Hotkey Suggestions

[NeonGuy]

i use the default settings for all kind of tasks.

[InnerVortex]

well.. i not refined this that much.. so for now yet i just use the
"a" key .. above the defaults.
the "a" for me is for extrude polys, extrude edges, merge vertices, split polygpn tools and merge vertices

[stunndman]

ctrl-alt-e = extrude edge
shift-ctrl-alt-e = extrude edge option
ctrl-alt-f = extrude face
shift-ctrl-alt-f = extrude face options

for CPS

ctrl-alt-x = toggle smoothed proxy visiblity
ctrl-alt-y = toggle proxy visiblity (on german keyboard layout which has flipped z and y)
ctrl-alt-a = toggle proxy shading

more general

ctrl-c = deselect everything
ctrl-n = toggle show normals

the other ones are default to 4.5 i guess - marking menus and so on

[beaker]

Also look in the "whats new in maya 4.5" docs. They added a bunch of really nice marking menus that you can customize that can quickly be accessed without going through the hotbox. Just hold down keys and drag with the mouse. Similar to what Xumi tools previosly had added but without the icons. These were very prominant in PA. I'm glad they decided to add them back because it was too many clicks to use them previously because you had to open the hotbox and then goto the top/bottom/left/right of it and click to get them. It just took too long.

[MDuffy]

In my (nonexistant) spare time I'm working out a set of modeling hotkeys and scripts. There are a few things I'm hoping to solve:

1) In Lightwave the Modeler is a separate program from the animation program (Layout). So when in Modeler, you can use the entire keyboard for hotkeys dedicated to modeling. Maya is an all-in-one program, so the keyboard hotkeys are spread across modeling, animation, dynamics, etc. So the first thing I did was write a MELScript that loads up different hotkey layouts depending on if you have the mode in Maya set to Modeling, Animation, Dynamics, Rendering, etc. Thus you can have a full keyboard of hotkeys for each stage of the pipeline, and swap them out easily.

2) In Maya you have different commands for extrude edge and extrude face. However conceptually (to me) they are the same operation, just on different components. So I'm currently working on writing scripts that will call ExtrudeEdge if you are in edge component mode, and ExtrudeFace if you are in face component mode. I also wrote a script to easily toggle from vert->edge->face mode to make mode switching easier. I'm working on mode based scripts for the following operations: Create, Delete, Split (add edge loop), Merge, Detach, Extrude, Select Loop, Select Ring, Separate (detach selection but keep as part of object), and Chamfer/Bevel.

3) I've also added a few more ways to perform selections, sometimes by calling MJPolyTools and sometimes by calling my own scripts. These have been mapped to similar hotkeys to Lightwave.

4) I've added in some keys as well for selecting the view of the current viewport, inspired by some Hash Animation Master hotkeys.


Basically I'm trying to take the best of workflows and hotkeys I've picked up from Hash, MAX, and Lightwave and bring them into a modeling setup for Maya. I haven't finished these scripts yet, but I'll post them on my website when I'm done (it will likely be a couple more weeks).


Later,
Michael Duffy
mduffy@ionet.net
http://www.ionet.net/~mduffy

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