Maya Overview

Maya's original design took an approach called the dependency graph. The idea is that everything in the scene every curve, object, link, image, texture, keyframe, and so forth and every tweak made to those items would be considered one "thing." Actually, not "thing" the name Maya uses is node, but it means about the same. It's one building block of the scene. These building blocks link to create ever more complex things. For example, when a profile line is drawn in Maya, it becomes a node. When the line is revolved to create, for example, a vase, the underlying line is still there. Further, the revolve operation creates a "revolve" node, placed in history, thus letting you modify the original curve and the revolve parameters independently.

Modifications made to the line immediately affect the vase's shape, and the modifications themselves create a node so that you can undo or modify anything you've done before. This flexibility underlies the entire Maya product, and includes the option to disable or delete history, which animators often use for efficiency. As history accumulates, a file can become very large or slow to load.

The dependency graph architecture is simple to understand and allows tremendous flexibility. In Maya, animators can view a scene file with every dependency revealed by using a view called the Hypergraph. There, links can be broken and reconnected so that any variable can control virtually any other variable. This feature illustrates one reason for Maya's popularity with Hollywood: A technician can set up dependencies so that the animator's work is minimized. When a character tilts her head back, the skin stretches, the muscles appear to move and bulge and this all happens automatically because it has been set up to work that way in Maya. Naturally, setting up complex dependencies takes time, but the investment is easily justifiable for a character that will be used often. Programming skills are rarely required, however. It's simply a matter of learning what's possible and becoming proficient in setting up these dependencies. As Maya becomes more popular with animators of all types, this type of "TD work" (named for the technical directors of projects that typically perform this work) is becoming something everyone does, so long as it saves time and effort overall.

Hand Positioning

Most of the time when you animate with Maya, your right hand controls the three-button mouse, and your left hand is at the left side of the keyboard. This puts your left hand in position to operate the primary hotkeys, the spacebar, the Alt and Ctrl keys, and other keyboard shortcuts that get heavy use. Left-handed users who keep the mouse at the left of their keyboard need to reprogram the default hotkeys that put all the primary keys at the keyboard's left side.

Using a Three-Button Mouse

In Maya, you use all three mouse buttons constantly. The left mouse button (LMB) is used to select and pick things, and often it's used to take actions such as moving or rotating an object. Clicking the right mouse button (RMB) usually displays a selection list (which you might be familiar with in other programs as a pop-up menu or a context-sensitive menu) for you to choose from with the LMB. The middle mouse button (MMB) is used for adjusting interim things for example, dragging and dropping materials to the scene or moving part of an object with snapping temporarily engaged.

Using the Spacebar

The spacebar has two functions. The first is the full-screen window toggle, where a brief tap of the spacebar causes a window to toggle to full screen. The window that switches to full screen is always the one that the mouse cursor is currently hovering over. When a fresh install of Maya starts, it's in the typical Four View mode, with Top, Side, Front, and Perspective views; however, the Perspective view is maximized. If you briefly tap the spacebar, the four screens appear. You can then maximize any of the other views.

The other function of the spacebar is to open the Hotbox by holding the spacebar. The Hotbox is described in detail near the end of this chapter.

Manipulating a View

As you build and manipulate objects, you need to be able to quickly adjust your viewpoint interactively. A primary part of knowing Maya is its window manipulation method. You can position yourself anywhere in a scene by using the tumble, track, and dolly controls.

Tumble

With the tumble control, also known as orbit or spin, you move your orbital position in relation to the scene. Hold the Alt key with your left hand while you click and drag with the LMB in a perspective viewport.

trap

You cannot tumble an orthogonal view because Side, Top, and Front views by default do not rotate. (Orthogonal camera settings are discussed in Chapter 13, "Cameras and Rendering.") These views are locked in place. The term orthogonal means the views have no perspective or vanishing point.

Track

With the track control, also known as pan or move, you laterally move your view of the screen. That is, without changing the angle or zoom level, the viewpoint moves up, down, left, or right. Hold the Alt key with your left hand while you click and drag with the MMB (or scroll wheel) in any viewport.

Dolly

With the dolly control, also known as zoom, you can interactively zoom in and out of a scene. Hold the Alt key with your left hand while you click and drag with the RMB pressed. You can also zoom into or out of a drawn rectangle by using these methods:

• Zoom window You can click-drag a window that outlines an area you want to zoom into, a technique that CAD users are particularly fond of. To zoom into a window, hold the Ctrl and Alt keys with your left hand while you drag a window with the mouse holding down the LMB. Drag the rectangle from the upper-left corner to the lower-right corner (in general, from left to right).

• Zoom out window If you perform the same steps for a zoom window but drag the rectangle from right to left, the window is zoomed back so that the previous full window now fits into the box you drew. The smaller the outline you draw, the greater the zoom outward.

tip

All these tools except the tumble work throughout Maya. That is, every graphical Maya dialog box that you can enable, from Render View windows to Hypershade and even the Paint Effects palette, can be tracked and dollied and zoom-windowed. You will use these tools constantly to focus your work area and to avoid eye strain. Don't forget this when a dialog box appears with text labels so tiny they're unreadable!

Saving a View

Every panel has its own Bookmark Editor so that you can save your views. This feature can be a big timesaver when you have perfectly aligned some objects in a panel and then need to adjust the panel to edit something else. To add a bookmark for a panel, open the Bookmark Editor by choosing View | Bookmarks | Edit Bookmarks from the menu. You can type in the bookmark name and even include a description. The bookmark then appears above the Edit Bookmarks item under View | Bookmarks in that panel.

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Each panel has its own bookmarks, exclusive of the others. If you can't find a bookmark you made, you are probably looking in the wrong panel or originally made the bookmark in the wrong panel.