Maya 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual Quickstart Guide

4. Transforming Objects and Components

Maya gives you many ways to move, rotate, and scale objects around a scene, and many shortcuts for completing these common tasks. These actions, known as transformations, can be performed in a couple of different ways: You can type new coordinates or values in the Channel Box or use one of the many manipulation tools (Figure 4.1) to drag an object freely around the scene or constrain it to an axis.

Figure 4.1. Maya’s manipulation tools.

Using the same tools you would employ to manipulate objects in the scene, you can also manipulate parts of an object, known as components. Each object type has its own components ...