Maya Tips 06: The ideal screen layout for your Animation workspace in Maya+Monitors

While Autodesk Maya has an option to set your workspace to animation, I find it very convoluted.

By which I mean it’s not ideal for animators who are stuck with 1920x1080 displays regardless of refresh rate. 

It’s mostly due to the issues involving interface compression since you have to cram everything in a single Maya window and that can get claustrophobic when you have interface shrinkage with viewports and the graph editor squeezed into such a resolution.

It’s funny how I see some people’s computer setups where they have dual or triple monitors for their workspaces yet they don’t try something like dedicate the graph editor to another monitor. I've seen people use dedicated windows for things like the graph editor but is that all that's cracked up to be considering they work within the same monitor?

For the amateurs and/or students, I’ve got an ideal layout for you guys.

Please forgive the photos but this was current desk setup when I typed this post. 

The above PC was my old Maverick Warhawk Build.

This photo was taken before I bought my ASUS TUF 1440p Monitor

The photo is temporary due to a dead MSI monitor so as of this photo, I've only got my Acer Monitor and Wacom Tablet in the photo but it does illustrate the layout I use for 3D Animation in MAYA. This photo will not be updated even after I bought my ASUS monitor but it still illustrates what layout I use for my main MAYA workspace. Even If I have a third monitor which would be that ACER, it mostly will be used for looking at my final renders and making adjustments during my IPR Renders.

I have my main monitor used for the more important things such as the viewports as well as looking at the numeric values for coordinates for controls on my Rigs, selecting things in the outliner that I can't see in or select in the viewports such as lights, cameras, or polygons.

My Wacom Tablet's drawing or touch functions aren't used for MAYA. What I use my Wacom Tablet for is to dedicate it as my secondary function monitor. That's used for things such as my Graph Editor, Assigning textures to Polygons, and my UV Editor.....

And last but not least: to set my render settings.

But we are focusing on Animation here. I have set my own custom workspace to keep things at GENERIC and I assign my main window which is my VIEWPORTS, outliner, and value controls to my main monitor.

All while my Wacom Tablet is used for my Graph Editor. This allows me to have more screen area in my Viewports, especially when reference videos are concerned or so I say so......

I actually work better with setting a 3 pane setup on my main monitor.

I have two panes on the top:

Left pane for my main render camera and the right pane for my reference footage.

The bottom is my main work pane where I work on my rigs without touching my Main Camera. This should be very helpful.

To illustrate what I'm insinuating with workspace preferences, Here's a typical workspace layout set by default on MAYA:

Unless your monitor is crazy high res like 1440p or 4K, this is going to be very claustrophobic when working on a 1080p Monitor regardless of physical size or refresh rate. My multi-monitor dedication method for a MAYA workspace should be the new standard for animation.

Again, I'm still constrained by 1080p monitors but it does mitigate the claustrophobia that MAYA's presets have for their animation workspaces.

To illustrate my issue with this layout for 1080p monitors, I've actually used some Dell Monitors and WACOM CINTIQs at my college where they actually were either 1440p or 4K resolution and that works out much better for this layout. But a lot of us students and freelancers either don't have 1440p or 4K monitors due to things like budgets or the fact that we use laptops instead of desktops due to conveniences.

From April 2020 until June 2023, I was stuck with my MSI Laptop but now I have my Custom Built PC which is better since I have more powerful hardware and I can swap out components.

Back to monitors,

I recently bought a 1440p Monitor so my MAYA workspace woes will be mitigated.

Monitors, especially the ones I want with a high refresh cost more money than you can imagine so a lot of us get stuck with 24" displays or if we're lucky to have 27" displays, we often get stuck with 1080p resolution displays.

And most animators who work in a studio environment usually just use whatever existing DELL or HP monitors are available in the workspace and those often max out at 60hz. 

I'm fine with having a 60hz monitor for workplaces but for the home, a high refresh monitor is preferable so that leaves me scouring for displays from ACER, ASUS, LG, BENQ, VIEWSONIC, etc.

And here's something I bet your animation studio workspaces don't have:

ULTRAWIDE MONITORS.

That's right. A lot of gamers are obsessed with these ultra-wide monitors just because our favorite STAR WARS or MARVEL movies use this style of camera lenses but not many games are optimized for ULTRAWIDE.

But I bet ULTRAWIDE will be an absolute breeze to work with for AUTODESK MAYA or BLENDER due to a large workspace. It's practically used by some YOUTUBERS working on ADOBE PREMIERE PRO or DaVinci Resolve but If I had an ULTRAWIDE Monitor from the likes of ASUS or DELL, I'd use that for my main monitor not just for gaming but also for animation.

Again, the price to spend on these ULTRAWIDE monitors are staggering due to things like screen size, resolution, and refresh rate.

Plus, my current desk setup is not built for ULTRAWIDE monitors to begin with.... well it actually is but I like to have my PC sit on top of my Desk so with the way I have things setup, I can't have an ULTRAWIDE monitor on my desk unless I put it on the top tray where my Logitech Speakers are but I don't want to tilt my head upward just for my main monitor.

On a side note, February 6 2024, the power repeatedly kept cutting out in my residential area due to an underground cable replacement. 

I was worried that would damage my PC's CORSAIR 850 watt Power Supply since I don't have a surge protector but luckily, My PC survived. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to type this Blogpost without using my MSI Laptop.

Update as of August 11 2024:

I've made some changes in my room to the point my Fractal Tower is now on another desk beside my usual so maybe in the future, probably Black Friday, I'll get an UltraWide Monitor and relegate my ASUS TUF Monitor as my Overhead Monitor as my Acer Monitor is showing a bit of it's age.... or I might use the Acer Monitor as my fourth Monitor... Who Knows.

Update as of August 24 2024:

While desk layout is still the same, I've changed bedrooms. Also I forgot to mention on the previous August update that I've since replaced the old MSI AM4 Motherboard with a Gigabyte AORUS AM5 motherboard. The PC in question is the MAVERICK FALCON 7900RT.