How to display size and location information for objects and selections

[Anonymous]

Here is an album describing my problem: http://imgur.com/a/WLkLw

I'm coming from Cinema 4D to Maya and something seemingly simple as knowing the size of a face selection in units is hard to do. I tried the component editor but that seems to be only for vertices, and I shouldn't have to use the measuring tools for every little selection I want to edit or have information on. I know you can do Ctrl+T to display measurements for the whole objects but this doesn't work during face selections. Surely there's got to be a better way to select something and know its location in space and its size in units (inches, meters, etc) as defined by the settings? Thank you for your time and please let me know if you know of a better way.

[J450NP13]

If you know the overall length of the mesh and how many times it was subdivided you could figure out the sizes...although that probably won't help you.

Maya isn't CAD software...it doesn't use dimensions like CAD.

What I do is setup a template for a new scene with inches as units and the grid set up to get a general idea of how big the model is....My grid is 20' X 20'  240 inches X 240 inches.

Why do you need the dimension?

[Anonymous]

Why do I need them? I just thought it was a basic feature of a 3D program, as shown in Cinema 4D it's a default part of the UI and it's trivial to make things exactly to scale, or in this case to make sure the walls of a room are of a certain height, so when you make objects to put in it they make sense relative to each other. I know you can still 3D model without units but lots of times it's handy to do and I'm surprised such a thing is missing from Maya. I guess I'll use another program when I need to model in real world units.

[J450NP13]

Well you can...you just have to be aware of your units and set up a workflow to use.  I modeled my entire house in Maya...I know it isn't Revit...and it did take longer but I did it.

I would recommend using another platform...then you could always import to Maya for animations or renderings.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I'm sure it's doable, but using measuring tools for everything would eat up time fast. I'll have to decide what each program is best suited for. Thanks for the clarification!

[J450NP13]

What are you modeling?

[Anonymous]

Was thinking of doing another room for this museum exhibit I'd made previously, so I exported the room as an FBX and imported it into Maya and was checking to see if the units would match up. It's pretty simple geometry for the walls and such but I went searching for answers about units when I selected a face and realized I couldn't tell how tall it was. In this situation I'd want consistent wall height, hallway widths, etc so I was hoping I'd overlooked another way besides measuring tools, I guess I was just spoiled by C4D.

[J450NP13]

Setup a template scene file that has the units you want...that match your model and it will be good to go.

[Anonymous]

If you need exact dimensions, you could set up the scene units to inches or centimeters or feet or whatever you need, and then use the Absolute Transform menu at the top of the window. Select a component on the mesh, select the move tool (works with scale and rotate as well) and enter the coordiates at the top (ie, 5, 0, 0 will move the component to 5 in x on the grid).

Another tool you could try would be the Transform Component Tool in Edit Mesh. It opens up a menu on the channel box similar to when you extrude a face and you can input exact numbers to scale or move or rotate.

Unfortunately there's no tool in Maya that can track the size of a face but hopefully these tools will help.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try them out!

[_sebastian_f]

also worth to mention:

bonus tools > display > vertex distance and edge length. gives you a HUD showing the values. if you don´t have bonus toos installed: get it!

[Arashseyedi]

I feel for you man, that's EXACTLY my wonder too! isn't Maya and 3Ds max "standard" applications in the game industry? isn't it that the games or any other 3D scene meant to be built based on the real-world scale! how on earth I see my objects real scales XD

God bless the German software Cinema 4D (big fan), love its UX on any aspects, so underrated in the game industry, its modeling tools are just thoughtfully developed.