Springboard Week 5: Notes

Selection Tools

-Select Tool and Soft Select Tool

-To Increase / Decrease size of Soft Select Tool (works with all brushes): B + Left Mouse Click Drag

Deleting History:

As you work in Maya, most of actions create nodes in the construction history of the objects you work on.

Delete history when you want to delete modeling operations from your object’s history or any nodes that my slow down your scene.

Freezing Transformations - Sets new point of origin for any given back to zero

Box Modeling Tips:

-Always model facing the X axis

-Never delete Edges or Vertices by hitting Delete. To remove: Go to Edit Mesh / Delete Edge Vertex

-Selecting  a row of faces: select face, shift select 2nd face and double click.

-Repeats last action/tool: G

-Try setting the pivot points to center / bottom of object: makes for easier snapping to other objects or grid.

*Tip: To remove clutter or unwanted seen objects from the outliner: Go Display/ click on Shapes.

Parenting: Nesting objects into another’s objects hierarchy.

-To parent: Select child node then select parent node.

-Parent: P
-Unparent: Select Hierarchy, Shift P

*Tip: To select a parent object in group multiple parents hierarchy, press down key.

Outliner Tips:

Shift / click: Opens or closes all elements from the group.

Locking the camera:

-Select camera
-Select all input channels
-Right Mouse click / Lock selected

*Tip: To lock camera on previous position, set a key on all input channels in F1.
*Tip: Left / Right Brackets keys: Undo for camera move.

Creating a simple Rig with Mel Script and Nurb Controllers:

-Create Nurbs Curves
-Select Nurbs Curves
-Press Down Key (selects shape node in channel box)
-Shift Select 2nd object you want to parent
-Type in Command Line (Mel Box): parent -r -s