Shelf customization question...

[Anonymous]

Can I customise a shelf by just using text labels on icons, without icons? Kind of like a button that says "sphere" instead of the icon?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Can I customise a shelf by just using text labels on icons, without icons? Kind of like a button that says "sphere" instead of the icon?

Thanks.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous and welcome to the community!

Shelves need an icon in order to load properly so by default this can't be done but you could make an image that says sphere for example and then use that as the icon for the shelf.

This way it will be an icon but it will only show text.

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.

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[Anonymous]

This would be a horrible solution, as I would need to make a new custom icon for every single shelf icon. Surely there has to be a simple way to just work with labels rather than icons.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

Unfortunately this is the only way that would display just text. We do have the functionality that when you hover over a shelf icon a tooltip will display that you could set to say something like sphere but in summary there is no way to completely remove the icons and have a shelf icon just have text saying sphere.

If you don't mind me asking, why would you want to remove the sphere icon and have text instead?

[Anonymous]

My background is with Lightwave3D, a text driven 3D program that makes it easy to find what you want by reading. Icons are a bit jarring and hard to find by comparison. Are there transitional tutorials or something available to make Maya a bit more friendly to Lightwave users?

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I don't know of any lightwave to Maya tutorials for interfaces etc. but we do have our help docs that may help you!

[Anonymous]

Thank you.

What would you direct someone to, when they are very familiar with the core concepts (rendering, parenting, IK, lighting, rigging, timeline, modeling) on a very different platform.

I have the student version (back to college, so why not) and without some basics that I have gotten used to, like layers (very much like photoshop), it is very confusing to me to select different objects, boolean operations (for modeling). I don't know if Maya even uses concepts like sets (group object selections, or polly selection sets). Then there is meta-forming (adding smoothing and detail geometry that changes based on a target (distance from camera, etc) to keep poly count lower in distant shots without losing detail in close ups. 

I hope these aren't too crazy questions to ask at this stage. 

I also just downloaded Mudbox, which I find much easier to grasp.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

There is a layer system and Maya does use sets/groups as well.

As for lower models depending on camera distance (LODs) I've worked with these in game engines but not Maya itself. That said, the functionality is definitely possible in Maya.

I totally understand how difficult it can be jumping programs like this, so aside from our help documentation, we also have the knowledge base and other resources you could search keywords for and find results or guides to most if not all of your questions!

Let me know if you need any more information!