TuTorials
15 tips for working smarter in MayaOpen the current camera’s
attributes and under the Camera
Attributes tab you will see two Clip
Plane options for Near and Far.
Adjust these to fix the Z-buffering
issues and make your scene feel
solid again.12
Marking Menus
Working in Maya wouldn’t be
as fluid as it is if it didn’t have its
marking menus. These are quick,
context-sensitive menus that pop
up on demand and give access
to common tasks, like enabling
symmetry or switching tools. Using
them saves so much time and can
be a much better way to work.
The most common are to use
Shift, Ctrl or a combination of
both along with the right mouse
button. Pressing these will open
a menu with options based onwhat you have selected. There are
many more you can bring into your
workflow and you can find the full
list on the Autodesk website.13
paint selection
Another tool I find useful is
the paint selection tool. I know you
can select this from the toolbar, but
if I want to quickly select an area
of a model I hold Tab instead and
Maya allows me to paint over the
surface, instead of clicking each
face or vertex separately.
When you release the mouse
button the area is selected, and
you drop out of paint selection
mode and back to where you were.14
instant pivot align
A quick way to align the
orientation of the manipulator is to
simply hold down the ‘d’ key. Thisenables you to select a component
and the manipulator will then mimic
its orientation using the normal as
a guide.
You can then manipulate the
object or components using the
new orientation. When done the
pivot will automatically return to
how it was before.15
Quick centre pivot
Another quick way to centre
the pivot on an object, rather than
look in the menus, is to again hold
‘d’. This time however, rather than
using it to align the pivot, simply
right-click to bring up the pivot
marking menu.
You can now quickly move down
to Reset Pivot to centre your pivot.
There is also a selection of other
pivot tools in this menu for you to
use and experiment with.top left: Maya has a
whole host of marking
menus at your
disposal for quick
access to context-
sensitive commandstop right: when
selecting a group of
components, hold the
tab key to quickly
drop in and out of
paint selection mode1512 1314