In my quest to learn more about Maya I have been downloading different files and rigs to see how they were constructed. I have downloaded a couple of files where anytime you select the move tool or rotate tool all or some of the controls are disabled. My question is where is it that you do this in Maya. I have looked all over in the attributes but have come up short. Please point me in the correct direction. Thanks in advance.

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I'm assuming that you mean that some of the translate or rotate channels are unable to be changed? You do this in the channel box, right click on them and select "lock and hide selected". This will lock those channels (can't change them) and hide them from the channel box so they don't clutter things up.

If you're talking about something different, post a screenshot and indicate the area that you're wondering about.

Edit: If you want to get deeper into that, there is a dedicated window in maya. Windows > General Editors > Channel Control (I think it's called something like that). This will display all the channels that are locked, un-locked, hidden, visible, keyable and non-keyable. You can change things here, e.g. getting a hidden channel visible in the channel box again. Hope that helps.

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-stwert

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hey Roontoon,

I know of a way that can limit what objects move,rotate,and scale. There's probably an easier way but I don't know it. So Lets say you want to lock an object so that it can't be moved. If you select the box, open the attribute editor, then up at the top where the tabs are (pCube1, pCubeShape1, etc) click on the pCube1, then open the tab that says Limit information, and from there you can set the minimun and maximum translate, rotate, scale limits. Set the same number for the min. and max. in order for it to not move at all.

Another way is to move the objects you want locked into a separate layer and click the middle box until it says R.

Hope this helps!


Edit: posted at the same time! lol and I knew there was an easier way!

i would think that if those controls are disabled then it's for a reason. i think when you rig something you're meant to lock awaythe controls and all sorts if stuff so that you limit the things that can be done with the rig. it makes it so that you can't start moving things around that something else controls or is dependant on and would make the rig less fragile to accidental movements that will make things go wonky and crazy

so more than likely whatever you have is probably controlled by something else, maybe it's locked (attribute will be grey) or controlled by expressions (attribute will be purple) orange i think means it's got a keyframe somewhere on it and yellow means it's controlled by set driven keys and blue means it's constrained (i think i got all the colours right, i might be making something up)

if it's controlled by expressions then you can look at the expression from the expression editor,
if it's controled by constraints you can see those in the channel box or in the hypergraph
same with set driven keys (in the hypergraph)
i think...

you can also limit scale, translate and rotate of an object in the attribute editor

if what you have is in an asset then all the controls the rigger intended you to have are in the asset container (unless they missed stuff out by accident)

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

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You guys rock!! Thanks. The channel box is now very much more familiar to me. :headbang:

d