Working with History - Autodesk Maya - making Movie - 6

Working with History

Over the course of a modeling session, the history for any given object can become quite long and
complex. This can slow down performance. It’s a good idea to periodically delete history on an
object by selecting the object and choosing Edit  Delete By Type  History. You can also choose to
delete all the history in the scene by choosing Edit  Delete All By Type  History. Once you start
animating a scene using deformers and joints, you should not delete the history or use the Delete
By Type  Non-Deformer History option.
You can turn off the history globally by clicking the history toggle switch on the status line, as
shown here.

5. Select the transform node (myCube), and press the s hot key. This creates a keyframe on
all the channels of the transform node.
You’ll see a new node icon appear for each keyframed channel with a connection to the
transform node (see Figure€1.5).
6. Hold the cursor over any line that connects one node to another. A label appears describing
the output and input attributes indicated by the connection line.

Figure€1.5
The attributes of
myCube’s transform
node have
been keyframed.
The keyframe
nodes appear in
the Hypergraph.

Navigating the Hypergraph - Autodesk Maya - Making Movie - 5

 Navigating the Hypergraph - Autodesk Maya - Making Movie - 4

The myCube node is the transform node. The myCubeShape node is the shape node. In the
Hypergraph, the shape and transform nodes are depicted as unconnected; however, there is
an implied connection, as you’ll see later. This is demonstrated when you rename the myCube
node; the shape node is renamed as well.
In Maya, the construction history feature stores a record of the changes used to create a particular
node. The polyCube1 node is the construction history node for the myCubeShape node.
When you first create a piece of geometry, you can set options to the number of subdivisions,
spans, width, height, depth, and many other features that are stored as a record in this history
node. Additional history nodes are added as you make changes to the node. You can go back
and change these settings as long as the history node still exists. Deleting a history node makes
all the previous changes to the node permanent (however, deleting history is undoable).
1. Keep the Hypergraph open, but select the cube in the viewport.
2. Set the current menu to Polygons (you can change the menu set by choosing Polygons
from the menu in the upper left of the Maya interface).
3. Choose Mesh  Smooth. The cube will be subdivided and smoothed in the viewport.
In the Hypergraph you’ll see a new polySmoothFace1 node between the polyCube1 node
and the myCubeShape node (see Figure€1.4). This new node is part of the history of the
cube.
4. Select the polySmoothFace1 node, and delete it by pressing the Backspace key on the keyboard.
The cube will return to its unsmoothed state.

Figure€1.4
Performing a
smooth operation
on the cube when
construction history
is activated
causes a new
polySmoothFace
node to be inserted
into the node
network.