Maya is a 3D modeling and 3D animation software program made by Autodesk. 3D models are created in scene files and then textures and lighting are added before rendering an image. Maya is commercial software that cost money to use for commercial purposes, an alternative open source 3D modeling and animation software package is Blender . There is a robust online community and it can be a great alternative for individual artists and small production companies. There are plugins to Blender that cost money but the base software is free and open source and quite capable.
Often multiple objects in a scene are animated with keyframes. Then each frame of the animation is rendered as a sequence of images.
Change the polygon display mode
Press 1 for the default polygon mesh display (no smoothing)
Press 2 for cage + smooth polygon mesh display
Press 3 for the smooth polygon mesh display