In the Modeling menu set, select
Note: If Paint Effects does not appear in the Panels menu, you must go to the Preferences window
Modules category and activate it. (You must click
Save and restart Maya)
- Click
to open the
Paint Effects tool.
- Load the
Paint Effects shelf, which has a range of
Paint Effects tools and brushes. To do this, click the Shelf icon
, and select
Load Shelf.
Note: Shelves are not loaded by default on Linux. To load shelves on Linux, see the instructions in
Load a shelf.
The
Load Shelf window opens, showing the contents of the runtime/script/shelf directory. Select
shelf_PaintEffects.mel and click
Open.
- [Optional] You can drag preset brushes to shelves to add them. See
Save preset brushes to shelves, below.
- If you are painting in a scene, note the following:
You can only paint effects on the view plane (the plane that is ortho-normal to the camera view), the grid plane of the perspective view, or on NURBS or polygonal surfaces.
Although you cannot paint 3D effects on subdivision surfaces, you can paint 2D effects on them using the
3D Paint Tool, or you can create textures using
Paint Effects and apply them to the surfaces. You can also try the following workflows:
- Place rough, invisible NURBS or polygonal geometry inside the subdivision surface and bind it to the same skeleton. Paint on the NURBS surface and the
Paint Effects strokes will grow out the NURBS surface and through the subdivision surface.
- Bind the CVs of some NURBS curves to vertices on the subdivision surface then convert the curves to strokes.
Save preset brushes to shelves
Maya provides over 200 preset brushes in your
mayapath/brushes (Windows and Linux) or
mayapath/Maya/Contents/brushes (Mac OS X) folder.
When you load
Paint Effects for the first time, the preset brushes can be accessed from the
Content Browser, while a small subset of preset brushes are available in the
Paint Effects shelf. You may want to drag and drop these preset brushes to the
Paint Effects shelf, or another shelf, so they are available for easy access.
To save preset brushes to a shelf
- Open the
Content Browser.
- Click the
Paint Effects tab and expand the brushes folder, if it is not already expanded.
- Click the folder containing the preset brush(es) you want to save to a shelf.
- [Optional] Create a new shelf for the preset brushes.
- Do one of the following:
- To save a single brush to a shelf, middle-click the brush icon and drag it to the
Paint Effects
shelf, another shelf, or the new shelf you created.
- To save all brushes in a folder to a shelf, middle-click the open folder icon and drag it to the shelf.
- Select
Windows > Settings/Preferences > Shelf Editor and click
Save All Shelves.
Paint Effects hotkeys
The following
Paint Effects actions have hotkeys defined in the
Hotkey editor.
Option or action
|
Default Hotkey
|
Open
Template Brush Editor (TemplateBrushSettings)
|
Ctrl-b (Windows and Linux)
Control-b (Mac OS X)
|
Modify
Paint Effects Brush Scale(ModifyUpperRadius in
Hotkey editor in
Brush Tools category)
|
Press b and drag left or right, then release
|
Modify
Brush Width (ModifyLowerRadius in the
Hotkey editor
in the
Brush Tools category, default hotkey, B
|
Press B and drag left or right, then release
|
Modify
Paint Effect Surface Offset(ModifyDisplacement in
Hotkey editor in the
Brush Tools
category)
|
Press m and drag left or right, then release
|
Define
Paint Effects hotkeys
In addition to setting hotkeys for each of the items on the
Paint Effects menu, you can set hotkeys (under
Categories > Paint Effects in the
Hotkey Editor) to do the following:
- Modify the brush width (ModifyLowerBrushRadius, in
Brush Tools category)
- Clear the canvas (ClearPaintEffectsView)
- Undo the last canvas stroke (UndoCanvas)
- Switch the
Tube Direction between
Along Path and Along Normal
(FlipTubeDirection). This is particularly useful when painting plants on the canvas.
- Switch
Paint At Depth option on or off (TogglePaintAtDepth)
- Blend brush preset shading and shape (BrushPresetBlend)
- Blend brush preset shading (BrushPresetBlendShading)
- Blend brush preset shape (BrushPresetBlend Shape)
- Replace the shading values of the template brush (BrushPresetReplaceShading)
- Switch the
Opposite option for the selected surface (ToggleOppositeFlagOf SelectedShapes)
- Display the Brush Animation marking menu (BrushAnimationMarkingMenu)
- Display the
Curve Utilities marking menu (CurveUtilitiesMarkingMenu)
- Display the
Auto Paint marking menu (AutoPaintMarkingMenu)
- Switch between the
Paint Effects panel and the scene view (PaintEffectPanel)
For information on defining hotkeys, see
Hotkey editor.