SGI: Computer Graphics

iffy50 wrote: Hello again,

One of the problems I've found with Maya 6.5 is that there are very few shelves with the installation. Coming from a later version, the menu's are very different and so it's a bit difficult to find your way around. So, I re-built the shelves that you find in 2011 in 6.5! Well, as far as it's possible to.

I would like to post them up here so that other people can use them. I just wanted to check if anyone saw any problems with doing this (not trying to break any rules here).

Just to be clear, I put these together with the shelf editor although the layouts and icons are the same as the later versions (all internal icons). I haven't copied them from a later version and edited them.

Cheers,
Ian

Info
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If you've come from a later version of Maya to IRIX, then you may find yourself a little bit lost. A lot of the same functions exist, but they're not where you expect them to be.

One of the main comfort blankets that I found was missing was the shelves. They've been there as long as I've been on Maya (since about 8.0). So I recreated them in 6.5 to be as close to the ones that ship with Maya 2011 as I could.

Not all of the buttons are there, but I was surprised to find that more than 90% of the features are. Also, the icons have changed a bit over time, so they may not be the same as the ones that you're used to (I've used the Maya IRIX 6.5 embedded versions in each case). I've tried to keep the positions the same and the help info in the info bar can be used to tell you what's going to happen.

All recreated from scratch (I didn't just copy the shelf.mel files over from a later versions), so there should be no copyright problems.

I haven't tested this on any IRIX version of Maya apart from 6.5, but I can't see any reason that it wouldn't work on earlier versions.

Install
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You've already expanded it, if you're reading this.
Copy the shelf_*.mel files to your ~/maya/6.5/prefs/shelves directory

Restart Maya.
The shelves should all now be there. You may need to adjust the order that they appear in. The Maya default is

General
Curves
Surfaces
Polygons
Subdivs
Deformation
Animation
Dynamics
Rendering
PaintEffects

I guess that it's also possible to make ones for Toon, Fur and Hair, but I don't use them so I didn't bother. If anyone wants them, then let me know and I'll knock them up.

If anyone finds any other things that I missed in there, then please feel free to update and upload.

Enjoy,
Ian
if at voom dot org
29/04/2011

iffy50 wrote: Hi,

OK, here they are.

And a copy of the included text file....

vishnu wrote: Don't know about PA but in Maya there's always been the option to turn off everything but the view window and run the program entirely from the hotbox. In these days of megapixel LCDs there's not really much of a reason to do that anymore. Oh hotbox, we miss you so....

GIJoe wrote: never seen anybody use the hotbox much though, outside of demo videos. that thing looks like it would need some serious customization to become useful. can only take in so much text at once - arghl.