Groovy semi-undocumented feature in Maya

Steve Schulze

This may be something that everyone knows already, but I thought it was rather nice.

The marking menu that comes up when you hold 'O' and either left or middle mouse button allows you to access the polygon editing tools using the artisan paint tool. While its not particularly useful for a lot of tools, it'll come in really handy for doing things like making hard or soft edges and the like. Haven't had much of a chance to experiement yet but it seems pretty cool. Its also something thats not really mentioned in Maya's documentation.

Daz

That's weird. I coulda sworn I just read a post from Jackablade about something being good in Maya.

/no must have imagined it

Steve Schulze

Thats right, you're hallucinating. Don't take so many drugs.

Alright, I'll have to admit now that I've taken lessons with one of the Alias guys as tutor, now that everything makes some degree of sense, its not so bad. Evil of course, evil beyond all imagining, but not so unpleasant to work with.

Gmanx

That's pretty cool, although I've got into the habit of using custom made shelf buttons for hard and soft edges.....old dogs, new tricks and all that. And - yes - Maya is the tool of choice for me.. <*sound of 'unclean' stamp hitting my forehead*>

TelekineticFrog

It is a good thing to know, but you could've just made your own marking menu(s) as well with the tools you need and or use. Maya has tons of good things, just sometimes seems like you have to dig deep to find them, but they are there.

malcolm

My all time favourite secret undocumented feature of Maya is holding the Alt key down and using the arrow keys to move objects or components around one pixel at a time, I use this all the time, it is camera relative as well, just like photoshop nudge.

Daz

Hah that's a good'n thanks Malcolm!

Steve Schulze

Its like playing some old-school platform game finding all these secret areas and power-ups.

Anyone else got any?

Daz

I don't know how much of a secret it is, but SHIFT> to grow a selection comes in bloody handy sometimes.

malcolm

Daz I use this one all the time now that you mentioned it in the other post, it is invaluable for selecting multimesh objects. Another feature I found recently, when using the split polygon tool after you have clicked your second point to split the edge, if you are not happy with the placement, use the middle mouse button to move the point around before you except it's placement.

Daz

I can't live without the middle mouse edge placement thingy!

I just discovered something else I didn't realise earlier today. Great for complex scenes. If you have a bunch of objects grouped, and you have one of the grouped objects selected that you're manipulating, and then decide you need to manipulate the entire group, instead of going hunting for that group in your crowded outliner, hit the UP and DOWN arrow keys to select up and down the hierarchy.

This is probably common knowledge knowing me!

Faucet

Holy hidden tools, Batman! I've never seen that feature & I've been using Maya for almost 5 years!

Thanks, Jackablade!

Snowfly

The nudge tip, is there any way to set it up so it moves in absolute units? It's pretty useless to me at the moment, being relative to the camera and all..

Pick walking is the way. And yep MMB is Maya's magic button.

Scott Ruggels

Alt period, and Alt Comma can move the time slider, back and forth (in the direction of the brackets above said punctuation). Very useful to check things frame by frame.

Scott

malcolm

Snowfly, I don't think so, but then again I didn't even know the tool existed until 2 years ago. I zoom in pretty close and then use it that way it moves the object one pixel at a time.

thinsoldier

daz,
SHIFT + > is the most annoying piece of fuggery ever known to man. When it works its heavenly, but for me and 'every' other maya user I know, it stops working after about 20 uses and doenst ever work again until maya is restarted. I'm still hoping desperately that someone in the maya communty will make a new/better/RELIABLE ONE.

http://www.3dbe.com/mtips.html
best thing I found all month

Daz

Well excuse me for pointing it out.

I use it all the time and it works fine for me. Apparently Im not 'every other maya user'

malcolm

It works fine for me too, but I have the same problem you are mentioning with another secret trick Ctrl + RMB select contiguous edges, this malarkie only seems to work for the first half an hour of my model building and then booyah! Doesn't work for sh*t. But if I restart Maya then it will work fine again?

thomasp

shift + > regularly stopped working on me too. i had to reset something within maya to get it working again, no idea anymore where that setting was located though.

anyway, if you're fighting to grow and shrink selections, then there are much nicer alternatives, e.g. check out koshigaya's or mjpolytools script packages (highend3d should have 'em).

still looking for a nice poly bevel, as always...

malcolm

thomasp, the poly bevel in Maya 6 is a little better than previous versions, it lets you bevel negatively and a few other useful things, but it still has the same lameness that if you bevel a cube with 3 segments it doesn't draw edges between them so you have to manually fix up your bevels later.

Daz

BPT bevel is free and works perfectly. Well, it isn't perfect actually since it kills UV's. But it's the closest thing out there.

thomasp

yeah, bpt's bevel get's rid of my carefully placed uv's all too easy and cleaning up the mess that the standard tool leaves behind - well, my only option so far.

i heard from someone that polybevel finally works without the fixing stage in the newly announced release 6.5 - can anyone confirm this?

Snowfly

When Select Contiguous Edges stops working, all ya have to do is open Selection Constraints... and hit the Close and Reset button. You can map that function to a hot key for an automagical fix.

malcolm

Snowfly, that is what I have been looking for, this has been bugging me for over a year, thanks!

stoofoo

This is probably common knowledge, but it was pretty funny when I figured it out and no one on my art team knew(Im a recent maya convert) split polygon tool... right clicking to "finish" the action. like hitting y or whatever.. it will keep the split poly tool active. It makes me happy!

Daz

Bloodyhell stoofoo that absolutely rocks thanks man! I had no idea. I'd always hit enter to finish then 'G' to get the tool back. This is way faster! Curse Alias and their stoopid secret features!!!

MoP

Nice one Stoofstar, I'd been doing what Daz had been doing too... why can't they make things obvious?!

iMag

if they made things obvious it'd be more useful? :P

malcolm

Actually the right click split poly functionality is a new feature to Maya6, it's not a secret it's in the what's new section of Maya6 help. As mentioned above if you use "y" it accepts your split and leaves you in the active tool, same thing just a different button.