We use cube polygon for it. One is flat and other in horizontal position. Then using sphere polygon you can create a ball. Then finally you can move the ball with time slider and range slider and play it in player.