Override Maya’s Drag and Drop Behaviour to be More Functional

Randall Hess Shows How Easy it is to Make Maya’s Darg and Drop Behavior Much More Functional.

We may be more comfortable using drag and drop within Maya. I see it used all the time: drag and drop a shader material onto an object, drag and drop an object into a group. Maya understands a “drag and drop” of a file between itself and the desktop. You can drag texture files directly into the HyperShade, as you can drag models and scenes directly into the viewport. I see it used much less, but it is possible. Maybe because it’s just not that functional? Technical Animator Randall Hess shows how you can change Maya’s drag and drop behavior to do a little more.

“A friend of mine recently pointed out that you can change the default behavior of Maya’s drag and drop files” Hess mentions. “I generally have not used this workflow, but upon changing how it handles the open conditions, I have found drag and dropping far more useful recently.”

Hess changed the local Maya file “performFileDropAction.mel” to give more options in a small dialog. Now drag and drop behavior will present the opportunity to import, open or reference the data. “The best implementation would, of course, to package the updated procedure into a module that you would roll out to the team” Hess notes.

Visit Randall Hess’ article that details the process.

Randall Hess is a Technical Animator that has been working in game development for close to 20 years. He has a background in animation, rigging and writing tools and processes meant to improve user workflows. Randall is currently working as a Senior Technical Animator for Epic Games.