Create a New Project
File > Project > New
Click on Use Defaults at Bottom of popup window
Rename your project
Set location if you need to
Click accept

Tour of Side Windows (click on outliner and persp)
 

Modeling with Reference Photos

Get Reference photos:
Top/Bottom, Side, Front/Back

Create an <b>Image Plane</b> for the side and top camera

(Create thumbnails of the commands:  <b>Alt+CTRL+Shift</b> while selecting command from the menu)

In outliner, click on top camera

<b>WIndow > Rendering Editors > Multilister</b>
OR button in menu
  
click on <b>top shape</b>

In attribute Editor scroll down to <b>Environment</b> tab
click <b>Create</b> near image plane

new window opens set the parameters as follows:


Image Plane Attributes

Display: looking through camera
(if you want to see the image only in the top camera view, otherwise select in all views)

Display Mode: RGB

Image Plane: Fixed
(this way when you move the camera, the Image Plane and the refence curves you draw will follow it)

Type: Image File

Image Name: here you have to load the file you will use as reference (in this case load the file bottom.tga)

Placement Extras
Center: 0 0 0
Width:  (Make this proportional to your image)
Height: ('')

Now Create curves with the CV Curve Tool

	Create > Curve Tool []  (make it 3 Cubic)


( Tip Đ When you draw a curve you have to use less CV as possible; this way you will control the curve easier and your model will be "lighter" too.
In this case you donŐt need to pay great attention to this because the curves you draw will only be a reference).

Once you have drawn the top and bottom profiles rename them bottomProfile and topProfile

 (Tip Đ When you rename something in Maya, itŐs
better not to use spaces or underscore. Try to use compound words with capital letters; this will work better especially when you will use
expressions).

Now, since you donŐt need to modify them any more and since they are only reference curves, you can template them.

Before doing this itŐs better to assign these and the other profile curves we will create to a level. The use of the layers is extremely important;
using the Layer Editor you can hide, template or select the different parts of your model very easily. So to assign the curves to a new layer:

Window>Layer EditorÉ 1.

Click the New Layer button 2.

Click the Rename button and rename the layer referenceProfiles 3.

Select the bottomProfile and the topProfile 4.

Click on the Assign to Current button.