Select an asset

Asset centric selection

For assets with no transform, you can customize Maya to select the first published node of an asset (the selection transform, the first parent, or the first child in that order) whenever any node in an asset is selected in the main scene. This is useful in complex scenes, especially with hierarchies, where you usually only want to ever select the highest level parent in the asset.

For example, in a character scene where a skeleton and its skin are placed in the same asset, an animator may have trouble selecting the skeleton behind the skin. However, if the skeleton is published as the asset’s root transform, the animator could then select the underlying skeleton just by selecting the skin.

To set a selection transform

1. Select a node inside the asset.
2. Select Assets > Advanced Assets > Node Publishing > Publish as Selection Transform.

   The selected node is set as the asset’s root transform.

To select assets by their selection transform

1. Hold the Q + while the cursor is pointing to an object in the scene.
2. Select Select > Asset Centric from the marking menu.

   Now if you select any object in the asset in the scene panel, the object that you set as the selection transform is selected instead.

Selecting selection transforms works differently if one of the transformation tools is active. In this case, Maya selects the first node with the appropriate published attributes above the selected node.

For example, in the above hierarchy, pSphere1 is published as asset1’s root node. If Asset centric selection is on and you select pCylinder1 with the Move Tool, Maya selects pCube1 if it has one or more published translation attributes. Even if pSphere1 also has published translation attributes, Maya still selects pCube1 because it is the first node with the appropriate published attribute(s) encountered by a traversal up the hierarchy.

In this case, if you select the Rotate Tool or Scale Tool and select pCylinder1, Maya selects pSphere1 because pCube1 does not have any published rotation or scale attributes.

To view an asset’s selection transform

1. Select the asset.
2. Open the Attribute Editor.
3. In the asset tab, navigate to the Published Nodes section.

   The Root Transform field displays the current published root node. If the word None appears then the current root node is the default. You can quickly go to the root node by clicking the icon next to the Selection Transform field.