Display > UI Elements
> Channel Box/Layer Editor
Lets you organize large-scale
pieces of the scene so you can show, hide, or edit them all at once.
You can switch between
the Display Layer editor, the Render
Layer editor, and the Animation Layer editor by clicking
the radio button. For more details on the Render Layer editor,
see
Render Layer Editor. For more information on the Animation
Layer Editor, see
Animation Layer Editor.
Menus
Layers menu
- Create Empty Layer
-
Creates a new display
layer, depending on the selection in the drop-down list, with a
default name, for example layer1.
- Select Objects in Selected
Layers
-
Selects the objects contained
in the selected layer(s).
- Remove Selected Objects
from Selected Layers
-
Removes all objects from
the selected layer(s) and assigns them to the default layer. The selected
layer(s) becomes empty so you can assign other objects.
- Membership
-
Opens the Relationship
Editor for removing or adding objects to layers.
- Attributes
-
Opens the Attribute
Editor for the selected layer(s). There are some attributes
in the Attribute Editor not available
through the Edit Layer window.
- Delete Selected Layers
-
Deletes the selected
layer(s), but not the objects in the layer.
- Delete Unused Layers
-
Delete layers if they
have no content.
- Set All Layers / Set Selected
Layers / Set Only Selected Layers
-
You can set all layers
or selected layer characteristics. When you set selected layer characteristics,
you can specify whether unselected layers will be affected or not.
You can set the following
characteristics:
Visible/Invisible
Normal/Template/Reference
Full
Detail/Bounding Box
Shaded/Unshaded
Textured/Untextured
Playback
On/Playback Off
The above layer settings
menu items are also available when you -click
a Display layer.
- Sort Layers Alphabetically
-
- Sort Layers Chronologically
-
Sorts layers by time
of creation.
Options menu
You can set the following
binary options:
- Make New Layers Current
- Add New Objects to Current
Layer
- Show Namespace
When using namespaces,
object names can sometimes get very long. This can make it difficult
to differentiate objects by name. Turning off the display of namespaces
replaces the namespace portion of a node’s name (if any) with “...:”.
The shortened name makes it easier to distinguish between different
objects in your scene.
NoteNamespaces are the
preferred method for managing naming when working with file references
in Maya. It is not recommended that you employ Maya's renaming prefix
convention when using file referencing. While the DAG path or long
name of a node may make it unique when using renaming prefixes,
they do not work consistently within file referencing and complicate the
hierarchical DAG changes, which may cause problems later on.
Context-sensitive menu
The following commands
are available when you -click
a layer:
- Add Selected Objects / Remove
Selected Objects / Select Objects
-
Add or remove objects
from a display layer. You can also select all objects in the current
display layer.
- Set All Layers / Set Selected
Layers / Set Only Selected Layers
-
- Empty the Layer
-
Removes all objects from
a layer, leaving it empty.
- Delete Layer
-
- Membership
-
- Attributes
-
- displayLayer
-
Type the name of the
layer.
- Enable Overrides
-
Turn this option off
to disable the effects of the layer. Objects in the layer appear
and behave as though they do not belong to the layer.
- Display Type
-
Select how the layer
appears.
- Normal
-
Objects in the layer
display normally, according to the settings for the layer. You can
select objects in the layer and snap to them.
- Template
-
Objects in the layer
become templates. You can see template objects in the workspace,
but you cannot select them, nor can you snap them.
- Reference
-
You can snap to objects
in the layer, but you cannot select them or modify them.
- Level of Detail
-
Select the level of display
detail for layer objects:
- Full
-
Displays full detail
for layer objects.
- Bounding Box
-
Shows objects as boxes that
represent their bounding volumes. Bounding boxes speed up Maya operations
making a significant difference for complex models.
- Shading
-
Turn on to make layer
objects appear shaded when in shaded display.
- Texturing
-
Turn on to show textures
on layer objects when in shaded display.
- Playback
-
Turn on to animate layer
objects during playback. If you have several characters in a scene
and want to look at each character’s animation separately, you can
place each character in its own layer and play back the animation
of each character as desired.
- Visible
-
Turn on to make the objects
in the layer visible.
- Color
-
Select the color of all
objects belonging to the layer.
- Number
-
This is the number assigned
to the layer.
Merging display layers
when importing files
To
facilitate the merging of layers when you read in files, select
Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences click
the Files/Projects category, and
in the Display Layer section select
one of the following options for File Import Merge:
- None
-
All layers read in are
put in a new layer, and renumbered and renamed, if necessary to preserve
uniqueness.
- By Number
-
All layers read in that
have the same index number as an existing layer are merged with that
layer rather than creating a new layer.
- By Name
-
All layers read in that
have the same name as an existing layer are merged with that layer
rather than creating a new layer.
Identifying display layers
by color
You can associate each
display layer with a different color so that it is easier to identify
which objects are in each display layer in the Hypergraph and
in the scene view.
NoteIf the object or
node is selected, it still appears in yellow in the Hypergraph and
outlined in green in the scene view. You only see the color for
each display layer if the object and node is not selected.
To associate each display layer with
a color
- Click Display in
your Render Layer Editor (Window
> Rendering Editors > Render Layer Editor) to view
your display layers.
- In the Render Layer Editor,
select the display layer that you wish to associate with a color.
Double-click the color box, which is the box beside the layer name,
and the Edit Layer dialog box appears.
- Select a color from the Color attribute
and click Save.
All objects in the selected
layer appear in the designated color in the scene view and all nodes
in the selected layer appear in the designated color in the Hypergraph.