HOW DO I USE MAYA’S NEW SEARCH FUNCTION?
Eric Tolan, Berwick-upon-tweed
Antony Ward replies
Since I began using it back in the early 1990s, Maya has grown enormously as Autodesk has continued to add new features and tools. The problem is, accessing these can often involve a search through the ever-growing drop-down menus, which can impact on your workflow.
Marking menus have done a lot to combat this issue, offering users a context-based system giving quick access to the most-used tools for the current situation, all with the press of a key and the click of a button.
These have served us well, and with each release Autodesk streamlines the process. They work particularly well when modelling, meaning you can quickly bevel, extrude or add an edge loop without breaking concentration.
As good as these are, they aren’t perfect and for a long time now the Maya community have been asking for one particular feature to be added, one which other 3D applications have now had for a while. This request has been for a quick search function.
Thankfully, Autodesk has been listening to its community’s feedback on this matter, and one of the main features of Maya 2023 is its new search box, which did pop up in later updates to 2022 for those who had access.
On the left of the user interface is a simple magnifying glass button. Clicking on this will open a text box, allowing you to quickly search for a tool or a command. You don’t even need to know the name of the tool you are looking for, because Maya will try and work out what you need based on the text you input.
Searching isn’t the only function this tool offers. You can also switch the operation so you can search for and select something, which is essential when working on larger scenes. You can also run a MEL or Python command too, all from this one box.
If you need to repeat the command you can press G, but the search tool will also remember your previous searches, so you have quick access to them if needed.
So as new features go, it’s not groundbreaking, but it could be the one that helps shave precious time off your daily workload.