Binding controls

Attaching a shape to the things it should select — and the dialog where everything else about an item lives.

U Bind selection to item I Picker Behavior

Binding by hand — U

1. Select the control in Maya.
2. Select the item on the canvas.
3. Press U.

Select several controls in Maya first and the item is bound to all of them.

The item stores each control's name without its namespace — bind to kamal:L_hand_ctrl and what is saved is L_hand_ctrl. That is what lets one picker drive every referenced copy of the character; see Rigs and namespaces.

Picker Behavior

Select an item and press I, or right-click it → Behavior.

This is the whole of an item's non-visual configuration. It is a single shared window — selecting a different item retargets it rather than opening a second one.

Section	What it is for
Object	The Maya nodes this item selects. Set to selection fills it from your current Maya selection — the same as U.
Annotation	A tooltip. Shown on hover, so an animator can find out what an unlabelled button is without clicking it.
Attribute Control	Turns the item from a selector into a slider, toggle or enum. See Attribute control.
Right-click menus	Extra commands on this item's right-click menu in Anim mode, each with its own script.
Script	Python or MEL run when the item is clicked. See Item scripts.

Annotations are worth the two minutes

An annotation is the cheapest usability work in the whole tool. A picker with sixty unlabelled face buttons is a guessing game; the same picker with annotations is self-teaching. Write them as you bind — "jaw open / close", "L brow inner" — and the picker stops needing you to explain it.

Binding several items at once

The efficient path is not to bind one at a time at all:

• Ctrl+Shift+A with controls selected in Maya creates one item per object, already bound and named. Start here.
• Ctrl+Shift+D duplicates an item and mirrors it — the shape flips and the bound control's L_/R_ keyword swaps with it, so a finished left arm becomes a finished right arm in one keystroke.

Together these two cover most of a body picker's binding without U ever being pressed.

Checking your work

Three ways, cheapest first:

Click it in Anim mode. Alt+W, click, look at Maya. This is the real test and it takes a second.

Watch the highlight. Select controls in the Maya viewport and their items light up in the picker. Select the whole rig and every bound item should light: anything that stays dark is unbound or bound to the wrong thing. This is the fastest way to find the gaps in a big picker.

Set Namespace's count. Open Set Namespace and read the "n of n objects found" line. It counts every object across the picker's items, so it catches controls that were renamed or deleted since you bound them.

Rebinding after a rig change

If controls get renamed, the picker keeps looking for the old names. There is no magic repair — you rebind. The practical routine:

1. Open Set Namespace and read which objects were not found. That list is your work.
2. Select the items concerned, select the new controls in Maya, press U.
3. Save, and re-check the count.

Name items after their controls

Ctrl+Shift+A names each item after the object it was made from, and it is worth keeping that convention when you draw by hand. When a rig changes, an item called L_hand_ctrl tells you what it was for; one called item_3034e191 does not.

What binding is not

Not a constraint. The item does not follow the control, and moving the control in Maya does not move the shape. A picker is a map, not a rig.

Not a namespace. Do not type namespaces into the Object field. The picker adds the current one at click time.

Not exclusive. Several items can bind the same control — a common, useful thing: a small precise button on the face board and a big obvious one on the body board, both selecting the same jaw control.