Hello this is Branden. Well here is my first dilema. Somehow I managed to screw up my project grid. Yes I know there is already a few questions like this in this forum. I will tell you now that under SHOW the grid is checked as being on. Ok now I don't see anything on the display representing a grid in the perspective window. So I went to the channel box and set the translate and rotate axis #'s to 0 to perhaps center the perspective camera over the grid. No luck. So my issue here is my grid is missing in the perspective window and I can't get it back. Another funny part to this is that when i first installed this software everything was in its normal default place. Recently though I have obviously screwed something up. Issue # 2. I went to DIGIMATION.COM to check out some nice CG models and to download some free samples. Well one of the samples was a cool helicopter. So I went into maya and imported this model. When the model appears in the display window it looks great. all in tact and ready to go. The thing is is that it appears way far away from the grid. No matter how much I try just like in the previous problem I can't get it back in the perspective view over the grid or in this case in general. Is there a way I can move this helicopter to appear directly over my grid? I also have an issue with rendering. For one thing everytime I try to render even a single frame from the helicopter it only appears to show up in the alpha channel. What the heck does that mean? I am so confused. Also i am having a frame rate issue. Apparently the default frame rate for my projects are 15FPS. I didn't realize this until I did a playblast pre-render of an animation for my helicopter and it moved terribly slow. So I found the frame rate controls under preferences and changed it to NTSC at 30 FPS. Well I had issues. I got this frame skip half way through my movie. I had the helicopter come in for a landing and bobble a little bit around it's rotating axis at the same time. In the playblast render only the rotating axis worked and not the translate axis for the helicopter. Well, not at first. The helicopter seemed frozen in its place on the translate axis but not on the rotate axis. Then...all of a sudden...it makes up for 6 or so seconds of movement on the translate axis in a matter of .6 of a second. What does this mean? It is soooo annoying. I have spent so much time trying to understand this software and by god I am going to master it. I have put my mind to it and when I do that it's for sure. Anyway I know this is a long freakin e-mail but as you all can see I am suffering from a multitude of problems. All of which bundled help documents cannot help me with. Thank you all for at least viewing this letter. I greatly appreciate it.
OK, A1:Possibly it is your userPrefs file had damged. it is in your C:Documents and Settings(your PC name)My Documentsmaya(your maya version)prefs. If you save in the different folder, just go there to find it. Delete that userPrefs.mel file or rename it, then restart maya to see if everything change back to default.
For the rest of your questions, possibly is the file you downloaded is build with different version of Maya, maybe very early version. Maya has capability issues with lower version.
#1.) Before you start playing with your userPref settings, I would suggest trying to change the background color of your viewport. One of the grey's is the exact same color as the grid, therefore the grid disappears when you select this color as the background...
To change the color of the viewport, make sure you are on the Modeling menu and go to Window -> Settings/Preferences -> Colors. In the pop-up box, go to 3d Views and change the background color.
I am unable to help with the rest, but would like to suggest that you separate your questions by paragraphs. It may help you to get answers since one paragraph that runs on and on may discourage people that can help from reading them.
Good luck.
ChaoticGood