The “Tool” Menu

If the current tool is none of the the known tools (for example: your own tool contexts or those provided by your plug-ins) the following “unknown tool” icon will be displayed:

The Basic Tools – Select, Move, Rotate, Scale

The “Selection” Tool

The Selection Tool can be used to select objects in your Maya scene.
It has two ways of using it: clicking and dragging.
By clicking (that is: briefly pressing and releasing the trigger button on your controller without moving the controller), a single object is selected.
By dragging (that is: holding the controller trigger button down for an extended time and moving the controller before releasing it), you can draw a selection volume to select multiple objects.
It also offers two modes of operation: ray-cast-mode (a.k.a. mouse mode, or “2D” mode) and proximity mode (a.k.a: volume mode).
In ray-cast-mode, the object beyond the tip of the cursor (the small red arrow at the tip of your controller). You do not have to aim the controller at the object – just hold it in front of the object and press the trigger button. This mode is useful for selecting distant objects.
When dragging with the cursor, a two-dimensional selection frame will appear. Everything that you see through this frame will be selected.
In proximity or “volume” mode, objects are selected that are close to your cursor. When you drag with the trigger button in “volume” mode, a 3-dimensional cube will appear. Everything that is within this cube will be selected. (Note: you can change the alignment of the cube in the MARUI settings. By default it will be aligned with the Maya scene).

The “Move” Tool

The move tool allows changing the position of objects without rotating or scaling them.
Even with the Move tool selected, you can still “click” at objects to selected them.
You can move the selected object in all three dimensions.
To limit the motion in one dimension (for example: along the X-axis), grab the arrow of the manipulator handle in which direction you want to push it.
You can also drag the small rectangle between the arrows to move the object in that plane only (for example: the x-y plane).

The “Rotation” Tool

The rotation tool allows you to change the orientation of selected objects.
Even with the rotation tool active you can still click at objects to select or deselect them.
You can rotate the selected objects freely in any direction.
If you want to limit the rotation to one axis (for example the X-axis), grab and drag the respective ring of the tool handle.

The “Scale” Tool

The Scale Tool allows you to change the size of selected objects.
Even with the Scale Tool activated, you can still click at objects to select or deselect them.
You can scale in every dimension (x, y, z) simultaneously, or you can grab on the the handles of the scale tool to limit the scaling to that dimension.
You can also grab one of the small rectangles between the scale tool handles to limit the scaling to that plane (for example the x-y plane).
You can also grab and drag the center of the scale tool handle to scale the object uniformly into all directions.

The “Omni” Tool

The Omni Tool allows moving, rotating, and scaling the selected objects all at once.
You can use both hands to scale the currently selected objects.

The “QuickDrag” Tool

The quick-drag tool allows moving (and rotating and scaling) objects without having to select them. Just grab the object that you want to move and drag it. This make the interaction very fast and intuitive.
Drag with both hands / controllers to change the scale of the object.

The “Edit Pivot” Tool

The Edit Pivot tool allows you to move the objects’ pivot without editing or moving the object itself.

This it similar to pressing the [Insert] key in the normal Maya mouse-based user interface, where  the [Insert] key allows you to move the object pivot.
With the tool selected, you can hold the “Alt” button and click on a vertex, edge, or face to snap the pivot to that component.

Tool Options

The Tool Options submenu allows changing details about the basic tools such as the size of the manipulator, using Maya SoftSelect or Symmetry and control throttling.

Soft Selection

This menu item activates or deactivates Maya’s “Soft Selection” feature.

Symmetry

This menu item opens a sub-menu where you can activate Maya’s “Symmetry” features, which mirrors all your actions to the other side of the scene symmetrical, either about the x-axis, y-axis, or z-axis.

Throttling

When using Maya in VR, it is possible to edit very complex and large scenes. In these cases, a balance between interaction speed (how fast your editing actions are applied to the scene) and display performance (the frame-rate with which you see the Maya scene).
This is achieved by “Throttling” the user interface.
If the throttle is set to a low user interface interaction speed, MARUI will delay executing your interactions to ensure smooth visual display. If the throttle is set to highest user interface interaction speed, MARUI will immediately execute all your editing operations. This however can cause visual artifacts, stuttering, and in some people cause motion sickness.
Please see the MARUI Performance Guide for details on getting the optimal VR performance.

Snapping

The Snapping sub-menu let’s you enable or disable snapping.
Snapping works for the “Move” Tool, “Omni” Tool, “QuickDrag” Tool and “EditPivot” Tool, as well for the EP Curve Tool.
The active snapping mode will be highlighted.
To disable snapping again, select the currently active Snapping Mode’s icon.
The following snapping modes are available:
 

(1) Snap to Maya Units: this mode snaps to whole numbers of Maya units.
(2) Snap to Points: this mode snaps to polygon vertices and NURBS control vertices.
(3) Snap to Curves: this mode snaps to NURBS Curves.
(4) Snap to Polygon Mesh: this mode snaps to the surface of Polygon objects.
(5) Snap to Joints: this mode snaps to joint of any skeleton in the scene.
(6) Snap to Zero: this mode snaps to the Maya scene’s x, y, and z axis and is very helpful when working with symmetric scenes.
You can set the snapping tolerance in the MARUI Settings Dialog, “User Interface” tab.