This tutorial will teach you how to model a snowman and animated it using Maya’s most basic tools.
Setting up Maya for the Tutorial
Before you begin this tutorial, it is recommended that you reset Maya to its default preferences. Please go to Maya’s Main Menu > Window > Settings and Preferences > Preferences. This will open up Maya’s Preference Window. In the Preference Window, go to the Edit menu and select “Restore Default Settings”.

Maya has a “Project” based system which will help you manage your files. It is recommended that you create a new project for this tutorial by going to Maya’s Main Menu > File > Project > New. When the Project Window pops up. You will need to name the project, then select the location that the project will be created in. Click the “Use Default” button before pressing “Accept”. Maya will automatically manage your files to this project from now on.

Modeling the Snowman
Creating The Body
To create the conventional snowman we will need to start off with 3 spheres. Maya has a list of default shapes that can be used to create the base body of our snowman. These shapes are called “Primitives” and can be located in the “Create” Menu. The following will create the 3 sphere primitives to build the body of our snowman.
1. Go to the Main Menu and click “Create > NURBS Primitives > Sphere”.
2. After the creation of the shape, Maya will automatically select it, then update the Channel Box which will contain the attributes of our object selected. The Channel Box can be used to change the name of a selected object or modify its attributes. To change the name of an object through the Channel Box, simply click on the field that carries the name. Change the name to “Body_Bottom”. Then scale the sphere so that it is 3 units larger in X, Y and Z. To do this, you will have to go to the bottom area of the Channel Box and enter in the value “3” in the fields named “Scale X”, “Scale Y”, and “Scale Z”.

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