How to Customize the Maya Interface

[@jordanmalone9853]

Thank you for making Maya feel a little smaller. I've just started to finally learn how to use Maya and this very simple and basic information is just what I needed.

[@malcolm341]

That's great, thanks for commenting and letting me know.

[@justinmyles180]

I always watch these tutorials when going to bed in the UK. Haha, I end up drawing notes in a note pad. 😅

[@Kimnn23]

i tried to add the attricutes sheet the same way you did at 8:00 but the line doesn't go blue and it just moves from side to side. is there any other way to do it? (a beginner asking:( )

[@malcolm341]

@Kimnn23 Hi, yes should work I just gave it a try and was able to dock it to the right hand side. Make sure you right click the existing tab you're trying to dock to and choose tab direction right. Another thing to check for the attribute editor specifically is go into Windows> Settings/Preferences> Preferences> UI Elements> Editor in Main Window> uncheck attribute editor checkbox. Let me know how it goes.

[@THEPASHKA]

Thanks! Your tutorial helped me fixing Yeti plugin

[@malcolm341]

That's great, thanks for letting me know.

[@VidalPueyo]

Really thanks Malcom! You are doing great! Thanks for all the actualization of the scripts too!

[@malcolm341]

Thanks for letting me know, glad you're enjoying the scripts and videos.

[@kevinm3751]

Very slick, thanks a ton for making this tutorial it will go a long way to help me get things setup right!

[@malcolm341]

Right on, thanks for your comment.

[@ashleechan22]

Thank you!

[@malcolm341]

You're welcome, thanks for commenting.

[@gabrielmoro3d]

Extremely useful, thanks a LOT!

[@malcolm341]

You're welcome, thanks for commenting.

[@Ngomes007]

how can I put the camera's controls on the ui

[@malcolm341]

In the viewport, click view in the top left and then camera tools. From there you can hold Ctrl + shift and add each camera control to the shelf, or just tear off that menu and use it as is like a floating window.

[@RomixV]

And by the way, you CAN store your viewport setting for each new scene instead of navigating every damn time to edit your prefs. So inside userSetup.mel type this code: global proc enableAA() { setAttr hardwareRenderingGlobals.multiSampleEnable 1; setAttr hardwareRenderingGlobals.hwInstancing 1; setAttr hardwareRenderingGlobals.lineAAEnable 1; print "Enabled anti-aliasing "; } scriptJob -event "SceneOpened" enableAA; enableAA(); This will make all your scenes loads with AA turn on. Actually there was a topic on polycount I think, with described viewport settings to add into this file

[@malcolm341]

Cool I'll give this a try I always want me scene to open with wireframe on shaded turned on.

[@ronydey2696]

Great

[@malcolm341]

Thank you.

[@Ka2Fa]

is there a way to make the icons within in the custom shelf in the modelling toolkit bigger?

[@malcolm341]

Not that I know of I think even if you make a bigger icon Maya auto scales it

[@Ka2Fa]

@@malcolm341 ah, too bad thank you! Just got the script pack for UVs and trying to wrap (heh) my head around it

[@malcolm341]

@@Ka2Fa Awesome, thanks for your purchase.

[@vertextwin1177]

How would you go about customizing the color when you have like the move, rotate or scale tool selected on the left side? It's blue by default. How would you change that color to something else?

[@malcolm341]

I don't think it's possible to change the colour of the interface buttons unless you find the actual image it uses and overwrite that, I'm not sure where that would be though.

[@vertextwin1177]

@@malcolm341 That's a shame. Thanks for the vid and info.

[@devjitpaul1191]

huge thanks

[@malcolm341]

You got it.

[@shisasworld]

The bug with the tool bar is still here in 2025!!! :)

[@malcolm341]

@shisasworld If you're referring to MTK custom shelf always needing to be expanded each time Maya starts I have a fix for it here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4LOn62wh9mFepI

[@shisasworld]

@malcolm341 im talking about the bar with the translation tools.

[@malcolm341]

@@shisasworld Oh yeah that one, sorry I don't have a fix for that, there's a lot of bugs when you modify the UI.

[@deanfuest]

love your vids dude. can you please explain how to add separators to the mtkshelf? ✌

[@malcolm341]

Thanks, sure it's just a button that does nothing that the icon happens to look like a separator. You can make a button on the top shelf and choose this as the icon down_ON_32_100.png or whatever icon you like, then drag that button to the MTK shelf.

[@deanfuest]

@@malcolm341 thank you! this was driving me insane.

[@michaelvaughan2986]

can you make cvs larger?

[@malcolm341]

Not that I know of, it looks like you can only increase vertex size on polygon objects.

[@michaelvaughan2986]

@@malcolm341 Thanks for the reply, what about cv color? Cheers

[@malcolm341]

@@michaelvaughan2986 yes Windows> Settings/Preferences> Color Settings> Active Tab> Components> Nurbs CVs

[@michaelvaughan2986]

@@malcolm341 Thank again man, Highlight components was the one I was after, under the Active>General>Highligt components.

[@malcolm341]

@@michaelvaughan2986 sweet, glad it worked out.

[@justinyuvilla8944]

would you happen to have any solution on the problem that arises when maya all of a sudden can no longer import multiple fbx files through windows drag and drop, even when using a multi fbx import plugin. I find that whenever I reset the maya preferences, this issue becomes resolved, but eventually will re occur time and time again for some reason I have not figured out yet, but I think is related to using GoZ for zbrush.

[@malcolm341]

Damn that's brutal, no haven't seen that issue yet. The best you could do is once the problem starts occurs close Maya and back up your prefs, then copy each folder from your back up prefs back one at a time until you find the folder that is causing the bug. This will be painful because you'll need to close Maya each time before you copy one folder back, but at least then you'll be able to narrow down which part of the preferences is interfearing with the drag and drop feature.

[@prasadparker6303]

only mel scripts are working .....i can't use my python made scripts in marking menu sir, pls help....

[@malcolm341]

Can you provide the steps of what you're doing, I don't really use the marking menus for any type of shortcuts or scripts so I'm not exactly sure where you're trying to assign the Python script.

[@prasadparker6303]

@@malcolm341 windows

[@malcolm341]

@@prasadparker6303 Looks like it doesn't work unfortunately forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-ideas/marking-menu-python-language-support/idi-p/8087370 in this article they mention there's a way to save the script to you hard drive and then call it through mel to trick it into working, but it was unclear how to use the trick as I don't understand Python so I can't read their example. I'm sure we could figure it out, but it would mean saving all your python scripts to your hard drive as separate files which is a hassle.

[@tedc1928]

I'm trying to get the uv editor to dock the uv tool kit permanently. How do you do that?

[@malcolm341]

If you're trying to dock it to the left side I think there's a bug preventing that. If you want to dock it to the right side try tearing off the UV editor so it's floating then drag the toolkit and dock it. Then save your current workspace so it remembers the docking.

[@tedc1928]

@@malcolm341 Now the uv tool kit won't scale. I tried to reset the work space but that didn't work. Any Ideas?

[@malcolm341]

I've found it can be pretty buggy, if you ever get something really corrupted you can always switch to Maya classic and then just save that work space as a new name to reset everything. Another thing you can try is also turning the UV toolkit off in UV editor under tools disable UV toolkit and see if that helps reset it. I've got the UV toolkit permanently docked and collapsed on the right of my UV editor so it's definitely possible, I'm in Maya 2018 though.

[@tedc1928]

@@malcolm341 Yeah the workspace .json file was messing me up but I got it to scale now.How do you get the uv editor with the uv toolkit docked to save without it being open?

[@tedc1928]

@malcolm341 I got it working. Thanks for your help.

[@Z.E.N.A.]

Can anyone configure the tool box on the right side?

[@malcolm341]

What do you mean, I thought we covered it all in the video. What is the name of the toolbox and what did you want to configure with it?

[@Z.E.N.A.]

@@malcolm341 Firstly sorry I meant left side. The place I call the tool box is in the red area. I want to change the shortcuts in this area. My Outliner shortcut stays too low. I want to pull it up without completely relocating the Tool box. i.ibb.co/q1Cf1vy/Tool-Box.jpg

[@malcolm341]

@@Z.E.N.A. as far as I know you can't configure the tools panel, as a work around you could make a shelf button that has the outliner on it, or move the modeling tool kit to the left side and put your tools in there.

[@Z.E.N.A.]

@@malcolm341 Okay, Thanks for comment

[@rezo856]

Can anyone please please tell me how can I make maya 2019 interface look like maya 2013 interface? the icons and so on. please please.

[@malcolm341]

I don't think it's possible, you'd need to change all the artwork that the internal program uses. I don't think Maya supports skins as far as I know.

[@wraithe5367]

here is the mel script "window -e -bgc 0.1 0.1 0.1 $gMainWindow ;" if anyone wants to change the maya's grey color to anything. those 3 (0.1) values goes for RGB, Might wanna save it as a start up file too.

[@malcolm341]

Oh cool, thanks for sharing that tip.

[@leecaste]

The Toolbox resizing bug is not fixed in Maya 2019...nice job Autodesk 😩

[@malcolm341]

Agree, very annoying they haven't fixed it yet. Your best bet is to create a small annoying things post and hopefully it will get upvoted by the community. I've actually had a couple of my own ideas added to Maya by using this forum. Autodesk absolutely reads this forum when they're looking for small annoying things to fix in future versions of Maya forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-ideas/idb-p/968/label-name/ui%20%26%20viewport/page/2

[@leecaste]

Not worth the time, there are posts made by Autodesk employees themselves years ago with hundreds of votes and those ideas get to nowhere. That forum is a joke like the company itself, the only thing useful Autodesk can do is to frustrate its costumers and teach them how to NOT manage a company.

[@malcolm341]

@@leecaste I found a fix, put this in the userSetup.mel file video coming soon //Maximize the MTK shelf vertically to fix Maya bug where it shrinks on restart global proc mtkFix() { string $pLayouts[] = `lsUI -l -type paneLayout`; string $pLayout = ""; for ($i in $pLayouts) { string $sub = `substring $i 1 14`; if ($sub == "NEXDockControl") { $pLayout = $i; paneLayout -edit -paneSize 2 1 100 $pLayout; break; } } } evalDeferred "mtkFix";

[@rodolfoxavierneto6667]

I mean... justo go blender ; every tutorial that i watch about this software I reach that conclusion...