Maya 2018 - How to create automatic selections?

#1

Hi, while animating i have to continiously marquee select elements and some times i miss and forget to select 1 in 20 then my animation has little problems but this marquee process makes it borring, hiding objects to select some behind, or you dragg and cant grab them all, etc.

How can i create selecion layers? what i mean is selecting like group of curves, mouth controllers for example then insteed of marquee select those everytime i just click 1 in the viewport or in attribute editor then i get all mouth, or eyes controllers automaticly selected, i dont want to use actual layers…because when you duplicate that figure several times …you get tons of layers in a bigg mess, i prefer if each figure has its own in the attributes or in viewport as a buton.

Thanks, please share your thoughts

#2

There are many ways to do this. Here are the two I use most:
[b]

  1. Quick Select Sets [/b]
    - Select your objects/nodes, then click “Create” on the top menu, then “Sets” at the bottom of that menu, then “Quick Select Sets”. Name your set.
    - Reselect that set by clicking “Edit” up top, then go down to “Quick Select Sets” and choose the set you desire.

2. Display Layers
- Select your objects/nodes, then in the Channel Box / Layer Editor panel down below click the “Create New Layer and assign selected objects” button. It’s on the right at the top of that panel’s list space, with a small white plane and blue sphere and orange arrow or diamond.
- Double-click the new layer and name it something useful, like “Mouth_Curves_layer” or something similar.
- Reselect those objects by right-clicking that layer and choosing “Select Objects”.

#3

Thanks

How can i make from that set a “select set members” button for the viewport?

I think i can add a set button to a shelf…but i dont want to create a new shelf for every character i create… i think it will be worst if i duplicate that character multiple times; it will be better if i can create a nurb next to each character then if i click this nurb it selects all members objects on a set.

#4

For complex character rigs animators often use an animation “picker”. It’s a GUI that allows for on screen buttons for easy selection of rig controls. It usually has it’s own window. There are a few available for free online. It does take some setup.

A quick way is to add a button to the shelf… Open the script editor, select all the controls you want to add to a button and in the history pane highlight the code that selects those controls. Then MMB drag the code to the shelf, in the pop up chose “mel”. You could also do this with a selection set by creating the set and then drag the code for selecting the set to the shelf.

If you want to get more into it, you could add the code to a custom marking menu or a pop up window or even a hotkey. A quick google will get you information on accomplishing any of these.