Tools / Canvas
Canvas
An empty dock that holds other tools, so a group of them moves, floats and hides as one. Then push the whole thing out into Maya's own interface.
Tool Box In the base package
What it does
Group tools into one unit
Open tools inside a canvas and they dock, tab, stack and resize as they do in the tool box. Drag, float, tab or hide the canvas and everything in it goes along.
Dock it in Maya
Dock in Maya moves a canvas, tools and all, into a Maya panel of its own. It arrives as a tab beside the Attribute Editor, and you can drag it anywhere in Maya's interface. Maya brings it back on restart, and Return to Tool Box brings it home.
As big as its contents
The inside is a page that scrolls when it outgrows the dock. It grows when you add a tool and shrinks when one leaves. A canvas of one-row tools, a stack of time sliders say, scales right down to them.
Lock it when it is right
Lock Canvas Editing hides every canvas's menu bar and resize grips, leaving only the tools. The title bar can go as well.
As many as you like
Name them for the job: Canvas - Rigging, Canvas - Anim. Canvases can hold other canvases.
Layouts remember all of it
A saved layout keeps each canvas, what it holds, how it is arranged, what each tool was set to, and whether it was out in a Maya panel. Switch layouts and it is rebuilt as it was.
Worth knowing
Only a canvas docked straight in the tool box can go out to a Maya panel, not one nested inside another. Dragging a canvas out of the tool box only floats it, so use its menu to dock it in Maya. Removing a canvas removes the tools inside it along with their settings.
Details
| Category | Tool Box |
|---|---|
| Price | Included in the base package, $2 |
| Maya | 2024 to 2027, Windows |
| Install | Unzip into your Maya modules folder, restart Maya — how to install |
| Files | Canvases are saved with your layouts, in your own Maya folder |
| Scene files | Writes nothing into your scene |
Comes with the base package.
Along with the Shelf, the Theme Editor and Selection Info — two dollars, once.