Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 16/17: Create and Manage Custom Shelves

The following tutorial series is directly from Module 1 of 3 of "Maya Foundation: Home-Study Course" tutorial course.

I've released this entire Module 1 of 3 completely free. It is focused on teaching you how to get started learning Maya completely from scratch in 4 hours. Start with all videos in order within Maya Beginner Series here.

The full "Maya Foundation: Home Study Course" contains 3 Modules and 18+ hours of tutorials.

• Module 1 is focused on interface overview for game environment modeling.
• Module 2 is focused on environment modeling techniques (27 videos, 8+hrs).
• Module 3 is focused on UV mapping and UVing (21 videos, 5+hrs).

Tool Shelves in Maya is a quick way to access some of the most commonly used tools. Having a custom shelf will speed up your work in Maya. Here is how to create and manage shelves in Maya.

Video Tutorial

Creating Custom Shelf

Maya comes standard with a few shelves already:

But it is better to create your own custom shelf and add tools you use the most.

Let's create a custom tool shelf specifically for environment modeling to speed up your workflow.

Left click on Gear Icon for drop down menu:

Choose New Shelf:

Name the Shelf:

You will now see an empty, new shelf appear as a tab:

Adding Items to the Shelf

Start adding most commonly used tools to it.

Hold Ctrl + Shift and go to any icon or drop down menus and left-click to add them to your custom shelf.

• Hold Ctrl + Shift then Left Mouse Click = Adds Any Tool/Function to an Active Shelf

Deleting Icons in Tool Shelf

Delete any placed tool from a shelf by Right-Click and choose Delete:

Moving and Arranging Icons in Tool Shelf

Moving icons on your tool shelf is simple. You can either go to Shelf Editor:

In Shelf Content area, select the shelf you want to modify then the tool to move up or down:

Or, inside the Tool Shelf, Middle Mouse Click Hold and Move the icon to new location on the shelf.

Accessing Tool Settings from Custom Shelf

Many tools in Maya have options menu for additional settings. These setting are accessed by clicking on small square box within drop down menus:

To open the tool settings from custom tool shelf, double click on ANY icon from the shelf and the menu will open up:

Shelf Editor

Left click on Gear Icon and choose Shelf Editor:

Shelf Editor allows to rename, add, delete, arrange, change icons and set up different colors for your shelves. You can customize everything about your shelf here:

Next Tutorial in the Series

Maya Beginner Tutorial Series 17/17: Creating and Using Display Layers

Maya Foundation: Home-Study Course

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