Help a maya newbie plz!

Ged

Im doing my best to learn maya at work and Ive hit some walls. I really didnt want to do this but I would like to use this thread to ask my questions rather than litter polycount with random issues.

First thing to note is that I have been reading a lot of the other threads on here asking for maya help etc so Im not being lazy about this I just want to be specific.

my major issues:

1. scaling or moving multiple objects: how do you do this in maya? I use the scale or move by "manip" pivot and that helps but then the objects get there axis pivots all messed up. I heard you can group and ungroup but that would slow my workflow down as Im often working with a lot of objects in a scene.

2. selecting objects to edit: I have a lot of objects so when I try to edit the faces on one particular object I ctrl-rmb over the object I want and choose face mode from the marker menu but I almost always select an object that is in front or behind the object by mistake. Then when Im finally editing the object I want I go to select some faces and maya often changes object to one of the other objects in front or behind! Cant I tell maya to lock my editing to the currently selected object?? I dont want to hide or lock my other objects Im not editing I just want them to automatically lock when I start editing verts/faces/edges so that I cant select them by mistake.

3. Im puzzeled by the outliner, what can I do with it? why doesnt it dock? can I make stuff template or reference like the layers window?

Bal

1. Not sure what you mean exactly... Moving and scaling seems pretty much the same as in other apps, just make sure you're move/scale Axis settings are right (World most of the time if you're moving multiple objects). Or you can also scale/move in component mode if you don't want it to affect the pivots for some reason.

2. No unfortunatly I don't think this is possible, and I agree that it's quite annoying at times, but you get used to it... I play with my "isolate selection" shortcut alot to avoid problematic situations.

Ged

thanks for the tips bal, well Im doing some tests with my scaling/moving issue and it seems to be pivot point related but I just cant figure out how it all works. if I keep the pivots at the center of all of the objects scaling them together is fine but if I move verts and pivots and stuff so that the pivot is no longer near the objects or rotated then it goes all wierd and my objects just shoot off in different directions from eachother when scaled.

as for issue numnber 2 well thats quite frustrating to say the least, I thought maybe the outliner would help me organise my objects but the outliner is not very useful to me, is there any way to combine the layers window with the outliner so that I can show and hide layers and make stuff reference and still read and select all the names of the objects nested in those layers?

lloyd

Hey, I feel your pain!

for the rotate/scale multiple objects, The only way ive forund and the only way people who like maya have told me is the group/ungroup option, its slow! i hate it too.

Also in maya you get alot of extra scene guff so check the outliner after doing stuff like this because you might have some extra nodes all over the place.


Hope this helps!

Bal

I'm guessing you're coming from Max? In Maya people use groups alot more, usually you want to organise your scenes with lots of groups, which makes the outliner quite useful.
Ctrl-g (create group from selected objects) p (parent objects to last selected object/group) and shift-p (ungroup selected objects) are all your friends to keep an organised scene.

For your scaling and moving, yeah it will always be doing it from the pivot point, except if you're scaling/moving components, this isn't different from other 3d apps as far as I can tell... Holding d (toggle pivot movement) combined with the snap hold-toggles v, c, x (vertex, curve/edge, grid) and middle click (transform your selection without having to have the mouse over the manipulator) are all very important to move pivots and stuff around on the fly (you can also move your component selection pivot on the fly like this, like Max's work pivot, but much faster and interactive).

Ged

Bal wrote: »

I'm guessing you're coming from Max? In Maya people use groups alot more, usually you want to organise your scenes with lots of groups, which makes the outliner quite useful.
Ctrl-g (create group from selected objects) p (parent objects to last selected object/group) and shift-p (ungroup selected objects) are all your friends to keep an organised scene.

For your scaling and moving, yeah it will always be doing it from the pivot point, except if you're scaling/moving components, this isn't different from other 3d apps as far as I can tell... Holding d (toggle pivot movement) combined with the snap hold-toggles v, c, x (vertex, curve/edge, grid) and middle click (transform your selection without having to have the mouse over the manipulator) are all very important to move pivots and stuff around on the fly (you can also move your component selection pivot on the fly like this, like Max's work pivot, but much faster and interactive).

Hey lloyd, Im from a 3dsmax and Cinema4d background, Im just trying to find the fastest workflow in maya. I dont want to be wasting time going in and out of settings/menus if I can so any common worflows/hotkeys/shortcuts to do the stuff Ive listed is what Im looking for.

Hey Bal can you explain how grouping objects helps to speed up workflow do you use them like layers to be turned on and off all the time? I cant seem to see or even select the group in my 3d scene it only shows as a group in outliner is that correct? do you mean make parent or wouldnt it make more sense to make it a child of the group?

In both cinema 4D and 3DS max when you select multiple objects they scale by the manipulator and keep thier size and distance relative to each other the same at all times regardless of where their individual pivots are or their pivots rotation. Ive never had any issue with scaling multiple objects before maya to be honest. Is there a quick way to make the pivot move to the exact center of your current object and zero out rotation? that way I could do that first before I scale my objects. Thanks for the hotkeys I only use D for pivots so far.

Ged

Hey Ive got a new one for all you maya people out there. So Ive been uvw mapping a model and every time I hit PLANAR mapping button it sets the projection width and height to an arbitrary value. I want to make it stay 1:1 at all times how can I set it to keep that value every time I hit PLANAR?

onionhead_o

goto planar mapping options and check on keep image width/height ratio. and you should be good to go.

Ged

onionhead_o wrote: »

goto planar mapping options and check on keep image width/height ratio. and you should be good to go.

that doesnt seem to work, everytime I planar map something it fits to the 0,1 uvs and it gives me wierd projection width and height values when I just want 1:1 scale

Ged

Ah I found the solution! use bounding box NOT BEST PLANE planar mapping and set keep image width/height ratio to on. Now it seems to keep the relevant scale at all times though I dont know why.

Ged

is there an interactive bevel tool in maya? I want to see how much bevel I need before I hit apply...

haiddasalami

You can always edit the bevel value in the history stack.

onionhead_o

the interactive bevel is in maya 2012 and above unfortunately. but i rarely use that now. got use to the attribute editor and channel box to do all my tweaking for the values. One thing to keep in mind is that not all workflow from max can be transfered over to maya.

Brygelsmack

Ged wrote: »

1. scaling or moving multiple objects: how do you do this in maya? I use the scale or move by "manip" pivot and that helps but then the objects get there axis pivots all messed up. I heard you can group and ungroup but that would slow my workflow down as Im often working with a lot of objects in a scene.

Yeah I think I know what you mean. It happens sometimes, not sure why.

1. Select all your objects you want to move or scale.
2. Hold D and then hold X, C or V to snap the pivot of all objects to the same place. I usually move the pivot to the origin of of the scene (0,0,0 XYZ) by holding X (which is snapping to grid), but you can do whatever you prefer. With the pivots in the same place you can move all your objects around like you want, even snapping works which is what I usually use this method for. Your objects kinda work like a group now, without actually being a group. When you want to move objects individually again you can just select all your objects and then center their pivot at the same time.

Hope that's what you meant.

And I know what you mean with the second question, unfortunately I don't know if there's a fix. As long as you right click on the model you want to edit you should be fine.

passerby

@ged click on offset in the bevel history node in the channel box, than drag mmb in the viewport, and or control+mmb to adjust the value in finer increments.

this works for all attributes too.

in the future im thinking of releasing some interactive tools i made, which bevel is one of them.

Harbinger

Modify -> Center Pivot will move the pivot to the bounding box center of your mesh.

Group are extremely handy because you can transform multiple objects at once using a new pivot (the group's pivot) while each individual object retains it's on object space pivot. Hierarchies are your friends.

I'm not quite understanding your component selection issue with multiple objects, but if you select an object, and then simply right-click in any empty space, you can bring up the hotbox for component selection. You don't have to click on the object itself. Also, there are keyboard shortcuts to directly enter the different component selection modes:

F8 toggles between component and object mode
F9 enters vertex mode
F10 for edges
F11 for faces

Ged

wow look at this wealth of knowledge! I will be sure to try this stuff out tomorrow and return with more ignorance! go polycount!

Ged

thanks for the tips Im working on using them. f8-f11 for component type selection doesnt work on my mac I have to hit fn and f8-f11 for it to work which is a pain in the ass so I use the ctrl+rmb marker menu.

I have found a solution to some of my problems with extrude and bevel, this set of tool enhancements http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/interactivetool

is amazing! its like the standard way I would expect maya to behave and makes my workflow much faster as long as it doesnt crash.

the interactive extrude script alone does so much:
for interactive Extrude, the following mouseclick/drag commands are: (These instructions are available in maya when you activate the tool)
Faces:
LMB: Drag the extrusion along the normal (localTranslateZ).
MMB: Offsets the extrusion
Shift+LMB: Creates new extrusion on the same face and drags along normal
Shift+MMB: Creates new extrusion on the same face and offsets the extrusion
Ctrl+MMB: Allows you to pick a new face to extrude
Ctrl+LMB: Allows you to translate the face in all axis. (like the move tool).

Ged

seems like the default extract poly tool in maya doesnt extract to a new object or give you the option to delete faces or give you your new object selected as soon as you detach it. All of this needs to be fixed so I finally found this tool

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/modeling/poly-tools/c/dupextract

DUPextract is awesome and simple and I love it! this is what the extract faces tool should do in maya.

Harbinger

The default Extract Faces command does split those faces into a separate mesh, it just puts the resulting faces into component mode right off the bat with a manipulator function similar to the "Transform Component" tool. After running an Extract, just tap F8 to get back to object mode. It's clunky, but works

passerby

ya ged i got a few personal tools that act very similar to to the interactive tools you linked, i just managed to make my work better with maya's repeat last command (g key), and gave it persistent values between script runs and did a little integration with the marking menus.

if you would like once i get home i could release that for you, and also list a few other scripts that have helped me greatly along the way.

Ged

I dont want to put you out, Im still learning maya so I havent ruled out using the default tools I just found those interactive extrude and bevel tools quite fast, unfortunately they seem to cause errors or crashes quite easily for example the undo history sometimes gets turned off if I mess up my interactive extrude

passerby

ya i had the same bug in early versions of my tools script but was able to work around it, and overall make thigns a little more stable, and better tied into maya's repeatLast and undo history.

thinking i might quickly document my stuff and release on the weekend in it's current state.

throttlekitty

If it's public, I'd very much like a copy.

Ged

sounds pretty good passeryby, let us know if you release it.

So todays issue is isolating objects. Once they are isolated there seems to be no way to un-isolate them? Really bizarre, Ive looked for hotkeys and searched online but found nothing I just want to go back to normal mode after im done with my isolated object

MiAlx

Ged, here are two ways to do that:



You can toggle isolation on and off with the button and also, if you press "View Selected" under "isolate select".

Also the keyboard shortcut for isolation is i think Shift + L

Hope this helps

Ged

MiAlx wrote: »

Ged, here are two ways to do that:



You can toggle isolation on and off with the button and also, if you press "View Selected" under "isolate select".

Also the keyboard shortcut for isolation is i think Shift + L

Hope this helps

aha! thanks, you see i was using shift+i which is the shortcut hotkey to isolate selection but Ive still found no shortcut hotkey to unisolate selection. I guess the button on the viewport will have to do for now, would be better if I could just hit shift+i again to reveal all.

MiAlx

Oh you're right, it is shift+i, my bad, but like you said it doesnt toggle. I just tried it out.

Actually it surprises me that the isolation hotkey doesn't toggle natively.

I googled a bit and found this:

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/interface-display/c/isolate-select-toggle

Maybe this does the trick.

Ged

thats ok I will just use the viewport button for now. Just an update on my progress with maya, I just added a "pivot to zero" button to my shelf using these mel commands, this is very useful for me!

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76534

BARDLER

I like to put the quick keys for selection hiding and unhiding on my shelf. It makes it really fast and easy. Having delete history, freeze transformations, center pivot, and flip normals is really helpful as well. I use isolate selection a little bit, but it is only active in that one view port, the functions I showed hide them every where.
Like this.

go under display>hide and display>show to get those.

Ged

BARDLER wrote: »

go under display>hide and display>show to get those.

yeah I did find those bardler I just thought they werent much use because i couldnt find a show all function that just unhides the stuff you have hidden and not everything else(cameras and all that nonsense). So thats why I went in search of isolate instead.

BARDLER

in your view port menu there is a drag down menu that says show. Just uncheck cameras and any other non sense you don't need in the view port for modeling. Those check boxes are unaffected by the show and hide commands I posted.

Ged

BARDLER wrote: »

in your view port menu there is a drag down menu that says show. Just uncheck cameras and any other non sense you don't need in the view port for modeling. Those check boxes are unaffected by the show and hide commands I posted.

ah thats much better thanks!

haiddasalami

Just threw this together so if you wanted you could rebind isolate select to it. If you want I can do it for all the views.:

global proc isolateSelectedUber(){
    string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
    string $panelType = `getPanel -to $currentPanel`;
    if ($panelType == "modelPanel"){
        if (size(`ls -sl`)>0){
            string $state = `isolateSelect -q -state $currentPanel`;
            if ($state == 0){
                isolateSelect -state 1 $currentPanel;
            }
            if ($state == 1){
                isolateSelect -state 0 $currentPanel;
            }
        }
        else {
            warning "Nothing is selected";
        }
    }
    else {
        warning "Wrong panel";
    }  
}

isolateSelectedUber();

Ged

hey thanks haiddasalami unfortunately that script just seems to go between isolated and normal mode which just hides everything and shows everything and doesnt actually isolate my currently selected object? still its pretty cool cause I have bound that script to "i" so i use shift+i to isolate and "i" to unisolate.

haiddasalami

Hey sorry Ged, I think when you do isolate selected it does something behind the hood cause if you run the script without isolate selected, everything disappears and re-appears when toggled back. I changed the script to add the object selected to the isolation mode.

global proc isolateSelectedUber(){
    string $currentPanel = `getPanel -withFocus`;
    string $panelType = `getPanel -to $currentPanel`;
    if ($panelType == "modelPanel"){
        if (size(`ls -sl`)>0){
            string $state = `isolateSelect -q -state $currentPanel`;
            if ($state == 0){
                isolateSelect -state 1  $currentPanel;                
                isolateSelect -addSelected $currentPanel;
            }
            if ($state == 1){
                isolateSelect -state 0 $currentPanel;
            }
        }
        else {
            warning "Nothing is selected";
        }
    }
    else {
        warning "Wrong panel";
    }  
}

isolateSelectedUber();

you should now be able to bind this to shift i. Only thing that I can see being a bother is that theres no way to know if you're in isolation mode. Might make a headsup display that says isolation mode if you like. Right now the only display is the camera name at the bottom of the viewport

passerby

there is a isolate toggle in the viewport toolbar, and you could also go view>show>all in menus.

I plan on takeing a look at my scripts again this weekend and polish things up a little than release.

passerby

still need to do a lot of work, like adding a method to control the sensitivity(maybe by camera distance to elements being worked on?)

but everything seems to work pretty well atm

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2360554/mayaScripts/pbInteractiveTools.zip

simply install by dragging the contents of the zip into your maya scripts directory.
than running these commands from the python tab of the maya script editor.

import pbTools.interactiveTools as pbt
pbt.install()

after that it will replace the maya bevel, chamfer and extrude marking menu entries.

if you want to add the commands to the shelf, or run them directly, you can use these 3 commands.

pbt.bevel()
pbt.vtxChamfer()
pbt.extrude()

most tools got differnt attributes for both lmb drag and mmb drag, and the extrude tool lets you use shift+lmb or shift+mmb to create new extrudes without existing the tool.

all of the tools support the repeatLast(g key) command to repeat what you last did in the tool, or if the tool is dropped, to just repeat the bevel, chamfer or extrude operation.

and each drag counts as 1 undo step, so you can undo while the tool is active, to go back to a older value, or in the case of extrude go back a few extrudes if you used shift or g to create multiples.

have fun, and feedback would be great.

i also included my helpers.py file since these tools depend on it, and there are a few smaller but useful commands of my in there too if people want to look, which if you ran the pbt.install() command for hte main tool, will be available with the pbh.* namespace.

Ged

passerby wrote: »

still need to do a lot of work, like adding a method to control the sensitivity(maybe by camera distance to elements being worked on?)

but everything seems to work pretty well atm

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2360554/mayaScripts/pbInteractiveTools.zip

simply install by dragging the contents of the zip into your maya scripts directory.
than running these commands from the python tab of the maya script editor.

import pbTools.interactiveTools as pbt
pbt.install()

after that it will replace the maya bevel, chamfer and extrude marking menu entries.

if you want to add the commands to the shelf, or run them directly, you can use these 3 commands.

pbt.bevel()
pbt.vtxChamfer()
pbt.extrude()

most tools got differnt attributes for both lmb drag and mmb drag, and the extrude tool lets you use shift+lmb or shift+mmb to create new extrudes without existing the tool.

all of the tools support the repeatLast(g key) command to repeat what you last did in the tool, or if the tool is dropped, to just repeat the bevel, chamfer or extrude operation.

and each drag counts as 1 undo step, so you can undo while the tool is active, to go back to a older value, or in the case of extrude go back a few extrudes if you used shift or g to create multiples.

have fun, and feedback would be great.

i also included my helpers.py file since these tools depend on it, and there are a few smaller but useful commands of my in there too if people want to look, which if you ran the pbt.install() command for hte main tool, will be available with the pbh.* namespace.

sounds good but im a bit scared of overwriting mayas extrude bevel and chamfer in the marking menus, can this be restored later if necessary?

passerby

not actually overwriting the original, marking menu scripts, just overrides, to return to the stock maya ones, either delete, or move these 3 mel files out of the scripts directory.

contextPolyToolsEdgeMM.mel
contextPolyToolsFaceMM.mel
contextPolyToolsVertexMM.mel

than it will go back to using the default maya versions of those menus.

also im not touching it in the main menus, or the hotbox.

Ged

ah ok thanks a lot for sharing!

Ive got a new issue today. The smooth mesh preview ( "3" key on the keyboard) looks good but when I go to the mesh drop down and apply a smooth it looks really bad and has lots of pinching along the middle seam where my object is mirrored. what is going on? I just want the smooth mesh preview to become the actual mesh so that i can do a few booleans on it.

passerby

weld your mesh up first, before applying the smooth.

persnally i hate the way it handles smooth preview, and prefer how other apps handle it, most allow you to export the mesh with smooth preview, and it exports the subdivided, and smoothed version, but maya dosnt everything needs to be applied before export, or bakes.

Ged

passerby wrote: »

weld your mesh up first, before applying the smooth.

persnally i hate the way it handles smooth preview, and prefer how other apps handle it, most allow you to export the mesh with smooth preview, and it exports the subdivided, and smoothed version, but maya dosnt everything needs to be applied before export, or bakes.

yeah its confusing the way its so unconventional. Anyway i found a solution to my problem - i can subdivide my mesh by going modify>convert>smooth mesh preview to polygons. This way my mesh looks exactly like the smooth preview whereas all the other smoothing options were a bit different to the smooth preview in thier result.

passerby

ya prolly something that i should work on is a script, coppies the mesh, does the smooth to polys, than exports the results to xNormal, than deletes the copy.

Ged

tell you guys what would be great is if someone could somehow combine the outliner and the layer browser together so that its easier to use and more conventional like photoshop. Heres a mockup to show you what i mean.

sculptn

Hope its ok to ask a question here I am also trying to get to know maya better. In maya can you select an object then say select the material assigned to this object in the hypershade you know have it select and highlight it in the hypershade ?

passerby

Ged wrote: »

tell you guys what would be great is if someone could somehow combine the outliner and the layer browser together so that its easier to use and more conventional like photoshop. Heres a mockup to show you what i mean.

i tend to just open the outliner docked to the side of the viewport, and makes lots and lots of groups.

in hte outliner you can also drag things from group to group with mmb drag.

but yes what you want might be possible, but it would require, a lot of work, and would prolly require some extra qt libraries, to be able to script more adavanced UI stuff like that.

passerby

sculptn wrote: »

Hope its ok to ask a question here I am also trying to get to know maya better. In maya can you select an object then say select the material assigned to this object in the hypershade you know have it select and highlight it in the hypershade ?

so your wanting to see what material in the hypershade editor is applied to the currently selected object?

well open the attribute editor, select the object, than in the tabs at the top select the materials tab and click select at the bottom, and it will select the material it's self, and highlight it in hypershade.

sculptn

Thanks that's exactly what I wanted thought there might be a quicker way than going through the attribute editor but that's great I never knew that. Thanks again

Bal

sculptn, yeah there's a faster way : Select your oject(s), open the hypershade, click on the "Graph materials on selected objects" button that's in the top menu (it's a small blue sphere, with a green and blue square next to it), that will display the shader network of all the materials applied to the selected object(s).

You can also do the opposite, in the Hypershade, right-click-drack to the right on a material (Select objects with material) and that will select all objects and/or faces that have that material applied.

Ged

passerby wrote: »

i tend to just open the outliner docked to the side of the viewport, and makes lots and lots of groups.

in hte outliner you can also drag things from group to group with mmb drag.

but yes what you want might be possible, but it would require, a lot of work, and would prolly require some extra qt libraries, to be able to script more adavanced UI stuff like that.

yeah I know what you mean, I just think maya should move forward and get some cleaner more concise ui, maybe I can make a suggestion to the devs somehow?