A lot of courses that attempt to teach 3D animation software walk you through all the menus explaining where the tools and options are and what they do. This course is different. It puts you into the modeller's chair where you immediately learn how to model several different objects. And guess what? By learning how to model, you also learn all those amazing tools by seeing them in action.

The first project is a lava lamp. This is where you learn about constructing simple geometric shapes, transparency and more. The second project is "Frank the Bear" where you learn to sculpt and extrude a more complex "natural" shape manipulating vertices and faces. Here you learn about mirroring, duplicating, creating edge loops, subdiv proxy and lattice deformation techniques as "Frank" begins to take shape.

So instead of yawning your way through all kinds of boring explanations of menus and tools, dive right into modeling inanimate and animate objects in this "in-action", Autodesk Maya modeling course by Nigel Broad.