Softimage-Maya Bridge: Getting to Know Maya

Projects and Scenes

When you open Maya for the first time, a blank scene is created in a default project that's set up for you - you don't have to create a project before you save the scene.

To set up preferences for projects and scenes, choose Windows > Preferences/Settings > Preferences to open the Preferences window and select Files/Projects.

For more information on how to work with projects and scenes in Maya, see Managing Scenes, Files, and Projects and this video: Softimage to Maya Bridge: Projects, Scenes and Preferences in Maya.

In Softimage	...becomes in Maya
Project Manager	File > Project Window, then click the New button to create a new project. The workspace.mel file that defines the project and is created and stored in the project's root folder when you create a project.
Set Active Project	File > Set Project
Scene files (.scn)	Scene files can be in either binary (.mb) or ASCII (.ma) format. The .mb files are smaller and the typical file format used, but .ma files are human readable and are often used with referenced files and presets.
Softimage Units	Working units, which are actual units of measurement, such as centimeters (the default). To set this, choose Windows > Preferences/Settings > Preferences to open the Preferences windows, select Settings, and set the Working Units options.

Layouts

Like Softimage, Maya has several predefined arrangements of windows and panels, called workspaces. You can switch between workspaces using the Workspace selector on the far right of the menu bar. You can also arrange windows and panels to your liking, and save the result as a custom workspace. See Workspaces for more information.

For a summary of the main Maya interface, see Interface Overview.

Menus and Shelves

Like the Softimage Toolbars and menu bars, Maya has menu sets. Each set defines which menus appear on the menu bar; for example, only Rendering menus will be available if you select the Rendering menu set, in addition to the standard set of menus that are always available.

For information on choosing tools and menu commands, see this video: Softimage to Maya Bridge: Working with Commands, Tools, and Attributes

If you can't find a menu, make sure the correct menu set is open, or select Help > Find Menu to locate a menu item by searching via keywords.

You can also create your own custom menu set, as described in this video: Softimage to Maya Bridge: Customizing Maya's Layout.

The shelves in Maya contain icons that represent the most-used commands from each of the menu sets - see Shelves.

Menu commands have icons beside their names to match their icons in the corresponding shelves. This makes it easy for you to make the visual connection between the command on the menu and in the shelf, but if you don't want to display icons in the menus, you can turn them off in the Preferences window (Windows > Preferences/Settings > Preferences): select Interface and turn off Show icons in menus.

You can also create custom shelves for your own sets of tools, as shown in this video: Softimage to Maya Bridge: Exploring Maya's Layout and Creating Shelves

In Softimage	...becomes in Maya
Model menu: 1	Modeling menu set : F2
Animate menu: 2	Rigging menu set: F3 Animation menu set: F4
Render menu: 3	Rendering menu set: F6
Simulate menu: Ctrl+4 Hair menu: Ctrl+2	FX menu set: F5
Repeat last menu command: middle-click on any menu name	Middle-click on any menu name. Note that certain editors may not have this functionality. You can also: Press Y to select the last used tool (except Select, Move, Rotate, or Scale) Press G or choose Edit > Repeat to repeat the last command
Context menus: right-click and Alt+right-click on scene element	Right-click to open marking menus for selected object. Hold down the spacebar to open the hotbox, which displays the same menus as in the menu sets. You can also right-click on nodes in the Outliner, and on attributes in the channel box and attribute editor for context menus.
Tear-off menus	Tear-off menus: click on the double-dashed lines at the top of any menu.

Hotkeys

Maya doesn't have as many predefined hotkeys as does Softimage, but you can assign your own hotkeys using the Hotkey Editor. See Assign a predefined command to a hotkey for how to do this.

Basic operations such as Save Scene (Ctrl+S), Open Scene (Ctrl+O), New Scene (Ctrl+N), Exit (Ctrl+Q), Cut (Ctrl+X), Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V), Undo (Ctrl+Z), and Redo (Ctrl+Y) are the same between Softimage and Maya.

Maya doesn't have supra keys as in Softimage - hotkeys are always sticky.

Basic Windows and Views

In Softimage	...becomes in Maya
Explorer: 8	Windows > Outliner The Outliner shows a hierarchical list of all objects in the scene in outline form - see Outliner for more information. To open multiple instances of the Outliner, choose Panels > Tear Off Copy in the Outliner.
Browser: 5	Windows > General Editors > Content Browser The Content Browser provides preset models, textures, images, and shading nodes that are installed with Maya in its \presets folder. You can also access files from any folder on your system.
Schematic View: 9	Hypergraph This presents a graphical view of the scene hierarchy or dependency graph (DG), with boxes representing nodes and lines representing relationships. See Hypergraph overview for more information. There are two ways to show the DG in the Hypergraph: the hierarchy in Windows > General Editors > Hypergraph: Hierarchy the connection of the scene elements in Windows > General Editors > Hypergraph: Connections Select Options > Layout > Freeform Layout in the Hypergraph: Hierarchy menu so that you can freely place nodes or graphs of nodes without conforming to structured hierarchy layouts.
Scene Layer Manager: 6	Display Layers Click in the Sidebar buttons in the upper-right corner to display the Channel Box / Layer Editor. See Display Layer Editor for more information.
Property editors: Enter	Attribute Editor: Ctrl+A or click in the Sidebar buttons in the upper-right corner to open. Attributes are like properties in Softimage, and this is where you can modify attributes on the selected object. See Attribute Editor overview for more information. Click Copy Tab at the bottom of the Attribute Editor to create an instance of the Attribute Editor in a floating panel. To edit multiple attributes simultaneously (such as transform attributes), select them and use the Channel Box (see Channel Box) rather than the Attribute Editor. To evaluate an expression in an attribute in the Attribute Editor, you can right-click and select Create New Expression. The Expression Editor appears from which you can create an expression. See Expression Editor for more information.
Script Editor: Alt+4	Windows > General Editors > Script Editor - see Script Editor for more information. You can also click the icon in the lower-right corner of the interface to open it.

Organizing Your Maya Scene

In Softimage	...becomes in Maya
Hierarchies	Object Hierarchies: Edit > Parent: P The object hierarchy is the DAG (directed acyclic graph) structure where each object is made up of at least two basic nodes: a Transform node which is the parent, and the Shape node which is the object's geometry and is a child of the Transform node. See DAG Hierarchy for more information. Choose Edit > Unparent or press Shift+P to remove a child from the hierarchy. See the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Organizing Your Maya Scene with Hierarchies and Groups for more information.
Transform groups or Hierarchies with a null parent	Groups: Edit > Group: Ctrl+G A group is an object hierarchy with an empty Transform node that is the parent of all nodes beneath it. To animate an object hierarchy, you usually create a group to contain those objects. See the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Organizing Your Maya Scene with Hierarchies and Groups for more information.
Scene Layers	Display Layers Click in the Sidebar buttons in the upper-right corner to display the Channel Box / Layer Editor. See Display Layer Editor for more information. See the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Organizing Your Maya Scene with Sets and Layers for more information.
Groups	Sets: Create > Sets > Quick Select Set: Select objects or groups and choose this command. Sets are saved at the scene level, and not within a group or hierarchy structure. Use the Outliner to change the membership of sets - see Create and edit sets for more information. See the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Organizing Your Maya Scene with Sets and Layers for more information.
Clusters	Sets of components: Create > Sets > Quick Select Set: Select components on an object and choose this command.
Models	Assets: Create > Asset > Create Asset or Create Asset with Transform See Assets and the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Sharing Models Using Assets in Maya for more information.
Referenced models	Referenced files: File > Create Reference: Ctrl+R See File Referencing and the video Softimage to Maya Bridge: Sharing Models with Referenced Files in Maya for more information.

Selection

In Maya, the logic is left-click for selection, middle-click to move items, and right-click for contextual menus.

When you multi-select objects in Maya, the one you last selected is highlighted in green by default, while other selected nodes are highlighted in white. To customize this, select Windows > Settings/Preferences > Color Settings and customize the Objects and Lead object colors on the Active tab. See Change user interface colors for more information.

Watch this video to learn how to select objects in Maya: Softimage to Maya Bridge: Selecting Objects in Maya

In Softimage	...becomes in Maya
Selection panel in MCP	Select and Lasso Select tools in the Tool Box on the left side of the interface. Object and component selection filters are in the Status line below the main menu bar. Press F8 to switch between object and component selection.
Node select: left-click; branch select: middle-click; tree select: right-click	There is no such thing as branch selection in Maya. When you left-click a parent object in the viewport, all its children are also automatically highlighted and selected. When you select a parent node in the Outliner, the children are selected, but not highlighted. To select only the parent object's geometry, select its Shape node in the Outliner (press the Down arrow key). To disable the highlighting of the child nodes when you select the parent, select Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences to open the Preferences window. Click Selection and select Never highlight from the Selection Child Highlighting list. See Selection preferences for more information.
Object selection: space bar	Select tool: Q Double-click the Select tool to open the Tool Settings where you can customize it.
Add to multi-selection: Shift	Add to multi-selection: Shift
Remove from multi-selection: Ctrl+Shift	Remove from multi-selection: Ctrl
Toggle selection: Ctrl	Toggle selection: Shift
Select all: Ctrl+A	Select > All: Ctrl+Shift+A
Deselect all: Ctrl+Shift+A	Select > Deselect All: Alt+D
Isolate selected objects	Show > Isolate Select > View Selected in a view panel: Ctrl+1
Raycast selection: F10	Camera based selection option for the Select tool and each Transform tool: double-click the tool's icon to open Tool Settings and set this option. You can also set this option in the Modeling Toolkit.