Daves Maya Qstns- (another one of "those"threads)

tremulant

Okay got a new job, It's in Maya...Have some questions and thought I would do something similar to what Arsh was doing and make my own thread with various questions for the Maya guys here.

Thanks for your help in advance.

-what plugin's should i be using for Modeling and Texturing with things similar to Max? IE-Weld, connect, select edge loop and ring... I downloaded CPS tools, and it is helping me out some, but I am confused on whether this stuff is old and not needed for maya 8.5.

--How do I connect two objects together, similar to attach in max?

--How do I change the viewport navigation...they seem to be hardcoded?

--Is there a plugin that is freeware, that will allow me to have something similar to Silo where the edges verts and polys are all simultaneously selectable?

More questions on the way, thanks so much

Dave

fmnoor

-- Select an edge and hold down CTRL then right click for Edge loop/ring options. I use MJPolyTools for the connect, but you can use the split polygon tool and adjust the weighting to your liking.

-- Select the two meshes, combine them (Mesh - Combine) then merge vertices (assuming you've snapped the vertices over each other and what not).

-- Not sure about the other two..

Steve Schulze

*Append Poly is your Maya connect. Now that they've got the loop and ring stuff in there you shouldn't need MJ Poly Tools at all. Probably

*I'm fairly sure you're stuck with Maya's navigation. You'll get used to it pretty quickly, its not that different.

*I haven't used silo, but you can highlight different kinds of components by selecting one, changing the component type the shift clicking another.
For example:
Select vertex, hold right-click, select face from the radial menu, hold shift, select face.
This feature only serves to bug me at the moment. What's its practical use?

As for the target weld, Daz posted his own script a while back. I'll just paste it here for convenience sake. Respect to Daz for this one. Its invaluable.

[ QUOTE ]
global proc targetWeld()
{
if (!`scriptCtx -exists snapWeld`){
scriptCtx
-t "Weld Verts"
-tss 1
-fcs "vrtSnapAndWeld($Selection1)"
-esl 1
-snp " Select FIRST, singular, vtx to snap and weld to a second, of shift select for SECOND w last weld as first"
-ssp " Select SECOND, singular, vtx to snap and weld to"
-setDoneSelectionPrompt " **** ---> MORE THAN ONE PNT SELECTED FOR SNAP AND WELD, UNSELECT THESE AND TRY AGAIN <--- ****"
-sat 1
-ssc 2
-sac 1
-pv 1

-euc 0


// maya 4.5 specific additions, comment "//" out if your on 4.0 (just like this line).
-tct "edit"
-ts "$sel = `ls -sl -dag -typ mesh`; select -cl; for ($se in $sel) doMenuComponentSelection($se, \"pv\");"
// end 4.5 specific additions

snapWeld;
}

$sel = `ls -sl -dag -typ mesh`;
select -cl;
for ($se in $sel)
doMenuComponentSelection($se, "pv");
setToolTo snapWeld;

}


global proc vrtSnapAndWeld(string $sel[])
{
undo; string $fst[] = `ls -sl -fl -type float3`;
string $scnd[] = stringArrayRemove($fst, $sel);
if (size($fst) == 1){
float $p[] = `pointPosition -w $scnd`;
move -ws $p[0] $p[1] $p[2] $fst;
polyMergeVertex -d 0.0001 -ch 0 $fst $scnd;
} else {
warning " ** More than one pnt initially selected to snap and weld to, start selectn again (you may have coincident vrts) ** ";
select -cl;
setToolTo snapWeld;
}
}

[/ QUOTE ]
*Make yourself a text file called targetWeld.mel (make sure you get the case right)
*Pop it into the my documents/maya/8.5/scripts directory
*You can now run the script once you've restarted Maya by typing "targetWeld;" in the script editor. Bind it to a key. You'll be wanting it easily accessible.

CheeseOnToast

The NEX plugin from Digital Raster absolutely rocks. It adds a lot of the good stuff from Silo (like selection highlighting, surface snapping, tweak mode etc.) and a lot more besides. Even better, it doesn't leave any plugin-specific crap in the scene heirarchy, so it won't screw anything up if opened by someone without the plugin. This should cover almost anything you need modeling-wise. I'm starting to sound like a PR man for these guys, but this plugin really is THAT good.

fmnoor

[ QUOTE ]
Select vertex, hold right-click, select face from the radial menu, hold shift, select face.
This feature only serves to bug me at the moment. What's its practical use?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you use MJPolyTools, you can shift select various edges and verts and then use connect to cut through them all. www.dustglove.com/connect.swf

I think what the OP here was referring to is the ability to select any component without having to switch modes. I think XSI lets you pick verts/edges/faces dependingo n where your mouse is hovering too.

Steve Schulze

Ah yeah thats right. I think I got reprimanded for that the last time someone asked where the "connect" tool in Maya was.

I still don't get why you'd want to select different kinds of components at the same time.

MoP

It's not actually the ability to select, say, an edge and a vertex at the same time, Jackablade.
It means you don't have to go into a specific "element" mode (such as vertex/edge/face)... you just highlight the sort of element you want, and then can select more of the same from there. Just means you don't have to keep switching modes to go from editing verts to edges to faces.

tremulant

Thanks for the help so far guys.
Yes Mop/fmnoor thats what I was talking about with the selection modes.
Ill see what I can do about getting my boss to get us the NEX plug.

Next question pertains to the changing of hotkeys....

--How do I make a hotkey use the mouse buttons as an assigned key?
LMB, or RMB do not work when I put those into the key assign. Is it possible? I would like to assign, for instance, RightClick+B to createPolygonCube