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Use and modify at your own risk

This script generates a marking menu with the quick selection sets. It is customized to work with the selectionEditorWin script, though you don't need this script for the other to work.

Usage:

Place this script into your personal .../maya/scripts/ directory. I re-assigned the q key to bring up this script, since I never use any of the default selection marking menus. Look in the Window|Settings/Preferences|Hotkeys for the exact syntax for mapping the keys to the marking menus.

When I was first using Maya, I found it terribly annoying to have to remember to change the project every time I opened a scene in a different project. But if you don't then, rendered images can end up in the wrong project's image directory. Since I work with a lot of projects it can get quite confusing.

Usage:

I placed the following line into my userSetup.mel:

scriptJob -e SceneOpened confirmProjChange;

Requirements:

This script now works on both IRIX and NT. It requires Maya 2.0 or greater.

Now that we've got some NT boxes, we've got projects that need to render across both platforms. since all of our disks are shared across machines, the only problem is mapping the IRIX "/usr" format to the NT "C:" format. This script does the mapping.

Usage:

call the function conformTextures

Also, you can put the conformTextures command into your pre-render MEL field of your scene's Render Globals. That way, no matter which machine created the scene, any machine can render it.

Instructions for customizing the mappings are included in the file.

Requirements:

This script requires Maya 2.0 or later.

Finally, an easy way to set up an image plane for your camera!

This script automates a lot of the tedium of setting up an image plane. The coolest thing that it does is that if you select the Browse button, you can double click on any image in a sequence, and it will automatically find the first and last frames, and set your image plane frame extension correctly.

It has a bunch of options and a few limitations. Be sure to look through the help window for full details.

Usage:

call the function imagePlaner

Notes:

The frame sequencing can be done by either keyframes or an expression. See the help window for full details.

If you have a complex skeleton, this command lets you set keyframes on the rotate attributes of every joint without having to select every joint. Just set up your skeleton with a parent node that has the word "Skeleton" somewhere in it. Then, when you execute this command, it will keyframe every joint under that parent node.

Usage:

select any joint in the skeleton, then call the function keyframeHierarchy

I have mapped this to Alt+k

We've all done it: pressed save when we didn't mean to, and overwrote the good file with the crap we've been messing around with. To avoid this, I have hacked together this little script. All it does is execute a shell command to copy the scene to a "comma file" a la the old TAV style (e.g. "scene.mb" becomes ",,scene.mb").

Usage:

Put the script in your scripts/ directory, then add the following line to your userSetup.mel file:

scriptJob -ro true -cf "busy" "source makeBackup.mel";

The script will override the default FileMenu_SaveItem proc to make the backup before saving.

Note:

This script should work with both IRIX and NT. It requires Maya 2.0 or later.

A really simple multi-object renaming script.

Usage:

Select a bunch of objects then type:

renamer newName

The objects will be named newName1 newName2 etc...

Sometimes a scene can be pretty complicated. This window provides a simple way to define sections of the scene. You can set the time slider to these different ranges to ease the animation of very long scenes.

Maya has both a playback range and an animation range. This script only adjusts the playback range. It also integrates itself into the Render Globals window to allow you to set the render range to the current playback range, the animation range, or to any of the defined sections. Just right click on either the Start or End frame fields.

The Add button creates a new section. The default values are pulled from the current frame range. The text in the Description field can be anything you like. You can then select one of your sections, and use the Set button to set that section to the current frame range. The ? button is a help button, and, of course, Delete deletes the sections.

Usage: Call the function "sectionList"

To integrate into the Render Globals window, you should add the following line to your userSetup.mel file:

source renderGlobalsWindow.mel; scriptJob -ro true -cf "busy" "source sectionList.mel";

Notes:

• When you set the range, it doesn't move the current time. This is a feature not a bug!

• The data is stored in the file as animCurveUU nodes. Don't mess with the nodes by hand. Be aware that they are just nodes like any other and you may do something to delete them if you're not paying attention. Optimize Scene Size will probably delete them.

• The script launches a scriptJob that keeps the window updated when you open a scene or create a new scene.

• In theory, everything should work fine if you import scenes with sections defined. The Maya name clashing system will keep the nodes from clashing, and the script should still be able to find them. However, I have not tested this.

Maya layers are kind of cool, but have certain limitations. Most important, any object can be in one and only one layer. Maya also has, hidden in the Edit menu, a quick and easy set creation and selection system called Quick Select Sets. This window provides all the power and control over Layer sets but using Quick Select sets instead.

Usage: call the function "selectionEditorWin"

This script inserts itself into the Edit menu in the Quick Select Sets submenu. To implement this functionality, add the following line to your userSetup.mel file:

scriptJob -ro true -cf "busy" "source selectionEditorWin.mel";

Notes: Because Layers have customized hooks into Maya, undo/redo and imorting or referencing files works beautifully. Well, it works just the same with these sets, but the window doesn't update correctly. You have to manually update the window with the Update button or by closing and re-opening it.

The default Maya hide/show functionality is flawed and becomes a pain. This script simply toggles the visibility attribute of the objects passed to it. If they have to visibility attribute, nothing happens.

Usage:

toggleVisibility $arrayOfItems

I have mapped toggleVisibility `ls -sl` to Control+h.