When you select Metadata > Visualize Metadata in an object marking menu, you enable metadata visualization for all objects. You can only view one stream and one member at a time.
You can also visualize metadata using scripts. See Visualize metadata using scripting.
Visualizing metadata using the Display menu
To visualize metadata in your scene
- Do either of the following:
- Right-click an object and enable Metadata > Visualize Metadata.
- Enable Display > Polygons > Metadata > Visualize Metadata in the main menu bar.
Metadata displays based on the options you have selected in the Metadata Visualization Options.
To set metadata visualization options
- Select
Display > Polygons > Metadata > Visualize Metadata >
to open the
Metadata Visualization Options.
All metadata streams that belong to your scene display in the Stream to visualize drop-down list.
- Select a stream that you want to visualize, and its available members appear in the Member drop-down list.
- Select the member that you want to visualize, and the method by which you want to visualize your metadata:
Color,
String,
Ray. See
Metadata Visualization Options.
Tip: You can also select the metadata stream and member that you want to visualize from the marking menu for an object: Metadata > Select Stream. All metadata streams that belong to the object are displayed in the menu. Select the stream that you want to visualize, then the member.
To disable metadata visualization
- Do either of the following:
- Turn off Display > Polygons > Metadata > Visualize Metadata in the main menu bar.
- Turn off Metadata > Visualize Metadata in the object marking menu.
Known limitations for visualizing metadata
- When you set a value on any member on a channel, the components that have values assigned are also given default values on the other members of the same channel.
For example, in this case, the data structure has two members: color and status.
When you set the values for faces 2:4 on the status member of the face channel, faces 2:4 on the color member of the face channel are automatically assigned default values. The default values are displayed when you visualize the color member of stream1.
Because the automatically assigned default values and the deliberately set metadata values are added to different members, they are never displayed at the same time.
dataStructure -format "raw" -asString "name=struct1:float[3]=color:bool=status"; addMetadata -streamName "stream1" -channelName "face" -structure "struct1" smcPlaneShape; select -r smcPlane.f[2:4]; editMetadata -streamName "stream1" -memberName "status" - value 1
- When visualizing arrays with a length of three or less values,
Maya only supports the display of up to 3 decimal places. Additional decimal places, or a value that is >6 displayable digits may be approximated. Numeric display that is >10 digits may return INF.
When visualizing arrays with a length of four or more values, or visualizing multi-byte characters, Maya may not be able to display a large number of unique values simultaneously.