3D World

TuTorials

15 tips for working smarter in Maya

the current panel full screen. You

will still have that panel’s menu,

and Maya’s main menu so you can

access key items and tools. This will

enable you to focus just on the area

you’re working in and eliminate the

disorder. If you wish to return to the

previous layout simply hit Ctrl and

Space again.

06

rinse anD repeat

A useful tool in Maya is the

‘g’ key which repeats the last tool

action. It may not initially sound like

much, but it’s actually probably one

of the most useful shortcuts that

Maya has.

As an example, I recently had to

parent constraint a long series of

objects, so rather than going back

into the menus to select the tool

each time I could simply press ‘g’

to apply the same constraint, which

was much quicker.

Other examples are using the

Average Vertex tool, so you press

‘g’ to add another quick pass. This

is also handy when copying skin

weights from one mesh to a series

of others.

07

Manually eDit weights

Sometimes painting weights

doesn’t give you what you need,

and a stray vertex just won’t play

nicely. No matter how you orient

the model the brush stroke just

won’t catch that point.

Rather than painting the

weights, try manually editing

the values of the vertices in the

Component Editor so you get the

exact weights you need and on the

correct influences.

This can also be useful when

editing blendshape weights, so

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06

the Component editor

is an essential tool

for editing weight

information