Maya to Blender

First Steps

Because Blender just went to a radical new version, a lot of the docs are out of date, here's some hints

• Go to Blender.org and download blender for your platform
• Click here for the in progress 2.5 wiki manual.
• CgCookie has great video tutorials, mostly introductory, mostly free.
• Blender for Dummies 2nd Edition is 2.5 based.

Keymaps

Blender has customizable keymaps, you can change them in user preferences: File->User Preferences-> Input, but you can also download and install pre-made keymaps. Here's a good one, that modifies the keys for viewport controls and transformations (and keying):

Linky it has the download and also a table to show you what he changed.

• After downloading it you need to save it to your scripts folder.
  • Launch Blender
  • do help-> system info
  • Open a blender text editor, and click on the little text icon next to the 'New' Button in the header, and open system-info.txt
  • you should see the file path for your scripts folder, among other things.
• In Explorer/Finder/Nautilus/Dolphin/a terminal/whatever, save the keymap file to that folder.
• relaunch Blender
• File->User Preferences->Input
• click on the middle button that should say Blender by default, and switch it to the new Blender to Maya preset (not the blender default Maya one)
• click on all the buttons that say 'Edit' that are visible underneath
• click on Save User Preferences

FAQ

General

Q How do I find out hotkeys ?

A Your best bet is to look in the menus/buttons. the hotkeys are displayed in the menus, or in tooltips on some buttons (if they have hotkeys). When asked, I'll probably resort to pointing you to the menu, since keymap changes may change the actual key for each user.

Q How do I move around in the timeline?

A Many ways:

• left/right arrow is frame forward/back
• up/down arrow is 10 frames forward/back
• you can jump to next keyframe/ next marker/etc (check the timeline window)
• if you have maya hotkeys/left mouse select you can right mouse scrub in any time window (timeline/graph editor/dopesheet/etc.) If you have blender defaults, left mouse to scrub.

Graph Editor

Q Can I used Stepped keys? What type of keyframes does blender support?

A Yes, Stepped keys are called 'Constant' in blenderese. you can change the keyframe interpolation for selected keyframe/s in the graph editor or in the dopesheet/action editor (Look for Interpolation Mode in the Key menu in either editor).

Q So what types of interpolation are there?

A Blender supports Constant (i.e. stepped), Linear and Bezier interpolation

Q Can I change the default interpolation to e.g. stepped/constant?

A Yes, go to File->User Preferences->Editing, and look for New F-Curve Defaults.

Q What are all the Bezier handle types?

A There's Free (a.k.a broken tangents), Aligned (a.k.a. smooth tangents), Vector (like free but the handles point at the previous/next keyframes- causes linear interpolation with bezier handles), Auto (automatic tangents) and Auto Clamped ( similar to Auto but with overshoot prevention)

Posing/Keying

Q I get a list of attributes to key when I hit insert keyframe.. what's up?

A These are called keying sets. for a detailed explanation, visit the coder's blog

Q I like to key the entire character at once, can I do that?

A Simple answer: yes. Just pick the entire character keying set.