Maya - Outliner, Groups, & Layers

The Outliner is an important part of the Maya interface, located on the left-hand side by default.

The Outliner is where we can see all our scene objects in list format. We can also organize this list into groups and subgroups.

It’s conceptually very similar to Adobe products and the “Layers” panel. Obviously with some differences, for doing 3D work instead of 2D.

A well-organized panel makes it much easier to work on a project long-term, and is essential if you ever share your project for group collaboration!

You can [ hold Middle Mouse Click + Drag ] to move objects around within the Outliner.

Suggested Exercise: Try creating multiple objects of different kinds. Around 10 or so. Create cameras, lights, and other various object types you can find. Examine how different object types have different icons. Practice moving these objects around in the Outliner list.

In any program, organizing a project can be boring, and even tedious at times. But if you’re going to work professionally, you will end up sharing your work with others, for collaboration. Which means you NEED to be organized!

Luckily in Maya, it’s not too difficult. Just remember to name things in common-sense ways. Group related objects together, generally organized going from larger (at the top-level) to smaller (at the deepest sub-levels).

When in doubt, you can google “Maya naming conventions”, but generally stick to “Camel Case” (itLooksLikeThis) and underscores (it_looks_like_this). Ultimately, the exact naming convention will vary by project, but the most important thing is that names are organized in a consistent way for each individual project.

Warning: “You should avoid using spaces, hyphens, or other symbols in the names, as they might cause problems or conflicts with Maya's naming conventions or scripts.”

Groups in Maya behave almost identical to Groups in Adobe products.

You can select objects and then hit [ Ctrl + G ] to group the objects together. Or you can click an existing group, and go to [ MenuBar > Edit > Ungroup ] to ungroup something. If you want to remove the group and contents, select the group and hit the delete key.

Similar to how you can move objects around in the Outliner, you can [ hold Middle Mouse Click + Drag ] to move objects in and out of groups.

Also be aware that when you copy+paste, Maya likes to automatically add the pasted object into a new subgroup.

Suggested Exercise: When examining the Outliner (above), we made roughly 10 different objects. Now experiment creating various groups for these objects. Move objects in an out of groups to get a feel for it. Copy+paste objects and observe how Maya handles grouping.

What Maya calls Layers are...not quite what you’d expect, if you’re coming from the Adobe Suite environment. Or really any 2D art tools. If you’re looking for functionality similar to "Adobe Suite layers", look at the Outliner and Groups (above).

In Maya, Layers are meant more for setting objects as non-selectable or hidden, such as when adding references to a scene.

The four buttons on the middle-right are used to create and manipulate new layers. Generally, it’s easiest to select your objects, then use the far-right option to “create new layer and assign selected objects.”

Once a layer is created and objects are added to it, we have three buttons for the layer:

• Far-Left Button - Used to show/hide an entire layer of objects at once.

  • Shows a V if the layer is visible, or is empty if the layer is hidden.

• Middle Button - Similar to the "far-left button", except it controls if the layer is visible or hidden during animation playback.

  • Shows a P if the layer is visible, or is empty if the layer is hidden.

  • For example, this can hide notes left in the scene, or temporarily hide certain objects for performance.

• Far-Right Button - Has three options:

  • Option 1 (Blank) - Objects in layer are treated as standard objects.

  • Option 2 (T) - Objects in layer are treated as a "template." That means they’re displayed as a wireframe and can’t be selected.

  • Option 3 (R) - Objects in layer are treated as a "reference." That means the objects are fully visible, but can’t be selected.