Selecting A Parent Without Its Children

[xizor]

Hi everyone, I'm a bit new to Maya, and I have a silly problem to which I can't seem to find the solution.

I'm currently texturing a fly I modelled and animated. Some elements of the model are parented, for example the eyes to the head. (Eyes are under head in the hypergraph.)

However, now that I want to select only the head without the eyes to use the "Create PSD Texture" option I can't seem to be able to do so. No matter what I try, there's no way to do it, and I've tried looking at the help, but to no avail.

I tried using the Select by Hierarchy : Leaf, but it select everything under the head node, i.e. the eyes, so that doesn't work too.

So does anyone know if it's possible to do something as simple as that ?

Thanks in advance.

[failure]

click on it with left mouse button

[xizor]

QUOTE(failure @ 10/22/05, 01:00 PM)
click on it with left mouse button
[snapback]217845[/snapback]

Nope, that selects everything under the parent node. That is both the head & eyes, when I l-click on the head.

[failure]

No it doesn't. If you list the selection by executing:

CODE
ls -sl

in script window, it'll list only the object you've clicked on. GUI merely highlights the sub-hierarchy.

However "Create PSD Texture" will make texture for selected object's material so if all of your objects have the same material - the result is obvious

[xizor]

QUOTE(failure @ 10/22/05, 01:33 PM)
No it doesn't. If you list the selection by executing:
CODE
ls -sl

in script window, it'll list only the object you've clicked on. GUI merely highlights the sub-hierarchy.

However  "Create PSD Texture" will make texture for selected object's material so if all of your objects have the same material - the result is obvious
[snapback]217850[/snapback]

Indeed, ls lists only the head. But when I r-click a shader, and pick "Assign material to selection", it recursively applies it to the children. Same thing with move, rotate and scale.

I want to temporarily override the hierarchy to move the parent without the children.

The PSD error I get seems to be something else, though. I think that's because I duplicated my whole model, but it didn't rename automatically the Shape nodes.

[failure]

use pickwalk ( arrow up, down ) to select only parent object shape node or select it via attribute editor or outliner.

You can't move the parent without affecting the children as it would defeat the whole purpose of dag hierarchy. If you need to do it, unparent the children and the reparent after adjustment.

[xizor]

QUOTE(failure @ 10/22/05, 02:52 PM)
use pickwalk ( arrow up, down ) to select only parent object shape node or select it via attribute editor or outliner
[snapback]217854[/snapback]

Oh ! Indeed, that works. Thanks a bunch !