Hidden Features and Secrets in Maya

hey what is going on guys I'm Mario and welcome to another video tutorials so today we're going to talk about hidden features in Maya or the ones at least that are not obvious at first and some of them probably already know and if not we're gonna cover them just in case so let's begin with a simple cube and I'm gonna use a scale to scale it up a bit and let's talk about this axes gizmo for a second so if I go to the move and you can also increase now this axis with plus and minus signs so if I use plus hotkey I can increase the axis and if we use the minus I can then decrease and then by this way you can find your perfect you can you can find the perfect size for your workflow alright so the next thing would be let's say if I use subdivision here I can use page up and page down hotkey to increase subdivision of my object so one two this will be the default one and if you add a couple of more than your objects would become very very smooth alright so let's now talk about mouth sensitivity and let's say that I want to do an extrusion here and I want to do an offset and basically the offsets and the most sensitive 'ti is gonna be controlled by this little icon and if you click on it if you keep clicking you will see that it will be populated with a bluish color and also what you can do is right-click on it and choose from this drop down menu how much of a sensitivity you want so let's say if we select fast sensitivity and if I go to offset you will see that it will be very very sensitive to the mouse movement but if I hold ctrl I can now have a bit more sensitivity added to my offset and if I go to shift control and then left click that will give me even more we fine-tune offset right here and the same thing will work let me just put this down a bit same thing will work if we go into channel box and if I go to this offset right here so simply with my left mouse click you will see that it will switch in the values and if I call control you will see that now we'll have more of a sensitivity on the decimal number all right let's not talk about viewport for bits so previous videos are also talking how we can customize your interface and how we can minimize its look so for example if we have let's say something like this you can use a space bar like we talked before to enter the panel view but if you hit ctrl + spacebar you can actually enter a full screen and then it will you will get this message to press ctrl + space to exit full screen so you will see that some of the windows heal will disappear also he can make them disappear as well by using a control mem shift em and shift control amps so basically then you have full screen for you to work and I'll just bring everything and back alright so when we talked about panels you have what space bar you have these four panels right here you can exit access them or right here as well and you can access them right here on the right-click so if you go here we can access one of the panels if you want so let's say that we are in one of the panels also what you can do is you can tear off or tear off a copy and that will simply mean that now you can let's say doctors somewhere on the side or if you want to capture screen let's say that you want a screen capture record only this part then that could be also very very useful all right so let's talk about one more thing so let's say that I have a cube on my scene and I'm operating with camera so you can also undo the camera with all Z and go back into any position that you have previously so whatever you did so for example you have cameras direct selected for your render now let's say this is the camera that you selected but by accident you managed to move it for a bit with all Z you can undo that that camera also when we talk about camera sometimes what will be very very useful for example let's say that we are working on material and let's okay so let's say yeah we working on a material so I have a material right here but I'm working on a material but I also want to work at the camera at the same time so I will click here and select my camera and if I decide from the camera I want to switch back to my material and I click away you will see that the camera settings will disappear and then only to click here one more time we can then use this copy tab and basically it will have the camera on the side in this special menu and then here we can now work let's say on our materials that this can be sometimes very very useful if we working with let's say rendering rendering options and we want to adjust specific material to a specific reference and adjust the camera at the same time then we also have this select which will just mean that we can now let's say if I'm changing material here I can select it to remove all the wireframe from the cube also what we can do is go to show and then selection highlighting to turn to off so if I would have let's say multiple cubes I can just click on them and they will not highlight any longer so that can be also very useful especially if you're rendering and not in let's say special Arnold the preview window but if you're rendering here right in the viewport and then you need to apply materials then this can be very very handy so I just turn this back off so while we are here we can also talk about one other feature and that will be duplicating and let's say hide and isolating so let's say that I have two objects here and I'm going to ask isolate one I will just hit ctrl one and decel isolate only one object and if I want to hide this one I will go to ctrl H and to hide it and control shift H to unhide it alright so let's go about one more thing so let's talk about cloning so we can clone one object but also we can clone it even further if you go to shift D you can al creates a limited copies based on the operation that you did previously so let's say that I clone this and I scale it and I move it to the side with shifty you can now continue the same thing so that can also be very useful and again depends what you do previously so if this is the only transformation that I did this was gonna be the multiple copy but if I let's say use a scale and rotation the next operation will be just that so shift D is gonna continue that operation for us right so let me remove that as well so what we have next is yeah whatever forgot to mention when we're talking about here so outliner we also have a double outliner simply it can be very useful if you have a lot of objects here and you need to focus on specific thing while searching for something else double outliner can come in very very handy alright so let's talk about a couple of more features here so multi cuts and talked about it previously a lot but with multi cut middle mouse click will give you a loop directly in the center also when we talk about let's say multi cuts let me just add a couple more cuts here let's talk about selections a bit so if I go to vertex mode I can click on one will see and then double click on it will select every vertice on that object same thing with the edges if I click on one edge it will create a loop and if I control double click it will deselect the loop same thing it will work with the ring with partial selection so for example if I want to deselect this part still here I just need to control double click so from here control double click till here and this will deselect that part alright so let's talk about a couple of more features right here and I would like to talk about insert edgeloop and autocomplete so let me just go to invert selection and delete and I'm just gonna create a simple situation here so it just maybe ring this so administration's you maybe want to add let's say a cut here but you don't want to use multi cuts to do it manually like so in that case what you can do is you can use insert edgeloop tool' so we can go to insert edgeloop tool' and these are the settings and I'm just gonna reset them and by default this is going to be the insert edge loop tool but if we select the ring right here what we would like to have that loop what we can do is I will select insert edgeloop tool' and then we'll go to shift control right click and turn autocomplete off and you will see that now we'll have this loop right here and then we need to click enter and now we have loop all around so that is also very very useful all right so let's talk about a couple of more things so let me add thunder here and maybe increase it a bit like that alright so let's talk about edit pivot so if I hit my move tool this is going to be our pivot so with hotkey D you can change the spirit and you can align it you will see that by default you will say a line and it will just align whatever you click on and that will be your new period if you hold shift you can also position it and if you hold shift and control you can aim it to a specific point edge or face so that can be all sometimes very useful also what you can do is simply go to right click and then reset pivot to its original position so what you can do with that are a lot of interesting things so for example instead of using wedge tool for specific operations you can use also edit pivot so let's say I want to create survey I've added that I'll show you here so let's go to edit pivot and I will I'll push it right here and so now I need to hit D again just to confirm and if I go to rotate and extrude it okay I by accident selected more than I wanted so let me just go to select camera base selection on select this V again so basically just a reposition it let's say something on here and then I'm gonna rotate this and by holding shifts we can now extrude this and you will see that it's snapping to a specific angle and this angle is set to a modeling toolkit it's set to a step snap and a relative 15 degrees and basically this will just give you the option to have a segmented extrusion so we can also decide we want to have more segments so I'm gonna select here 10 and then you will see that now we'll have more segments when we do the separation and then we simply need to extrude it out and then we have something like this all right so let's null since when we hear talk about normals and let's say scaling and normals so let's say that I want to execute this and keep faces together off and let's offset this and let's say that's now all of these selections that were just previously selected that I want to scale them [Music] individually basically that if I now would select scale tool and go to the reset pivot and if I would scale you will see how they will scale but what if I want to scale them like this so in that case we would use a normal scale so also in since we're here we can also talk about select similar so what we can do here is just right click select similar and we will get selection of every face or edge selection that looks similar within specific tolerance and here the tolerance is set for me to 0.02 all right so scaling along normals will be if you hold scale and then middle mouse control you can now scale along these normals so again control and then middle mouse that will scale along enormous also what it's interesting is that we can select the whole object and I'm not sure is it in scale or we need to be in move modes okay so we need to be in move mode with control middle mouse and then we can scale along normals like that alright so let's talk about one more feature and this is going to be the former's so let me just scale this maybe go to my attitude matter editor add a bit more divisions here and let's out of the former nonlinear band and if you hit hot keep T for me it's different hotkey but I believe that T is by default you will get this manipulator and what it allows you is to play with this handles and establish your the formation much faster instead going to attribute editor band and then playing with curvature and bounce or right here so it's very very handy in case you don't see it it's going to be under modify transformation tools and then show manipulator tool again for me the hotkey is 8 but I believe that by default is set to T so yeah more or less I believe that this is all what I wanted to talk about in this video so thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Elementza

Views: 28,551

Keywords: 3d in maya, 3d modeling

Id: 8w-SVrpBbPg

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/blueSGL]

select in the attribute box also selects the node itself, so for example if you want to delete a constraint and don't want to ferret it out in the outliner you click select and then press delete.

the square brackets "[" "]" also act as an undo/redo queue for your camera movements

Edit: to add, because of this video I've taken another look at the shortcuts running along the top of the viewport. Not only is there a quick shortcut to highlight the camera node you are using, one to bring up the attributes.
There is also a camera lock and camera bookmark button.

[u/Kafkin]

Nice video. I'd like to throw in something that a lot of Maya folks aren't aware of - it's the cursor keys for pick walking.

When you're working with one edge - simply hit the right cursor key to expand to the entire edge loop and then start selecting the next edge loop until you hit the border edges. You can also hit the up key to select the edge ring.

When you're working with a selection of vertices, using the cursor keys will move the group selection around other sets of verts on the same mesh.

When you're working with UVs - you can move UV shells off the 0-1 space with the same offset, to help make things more manageable.

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I thought the edge loop / auto-complete option was pretty nice. In the past, I've used the 'connect' option to do similar. You can also use the connect option to connect edges / vertices (multi-component selection) as well

[u/Draico01]

Thank you! I have been using maya for 8 years and its never ceases to show me new tricks.

[u/non_plus]

Incredibly informative, thank-you! You actually included a bunch of shortcuts and features I've never seen in other similar videos, so I really learnt something here. I'm looking through your other content now and I'm really tempted by your Mastering 3D modelling in Maya course too!

[u/lolmax101]

poggy woggy

[u/m1a1thousandmiles]

Thanks a lot for this, very very useful info!

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome video! I’m hoping to purchase your Maya Masterclass course when I have the money. Have you considered a course in rigging?

[u/Wisiwise]

I have really learned a lot watching you.

[u/[deleted]]

Hi, great video and course. Are you going to be doing anymore specific content, stuff like advanced techniques with vehicles, mechs etc? Kinda like Wizix. Nice one!