Chapter 2. Navigating and Changing the Interface

Maya's interface is fully customizable (Figure 2.1), which means you can alter its layout to suit your current project and workflow. For example, you can hide each menu and window until you're viewing only one panea panel or window in which to workwhile the rest of the interface is hidden. However, even when menus are hidden, you can still access them via the Hotbox (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.1. The Maya interface can be changed to suit each user.

Figure 2.2. The Hotbox is a set of menus that appear where your mouse is when you hold down the .

You can also hide and show specific object types in a pane using the Show menu. Once you're viewing the object types you want in the pane, you can dolly, track, and tumble around the objects (movie-industry terms for specific camera movements) to get a better, more three-dimensional view.

Maya provides many ways to accomplish the same taskanother way it helps speed users' workflow. It includes hotkeys (keyboard shortcuts) for commonly used commands, and you can add hotkeys for just about any command you want.

In the pages that follow, I'll describe the ways you can change the interface and navigate the scene.