Maya Cheat Sheet

After opening Maya...

• Set your preferences to "infinite undo."
• Set the "set key" option so that the tool will give you a prompt box and will set keys below.
• Check that your animation units are set to 30 fps.

Shortcuts

General

• "q" cancels a command
• "w" is a move
• "e" is rotate
• "r" is scale
• "h" is hide selection
• "d" is duplicate
• "f" frames the selection in the active window
• "x" is grid snap

Setting Keys

• "s" sets key
• "SHIFT+w" sets move
• "SHIFT+e" sets rotate
• "SHIFT+r" sets scale

Graph Editor

• "ALT+SHIFT+left click+middle click" lets you move the view in the direction you move the mouse.
• "SHIFT+middle click" moves keys and curves in one direction. The direction is the first direction your mouse moved in.
• "w" and "r" can be used for translate and scale in the graph editor and dope sheet.
• To weight tangents, you have to first specify that tangents be weighted (tangents > weighted Tangents) and then you have to free the tangent weights.
• You can set the way your keys are set through Options > General Preferences > Animation > Keys. You can change how the default tangent comes in and how the default tangent goes out.

Channels Box

• Greyed out means the attribute is locked.
• Yellow means there's a key on it.
• If you highlight the attribute itself (not its value) and it's an attribute you assigned, you can use the middle mouse button to change its value.

Outliner

• To select multiple items, hold down the "CTRL" key.
• You can drag things by holding down the middle mouse button. You can also use this to move things under groups, to parent and un-parent items.
• If you click the "+" symbol, you'll see what's immediately childed under the object. If you hold the "SHIFT" key while clicking the "+" symbol, you'll see the entire tree of parents and children.