Jan Jinda shows how you can do math right in the channel box as well as randomizing transforms.

Math sometimes is the bane of the artist, but a lot of the times you just can’t around doing small calculations here and there. A new quick tip tutorial from Jan Jinda shows that the channel box in Maya is more versatile than just numbers; it can also do math.

“Have you ever wanted to move your geometry 23.56 units more to left or add 11.5% scale?” Jinda asks. You don’t have to have a calculator handy to work those numbers, you can just use the channels. Actually, most applications will allow you to do simple maths and expressions in numerical fields, and Maya is no exception there. “Maya can perform math operations directly in a Channel Box. Plus, minus, multiply, divide, percentage or even random value is not a problem,” Jinda notes.