EOV Selection Sets

EOV Selection Sets is a free floating panel for Maya: a slim strip over the viewport where every button holds a saved selection. One click and every control of the arm, the legs or the fingers is selected again.

An animator selects the same things dozens of times a day: shoulder, elbow, wrist, one Shift-click after another, then fifteen finger joints without missing one. With two characters on the same rig, it all happens twice. Here a selection is built once and becomes a button.

A button is a set

Each button has its own name and color. A click selects everything in the set and drops the rest. A white frame lights up on the button by itself when everything in the set is selected, whether by the button or with the mouse in the viewport. The frames show at a glance which parts of the character you are working on.

A new set in three steps

Select the controls in the scene, press "+", type a name. The palette has 30 calm pastel colors, and a new set picks one that is not on the panel yet. If the name is taken, the new set gets a number: Arm_L_2.

Clicks with keys

Shift-click adds a set to the selection, so the arm and the fingers come from two buttons without a set of their own. Ctrl+Shift-click isolates the set in the viewport, and a second one brings everything back. Alt-click changes the color and the name, and a double-click renames right on the button.

The right-click menu has all of it too: add the selection to the set, remove it, replace the contents, delete the button or every button of one color. Each item shows its key, so there is nothing to memorize up front.

Several characters on one rig

When characters are referenced in and differ only by namespace, the sets are built once, on any of them. The characters button turns on tabs, one per namespace, and the tab decides which character a click works on. Load a third one and it gets its own tab.

Color filter and a narrow panel

A color works well as a group: the left side blue, the right side red, the center green. The filter leaves only the colors you need on the panel in one click and deletes nothing. Drag the panel's edge inwards and the buttons wrap into a second and third row; the width is remembered.

Sets live in the scene

The sets are stored in the scene file itself: open it and the buttons are there, hand the scene to a colleague and the sets go with it. Every edit is undone with the usual Ctrl+Z. Export to .json moves a set of buttons between shots with the same character.

Stays out of the way

The panel can turn 50% transparent while the mouse is away and stay on top of all windows. The cross closes it, and the sets and settings are kept. The manual, in English and Russian, opens from the panel with F1.

Pairs with EOV Selection Display

EOV Selection Display shows the selection as a list and helps clean it up, and its To Sets button sends the result straight here as a new button. Each script also works on its own.

What it does not do

It is not a picker with a picture of the character: the buttons are labelled strips, with no rig diagram. The sets are not regular Maya sets; they live in a node of their own in the scene. A set remembers object names, so after renaming a control the button needs Update Contents. Isolation is Maya's own isolate select, which shows objects together with their children.

At a glance

• Autodesk Maya 2019–2026, Windows
• free, MIT license, open source
• install: drag one file into the Maya window
• 343 KB archive
• manual in English and Russian, interface in English