What’s up everyone?
Matt again with the Maya Learning Channel,
and today I’m going to try something a little different.
Instead of concentrating on a particular workflow, I’m going to do my first list!
And what better topic than my top 10 hotkeys in Maya?
For this list, I’m going to try and balance the most powerful keys
with those that you’ll use most frequently.
And just to shake it up a bit from other lists you might’ve seen,
I’m going to focus specifically on hotkey combinations
that let you to do some very powerful things very quickly.
So without further adieu, let’s jump right into number 1.
Many of you might already know about Maya’s snapping feature up here in the status line.
These let me snap movements to grid lines, curves and edges, and points respectively.
What you may not know is that you can quickly activate these same snapping modes
by middle-dragging while holding the X, C, or V keys.
With such quick access, snapping becomes a lot more useful for precise object transforms,
especially when combined with pivot mode!
For example, watch how fast I can change an A-Pose to a T-Pose to match this skeleton.
First, I'll select the arm's vertices...
...then press D to enter pivot mode.
I'll V + middle-drag to snap the pivot to the shoulder joint...
...and finally, turn on symmetry.
Now look how easily I rotate the arms.
Or another great use for this is to roughly place new objects.
So, suppose I create a new area light in the scene like so...
Rather than zooming out, selecting the light, and moving it up with the handles,
I can just C + middle-drag to roughly place it at head level.
From there, I can just finesse the light like usual.
As you might imagine, this trick can save a lot of time in even denser scenes.
So have you ever found yourself working in a really dense scene,
that makes it difficult to select the object you want?
Well, you can use the Isolate Select hotkey to quickly hide everything else in the Viewport
except the object you're currently working on.
I can even isolate specific parts of this robot's body to work on them individually.
To bring the scene back, just deselect everything and press Shift + I again.
You can even isolate multiple selections at once.
This is also handy if you want to increase performance while working on specific objects,
since the rest of the scene won’t bog down the Viewport.
There are all sorts of ways you can speed up component selection in the Viewport.
For example, did you know that the F9-F12 keys
quickly swap between component modes?
That's a lot faster than using the buttons up in the Status Line or even the Marking Menu!
Double-clicking a component in Face or Vertex mode will select all its connected components.
While doing the same thing in Edge or UV modes will select edge loops...
...or UV shells.
One place I use this the most is actually the UV Editor,
where it makes selecting overlapping shells super easy.
To take things a step further, you can also use this method to select component loops as well.
For example, if I select this face and then Shift + double-click the one next to it…
…Maya selects the entire loop.
Or I can select a start face and Shift + double-click an end face on the same loop...
...and Maya selects all the faces inbetween.
This works for edges and vertices too!
One thing this is really handy for is cutting new UV seams.
Another handy trick is using "Shift + ," or "Shift + ." to shrink and grow your selections
So for instance, say I wanted to expand these lips...
I can double-click in Edge mode to select them.
...then hit "Shift + ." repeatedly to spread the selection to adjacent edges.
Then I can hit "B" to activate Soft Select and blend my changes with the rest of the face.
It’s also pretty handy for getting a selection started in tight, awkward-to-click areas…
...like these nostrils.
I can just select one vertex in each, then grow them outward.
After which I can Ctrl click individual vertices,
...or Tab + drag to refine the selection.
So you probably already know that holding the right mouse button
produces a contextual marking menu based on what you’re hovering over.
But what you might not know is that the menu changes if you hold certain other keys with it.
In fact, both Ctrl and Shift will modify the right-click marking menu,
giving you different options based on what you have selected.
One of my favorite uses for this is selecting just the top faces of a cylinder or sphere.
I can’t use the Shift + double-click method here
because these faces aren't quads.
See? I can only select ALL the faces or none of them.
So instead, I can just select the center vertex...
and use the Ctrl + right-click marking menu to convert that to faces.
See? Easy.
Or watch how fast I can select a bunch of vertices...
...then Shift + right-click to merge them all to center.
So similar to No. 4 on this list, you might already know that Q, W, E, and R
will quickly cycle through the Select, Move, Rotate, and Scale tools.
However, what you might not know is that holding these keys
along with the left mouse button will get you a shortcut to their Tool Settings too!
This is a great way to get at frequently changed settings like Axis Orientation.
A couple of the options in this shortcut menu even have shortcuts themselves!
Take Soft Select for example.
Earlier I demonstrated turning it on with the B key.
But you can also quick resize the Falloff Region by holding B while dragging the mouse.
Left-dragging starts the circle at it's current value...
...while middle-dragging always starts the circle from 0.
This also applies to sculpt brushes too.
In addition growing or shrinking the region with B...
I can also hold M to increase or decrease the strength.
But getting back to the Toolbox,
you can hold J while transforming to quickly toggle Step Snapping.
This is different from the snapping I showed you earlier.
Instead of snapping to grids, curves, and points,
this snaps to specific intervals that you define in the Tool Settings.
The default value of 15 is particularly useful, since it also leads to 30, 45, and 90.
Finally, you can Shift + drag any manipulator in component mode
to quickly extrude faces or edges.
This comes in real handy when modeling.
Bonus fact: Shift + dragging in object mode gives you quick duplicates instead!
Here’s a sweet little tidbit: In addition to the big arrows that transform along one axis,
the Move and Scale Tools also have these plane handles that transform in two.
Another way to activate these is to Ctrl + drag any of the big arrows,
which locks that axis and moves or scales in the other two.
Sometimes its just easier to see or grab these than the little plane handles.
However, if you still find them too small, a few taps of the + or – button can easily fix that.
To make things even easier, you can actually middle-drag ANYWHERE in the Viewport
to move along the most recent axis.
Very useful if your object's handles are off-screen.
This one is a tad obscure, but you know how you can use Ctrl + Z (or just Z) and Ctrl + Y
to undo and redo actions?
Well, it might surprise you to know that [, and ] will Undo and Redo camera moves too!
This comes in handy when you’re testing out render angles,
or even just move the camera accidentally.
Also, did you know that you can change the size of the undo queue in the Preferences?
If you’re tired of running out of “undoable actions” just crank this baby to infinite
and undo to your heart's content.
Now let’s get a little into the animation side of things.
When you just start animating in Maya, one of the most common hotkeys to learn
is S to set a key on the selected object.
The problem is that this sets a key on ALL the channels at once,
whether you used them or not.
This often has a cumulative effect that makes animating more and more difficult down the line.
That’s why it’s better to use Shift + W, Shift + E, or Shift + R
to set keys on specific channels instead.
Now my unused channels are left free and clear!
There’s a bunch of hotkeys I can use for the Time Slider too,
...like Alt + V to play and stop…
Or "," and "." to step one frame at a time.
Or, if I hold K instead, I can jump between keyframes.
Finally, holding K and dragging the mouse let’s you scrub the Time Slider
from anywhere in the Viewport.
While K + middle-dragging let’s you scrub without activating any keyframes along the way.
Time for another obscure one. Did you know that Ctrl + P brings up the Color Picker?
I use this a lot to grab colors outside the viewport that I might want to use later.
As you can see, the sample stays in the swatch!
Finally, here’s a great one for you VFX artists out there.
Suppose you’re trying to closely align a 3D effect to some live action footage.
You want to be able to get in close to see what you’re doing,
but every time you do it messes up the tracking with the back-plate footage.
Well, by pressing “\”, I can activate the 2D Pan Zoom feature,
which keeps the scene and plate in synch.
Then I can hold “\” while middle or right-dragging to move the whole scene view
while keeping it synchronized at the same time.
Here, check out the difference in this 2-Pane view: one with 2D Pan Zoom turned on,
and the other with it off.
This setup makes it easy to do things like align a ground plane.
Then if I set the plane to Hold-Out mode...
...I can lose the shading but keep the shadows.
This is also handy for animators who commonly tweak the overscan
to fit a resolution gate in the Viewport.
With this, you don’t need to anymore!
And that’s it for my first top 10 list.
Don’t forget – everything I’ve shown you is based on Maya’s default hotkeys.
You can always customize them to your liking up here in the Hotkey Editor.
Beyond that, did you find this useful? Did I miss any of your favorites?
Feel free to chime in in the comment section below.
If this format proves popular, I’ll try to do more like it in the future!