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Advanced Modeling Tool:

The Advanced Modeling Tool Context was created to speed up the polygon modeling process. It was built to be as fast as possible utilizing as few hotkeys as possible. Everything is done on a contextual level with combinations of ctrl and shift. Click on the icon and you will enter the Advanced Modeling Tool Context. You will see your cursor change to a sideways arrow and any mesh that was selected will automatically highlight into vertex mode. If a mesh has not been selected, hover over a mesh, right click, and go to "Vertex" mode.

CONTEXTS:

A lot of the times I mention contexts to people who use Maya, they tend to not understand what they mean or how they are used within Maya. Let me explain so you have a better understanding of what these custom contexts do and do not do and why.

Above is a picture of the left side toolbar in default Maya. If you do not click any of these icons, I am sure you enter them at some point mostly by hotkeys. Each icon above is a context that Maya has created. The default Maya hotkey for the move tool is "W"... when you hit "W" on your keyboard, you are entering the "Move" context which is highlighted above.. Clicking "Q" enters the default selection Context or the top icon, the arrow.. The "Move" context allows the user to select as well as move both objects or components. The default select tool only allows the user to do selecting. If you want to actually move something, you must exit the context and enter the "Move" context. Maya also has special contexts for splitting edges or extruding faces.

Why am I telling you all of this? Users tend to not understand the principal of switching contexts and the limitations that contexts have. For example, if you are in the splitting edge context, you cannot move an object until you exit the splitting edge context and enter the "Move" context. Hopefully this makes sense.

ADVANCED MODELING TOOL CONTEXT:

The Advanced Modeling Tool Context is not an object selection tool. As described above in the context section, one must program the context specific to do specific functions. Therefore, if you click on the Advanced Modeling Tool Context Icon and try to drag and select objects, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN! This is very important. Please be aware of what context you are in when trying to perform actions in Maya. If you want to select an object, click "Q" to exit the Advanced Modeling Tool Context and enter Maya's default selection Context.

Advanced Modeling Tool Context is meant for editing mesh components. In order for anything to happen you must be in a component mode. If you have an object selected before selecting Advanced Modeling Tool Context, the tool will enter a component mode for you automatically. If not, you must right click over an object, and select "edge", "vert", or "face" to enter a component mode.

HOW TO USE:

If you are not in a component mode, switch to one first by right clicking over the model and selecting a component. By default, the Mult-Component Select checkbox is checked. This means that regardless of which component mode you are in, it will be a multi compent mode. When you hover over the model, you should see pre-selection highlighting. If you don't, you might have locators unchecked in the "Show" viewport menu. You will also notice a green circle drawn around your mouse when you hover over the mesh. This is the soft selection radius of the brush.

MIDDLE CLICK AND DRAG:

Clicking and dragging the middle mouse button will increase or decrease the radius of the brush.

The Advanced Modeling Tool is a multi function tool. What this means is that it will function different dependent on what you do. The first time you use this tool, you will have the radius drawn over the brush with pre-selection highliting on. There are two main modes to this brush. Tweak Mode, and Selection/Edit Mode.

TWEAK MODE:

If there are no components selection, you have the option to be in tweak mode. This will be obvious by the radius circle being drawn. If you are not in tweak mode, you will not have a circle drawn. There are two basic things you can do in tweak mode, Move or Smooth.

Both Move and Smooth are all modified by the Intensity and Smooth Intensity values. Change these to modify how powerful the results are.

TWEAK MOVE: CTRL + LEFT CLICK AND DRAG

By holding down "CTRL" with NOTHING selected and left clicking and dragging, you will tweak move the vertices of a mesh based off of the soft selection radius. The gif above shows the results. At the end of the gif, you will notice that I dragged the soft selection radius, by middle clicking and dragging down to 0. By doing this, it gets rid of soft selection and turns the tweak into an individual component level tweak. Because Mult-Select-Component is checked, if you are over a vertex, it will move a single vertex. If you are over an edge, it will move the edge. If you are over a face, it will move the entire face. Middle click and drag the soft selection radius back up to enable soft selection again. This is a very fast way of turning soft selection on and off.

TWEAK SMOOTH: SHIFT + LEFT CLICK AND DRAG

By holding down "SHIFT" with NOTHING selected and left clicking and dragging, you will smooth the vertices of the mesh based off of the soft selection. The gif above shows the results.

SELECTION/EDIT MODE:

Selection/Edit mode is the other mode the brush can be in. This mode gets activated simply by Left clicking over the mesh to select components. By default, Multi-Component Selection is enabled. This means that you will select whichever component is the closest to the mouse. If you do not want this, you can click off Multi-Component Select and the selection mode will be based off of the current component mode you are in.

LEFT CLICK AND DRAG:

Paint selection mode. If you left click and drag on the mesh, Advanced Modeling Tool will select the closest component to the mouse. When you continue to drag, you will continue to select additional component based off of the first component type you selected. For example, if you selected a face first, if you continue to drag, you will select additional faces. Additionally, if you release the mouse, and click again on the mesh, you will select the same component type you previously had selected. In the previous example, that would be a face.

If you select outside of the mesh, in an open viewport area, you will deselect and turn the brush back into the default starting mode.

SHIFT:

Holding shift and left clicking and dragging will add to the selection. You obviously want to do this after you made a selection in the first place. This will also continue to only select the new component type. For example, if you initially clicked and dragged edges, the next time you hold shift, click and drag, you will continue to select edges.

CTRL:

Holding Ctrl and left clickng and dragging will deselect whichever components you hit. Again, this only can happen after an initial selection as taken place.

SHIFT + CTRL + LEFT DRAG EDGE:

Holding Shift + Ctrl and dragging over an edge will select up and down the current edge's edge loop and edge ring. Similar to the Super Selection shown in the gif below. However, the tool tries to figure out if you want a loop or ring selected based off of the direction of the drag.

FAST LEFT CLICK EDGES:

If you click fast without moving the mouse over an edge, you will select an edge ring. Shift and Ctrl both work by adding or removing full edge rings.

CTRL + SHIFT FAST LEFT CLICK:

If you hold down Ctrl + Shift and fast left click, you will select an edge loop instead of a ring. Because of a lack of hotkeys, this will continue to add to the selection. There is no removing selection.

CLEAR SELECTION OR DESELECTING:

In order to clear the selection, just click outside of the mesh in an open space of the viewport. Do not hold shift or ctrl down. This will deselect any selected components.

EDIT MODE:

Once you have components selected, you can edit them based off of either the CTRL or SHIFT modifier's and the Middle Mouse button.

Edit mode is context sensitive. That means that something different will happen based off of what type of component is selected.

MIDDLE MOUSE CLICK:

By clicking the middle mouse button with components selected, the tool will be some version of "delete". Because the tool is context sensitive, it will be different depending on the component selected.

EDGES:

If Edges are selected, the tool will attempt to delete the edge and the connected vertices. Dependent on which edges are selected, you will get multiple results. The following gifs show both examples

VERTICES:

Vertices will only be deleted if they are stray vertices. That means any vertex that lie inside an edge without proper connections.

FACES:

If faces are selected, they will be deleted.

CTRL + MIDDLE MOUSE CLICK:

Ctrl + Middle Mouse Click is always some version on "adding". Because the tool is context sensitive, it will be different depending on the component selected.

EDGES:

If Edges are selected, "adding" will mean cutting and connecting the selected edges together as shown in the video below.

As you can see, the edges will be "cut" or connected the best it can be. This means going accross edge loops. You can cut multiple connected edges regardless of whether they touch each other. If you have a single edge selected, and cut it, you will split the edge, adding a vertex in the middle.

NOTICE: After the edge was split, I quickly held CTRL down and left clicked over the vert to Tweak it. This makes it extremely fast to edit.

VERTICES:

If vertices are selected "adding" will mean connected the vertices with edges as shown below.

FACES:

currently if you have faces selected and hold ctrl + middle click, nothing will happen.

SHIFT + MIDDLE MOUSE CLICK:

Shift + Middle Mouse Click is always some version on "collapsing". Because the tool is context sensitive, it will be different depending on the component selected.

EDGES:

If Edges are selected, "collapsing" will mean collapsing the selecting edges as shown below:

VERTICES:

If Vertices are selected, "collapsing" will merge the selected vertices to the last selected vertex. Just like a target weld.

FACES:

If Faces are selected, "collapsing" will collapse the faces selected.

SHIFT + CTRL + MIDDLE MOUSE CLICK:

Shift + Ctrl + Middle Mouse Click is always some version on "extrude". Because the tool is context sensitive, it will be different depending on the component selected.

FACES:

If Faces are selected, you will extrude the faces. Drag back and forth to set the distance of the extrude. Once you release the mouse, you can click it again to perform another extrusion. This is meant to be a fast way to extrude. Therefore, you do not have all the options of extrude within the tool. However, once you perform the extrude, if you look in the channel box, you will see an extrude node. You can edit the values there to do specific things. This is a Maya extrude node.

EDGES:

If Edges are selected, you will bevel the Edges. Drag back and forth to set the distance of the bevel. Drage up and down to set the number of divisions in the bevel. Once you perform the bevel, if you look in the channel box, you will see an bevel node. You can edit the values there to do specific things. This is a Maya bevel node.

Once you have done any editing, the brush will enter the default brush setting allowing you to quickly either tweak the mesh or do further selection and editing. Note that your next selection will turn back into a multi component selection if checked. This also allows you to quickly modify, for example, edges and then quickly jump to faces or vertices without having to change component modes manually.

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