Chapter 4. Selection Modes, Hiding, and Templating

A Maya scene can include hundreds of joints, thousands of polygons, and hundreds of thousands of pointsall of which can amount to a major headache when you're trying to locate just one small point in the middle of huge amounts of geometry (Figure 4.1). Not to worry: Maya provides a number of tools that you can use to hide, template, layer, and select objects, eliminating much of the frustration of organizing and selecting objects.

Figure 4.1. A model can have hundreds of selectable points. Luckily, Maya provides helpers for selecting specific ones: Here, the component Pick mask is used to select one of this creature's many points.

For new users, however, selecting a specific object type or piece of an object (known as a component) can be tricky. For instance, a curve may be positioned in front of the surface you are trying to select, making it difficult to select it without using the Pick Mask. The object might be a curve, light, surface, or any of an array of other object types, each of which can be turned off using the Pick mask (Figure 4.2). You use the Pick mask controls to mask certain object types (so that only the object types you wish to select are displayed). For example, if you're only interested in selecting curves, you can turn off the ability to select other object types (Figure 4.3). Once you do this, when you try to click anything except a curve, nothing will happen. When you click a curve, however, it will become selected. We'll devote much of this chapter to this useful tool and the selection process.

Figure 4.2. The controls in the Pick mask determine which objects can be selected at any given time.

Figure 4.3. Individual object types, such as curves, can be selected in the Pick mask to limit a selection to that type of object.

Sometimes you'll find that certain objects inhibit your view of other objects. This is where hiding, templating, and layering come in to play. You can use these functions to separate objects so that they no longer hinder your view, making it easier to select the objects that you are interested in.