How to Substitute Hotkey for Middle Mouse Panning in Maya's Hypershade Window

[jessehigman]

I am having trouble assigning a hotkey to the middle mouse click necessary for panning inside the Hypershade. (I am using Maya 2018 with Arnold 5.1.0.1) I was successful assigning a hotkey for panning inside a regular camera view. I have the X assigned there but that same key assignment does not work inside the Hypershade. It also does not seem to work inside Arnold’s render view. It would eventually be nice to be able to pan around in the render view and also use my other keys in that view but it’s OK if there isn’t a way yet. Navigating the Hypershade is more important to me right now end it seems like it should be possible to remap the X key or an additional key for that but I can’t figure it out. 

I am a quadriplegic in a wheelchair and have limited use of my hands. I can push keys with my thumbs but I am not able to use a three button mouse. I am on a Mac so I have the left and right mouse clicks available. It is the middle mouse button however, that I have had to work around for many years. I could buy a Griffin PowerMate type of USB plug-in knob and see if its software would allow me to remap the middle mouse button to it. I am not sure of how hard that Griffin knob is to push though. I have a Wacom tablet hooked up and I assigned one of its buttons to be the middle mouse so I can move objects in Maya’s outliner. It is not a very effective way to move because it such a hard button for me to push. It would be much easier for me to just push a button on the keyboard for panning. Does anyone know away to accomplish this?

I am getting better at working with textures but if I could have a better key to push for panning, I could eliminate my clunky gestures and get to the next level of moving through a complicated network. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you

Jesse Higman

[sean.heasley]

Hi @jessehigman

There's a few ways to do this!

I believe the easiest for you would be to go to Windows->Settings/Prefs->Hotkey Editor and type Track.

Near the bottom the Tracking Tool should pop up, simply assign a key to this and now when you press said key you'll be in panning mode which you can use left mouse to move around. Once you've moved however much you want to simply press the W key and you'll be back to the default camera controls.

Another option is the handful of button commands we have in this article.

For a two button mouse you can try: 

Option + Command + Left mouse button

And for a one button mouse you can try:

Option + Command + Mouse button

Please let me know if this helps or if you need any more assistance!

If one or more of these posts helped answer your question, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.

Kudos are greatly appreciated. Everyone likes a thumbs up!

[jessehigman]

Thank you Sean for the quick reply. Unfortunately, no solutions yet. I like the Hotkey Editor solution but I have already assigned the letter X to the tracking tool and that only works in a camera view, not in the Hypershade or in the Arnold render view. If a single key is assigned like you suggested, it seems like it would perform a panning function universally between all the windows but it does not. Also, there is only one selection possible for assigning a hotkey in the Hotkey Editor. It would be helpful if there were options to assign unique hotkeys to each of these three windows if they are indeed independent of each other. I am wondering if a MEL script might be able to address this specific window.

I also tried the button commands you provided, and I looked at the article. Thank you. On my Macintosh, with its two button mouse, the option key does perform a helpful function which I did not know about before so that helped me with a new function. It does not however, track left, right, up, or down. It dollies, zooming in and out in both the Hypershade and Arnold render view. Using command or control or any other key along with option and either mouse button does not perform the tracking function.

Thank you again for you help trying to get me tracking!

Jesse

[sean.heasley]

Hi @jessehigman

Ah ok I totally forgot to test it on windows like the Node Editor and Hypershade window.

I asked some devs about this and you could try using this keyremapper. This would allow you to change the function of keys across your machine entirely not just Windows but it should work for you, they even have an example of remapping capslock to middle mouse button!

Please let me know how this goes for you!

[jessehigman]

Thank you again Sean for digging deeply and asking around. Still no solution on this end. I had looked into KeyRemapper earlier, thank you for the link, but unfortunately it is a Windows only application. There are some some similar, but not as versatile, key remapping options for the Macintosh, even possible within Apple’s system preferences but nothing I have found that remaps mouse buttons )-:

Jesse

[sean.heasley]

Hi @jessehigman

Ah right my bad I forgot you were running on Mac.

In this case, it looks like this needs to be done outside of Maya so I would recommend reaching out to Apple's support to see if they have any recommendations that may work for you.