Maya UI Cheat Sheet

Navigation

• alt + left mouse button = rotate camera
• alt + middle mouse button = pan camera
• alt + right mouse button = zoom camera
• scroll wheel = zoom camera
• hold space bar = all menus in maya
• tap space bar = change between all viewports and selected viewport

Basic UI

1. Menus
2. Status Line, see Status Line
3. Shelves
4. Tool Box
5. Viewport Layouts
6. Panel Menus
7. Attribute Editor/ Tool Options / Channel Box
8. Channel Editor
9. Layers
10. View Focus
11. Time Line
12. Mel Script prompt
13. Help Line
14. Current View Panel
15. Axis Orientation

Status Line

starting from the picture and working over.

• THE MENU SET, this drop down will change your menus, for easier access
• NEW/SAVE/OPEN, lets you save and open maya scenes
• PICK MASK CATEGORIES, The next three will allow the user to only select items in these categories, (node, objects, components)
• PICK MASK OPTIONS, this next area allows the user to select only certain items that fall in these options.
• SNAPPING, these next options allow the user to snap objects to specific things.(from left to right snap to grid, snap to vertex, curves, view planes, live objs)
• INPUTS AND OUTPUTS, the next three are for seeing input, outputs of the selected objects in the hypergraph, and turning construction history on/off
• RENDERS, the next area is for creating renders, (from left to right, see last render, render current scene, render with IPR, render settings)
• EXACT SELECTION AND TRANSFORMS, allows the user to input exact transforms and rotation as well exact selection without being in the attribute editor
• ATTRIBUTE EDITOR, TOOL OPTIONS, CHANNEL BOX, in that order allows the user to change the right most box

Tool Box

From Top to Bottom

• Select Tool
• Lasso Tool
• Paint Selection Tool
• Move Tool
• Rotate Tool
• Scale Tool
• Universal Manip. tool
• Soft Modification tool
• Manip. tool
• Last Used Tool

Hot Keys

• alt + left mouse Button = rotate camera

• alt + middle mouse Button = pan camera

• alt + right mouse button = zoom camera(scroll wheel also works)

• 1 = display smoothness Low

• 2 = display smoothness Med

• 3 = display smoothness High

• 4 = display Wireframe

• 5 = display shaded

• 6 = display shaded and textured

• q = select tool

• w = move tool

• e = rotate tool

• r = scale tool

• t = manipulator tool

• y = repeat last tool

• g = repeat last action

• a = frame all

• f = frame selected

• ctrl + a = attribte editor

• ctrl + s = save scene

• z, ctrl + z = undo

• shift + z = redo

• f8 = object mode

• f9 = vertex mode

• f10 = edge mode

• f11 = face mode

• delete = delete

• x = snap to grid (hold middle mouse button)

• c = snap to curve or edge (hold middle mouse button)

• v = snap to vertex (hold middle mouse button)

• p = parent

• shift + p = unparent

• s= key all

• shift w = key translation

• shift e = key rotation

• shift r = key scale

• -,+ = Manipulator Display Size

all hotkeys can be changed by going to "Window -> setting/prefferences -> hotkey editor"

Other Tips

• right clicking and hold over an object will allow the user to select different components of the object
• cntl right click and hold over an object will give the user selection options(changes menu options for object, vertex, edge and faces)
• shift right click and hold over an object will give the user modification options(changes menu options for object, vertex, edge and faces)