Navigating through Maya is dependent on your ‘alt’ button and a mouse button. To rotate it is ‘Alt + Left Mouse Button’, to pan around it is ‘Alt + Middle Button’, and to zoom and zoom out it is ‘Alt + right Mouse Button’. If you would like to select and object and have in frame, you must select it and click the ‘F’ key. On the bottom left of the middle window you will find small green, red, and blue lines, these will show you the perspective in which your work is being looked at.
To save your project you simply go to ‘File + Save/Save As’. When you click ‘Save As’, it will ask if whether you would like to save it as Maya ASCII or Maya Binary. Maya ASCII is recommended because it allows for you to open the file in a text editor later on. ‘Increment and Save’ is helpful because it saves as you make changes to your work. Maya is an old software so it can become prone to crashing, that is why auto saving is very important when it comes to properly saving your work securely. You can do this by doing ‘Window + Preferences + Files/Projects’, from here you can set auto save to enabled.
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