The Channel Box - Autodesk Maya

The term channel is, for the most part, interchangeable with attribute. You can think of a channel as a container that holds the attribute’s value. The Channel Box is an editor that lists a node’s attributes for quick access. The Channel Box displays the node’s attributes, which are most frequently keyframed for animation. The Channel Box is located on the right side of the screen at the end of the status bar when the view mode button in the upper right of the status line is set to Show The Channel Box/Layer .Editor (see Figure 1.14).   Figure 1.14 The icon in the upper right of the interface toggles the visibility of the Channel Box. There...

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Displaying Options in the Outliner

There are several options in the Outliner for displaying nodes and their hierarchical arrangements. You can see that the default perspective, top, side, and front cameras are visible as nodes at the top of the Outliner. Also, there are a number of sets such as the defaultLightSet that appear at the bottom of the Outliner. These sets are mainly used for organization of data by Maya and are usually not directly edited or altered. 1.  In the Display menu of the Outliner, select the Shapes option to display the shape nodes of the objects. The shape nodes appear parented to their respective transform node. You can select either the transform...

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Creating Node Hierarchies in the Outliner

The Outliner shows a hierarchical list of the nodes in the scene in a form similar to the outline of a book. It is another way to view the transform and shape nodes in a scene and a way to create hierarchical relationships between nodes through parenting. The Outliner does not show the connections between nodes like the Hypergraph; rather, it shows the hierarchy of the nodes in the scene. To see how this works, try the following exercise: 1.  Open the miniGun_v01.ma fle from the Chapter1/scenes directory on the DVD. The scene consists of a minigun model in three parts. 2.  Open the Outliner by choosing Window > Outliner. Outliner...

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Connecting Nodes with the Connection Editor

Connections between nodes can be added, deleted, or changed using the Hypergraph and  the Connection Editor.Start a new Maya scene.  Create a locator in the scene by choosing Create > Locator. A simple cross appears at the center of the grid in the viewport. This locator is a simple nonrendering null that indicates a point in space. Locators are handy tools that can be used for a wide variety  of things in Maya. Press the w hot key to switch to the Move tool; select the locator at the center of the grid, and move it out of the way. Press the g hot key to create another locator. The g hot key repeats the last action you performed,...

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Using the Hypergraph

The Hypergraph is a picture of the nodes and their connections in Maya. A complex scene can look like a very intricate web of these connections. When you really need to know how a network of nodes isconnected, the Hypergraph gives you the most detailed view. There are two ways to view the Hypergraph, the hierarchy view and the connections view: The  hierarchy view shows the relationships between nodes as a tree structure. The  connections view shows how the nodes are connected as a web. You can have more than one Hypergraph window open at the same time, but you are still looking at the same scene with the same nodes and connections....

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Creating and Editing Maya Nodes - Autodesk Maya

A Maya scene is a system of interconnected nodes that are packets of data about what exists within the world of a Maya scene. The nodes are the building blocks you, as the artist, put together to create the 3D scene and animation that will fnally be rendered for the world to see. So if you can think of the objects in your scene, their motion, and appearance as nodes, think of the Maya interface as the tools and controls you use to connect those nodes.  The relationship between these nodes is organized by the Dependency Graph, which describes the hierarchical relationship between connected nodes. The interface provides many ways to view the...

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