Quick Tip: Custom Marking Menus in Maya

In this tutorial I'll show you how to create a custom Marking menu in Maya, this plays a really important role in boosting your production speed. With the help of this quick tip you can set as many marking menus as you like, and will never have to go through the window options to access the tools of your choice.

Step 1

First go to Setting/Preferences > Marking Menu Editor.

Step 2

Then Under the "Marking Menus" Window, select Create Marking Menu.

Step 3

The Create Marking Menu window will open. Right now it's filled with an empty box layout.

Step 4

Now you can add tools from the Custom Shelf, by simply pressing and holding the Middle mouse button and dragging them to an empty box.

Step 5

And in the same way you can also drag and drop other tools to these empty boxes. Once all the boxes are filled, new empty boxes will appear so you can add even more tools you like. (Note: here I've added only a few basic tools which I use most, you can add any tools you like from any shelf.)

Step 6

Now simply give it a name in the Menu name field, such as "My Menu", as it's required to assign this menu a hotkey. And under the "Click Here to test" box, you can check how your marking menu is working by simply pressing and holding the Left Mouse button.

Step 7

As I hovered over the "UV Texture Editor" menu in the last step, the UV texture window appeared.

Step 8

Now just select your "My_Menu" and under the "Settings" option, set the "User Marking Menu in" to "Hotkey Editor". And finally hit "Apply Settings".

Step 9

Now again go to "Settings/Preferences > Hotkey Editor", to set a hotkey to access our "My_Menu".

Step 10

Now under the "Hotkey Editor" Window. First select (1) "User Marking Menus" from the "Categories", then under the (2) "Commands". Select "My_Menu_Press", then set the (3) key to "S" (or any other key of your choice, mine was S) and click on (4) "Assign". Now a new window "maya" will appear, stating a warning that that particular hotkey is already assigned to another function (if that is the case.) If you don't need that particular key, just hit (5) "Assign" again to overwrite it.

Step 11

Now a new window will appear stating: "Your marking menu will not work correctly unless you also attach the release hotkey. Do you want this to be set up for you?". As Marking menus hotkeys also need the same key to release them and when you set any particular key, Maya will automatically ask you to set it's release key to the same, so just hit "Yes" to let Maya do so. And finally hit "Save".

Now here is your very own custom marking menu which you can access by pressing and holding "S". This way you can make up as many marking menus for particular shortcuts that can optimize your workflow to be way faster.