I have three marking menus set up, bound to Option + 1, Option + 2 and Option +3. I do 90% of my Maya work on a Macbook Pro and on that keyboard, those bindings work pretty well. They're not super-intuitive and I imagine that I'll try out some other options eventually but they're fine for now. I can't easily hit the Option + 4 chord, so this set up is limited to three menus only.
The commands in each menu are all loosely related. MM_01 (marking menu one) is commonly used modeling tools. MM_02 is commonly used viewport options and MM_03 is, well, I'm not sure what to call it.
Here they are:
So, I use these tools a lot. This menu is a bit too full for me to truly work gesturally with it, at least at the moment. With more time spent using it, maybe all of the tools will become gestures. Insert Edge Loop and Extrude are well-placed, I think but I don't know that Combine really deserves the "pride of place" of being the bottom tool. I should put something that I use more often in that place, maybe the Split Polygon Tool.
This one is nice and light. I use X-Ray all of the time and both Isolate Selected and Wireframe On Shaded are easy to hit gesturally. This menu I really don't have to think about at all.
The To Edge Loop and Delete Edge/Vertex don't really fit the theme of this menu so well but it only bothers me a little bit.
These are the, "all right, let's move on tools." The set-up here works well for when I've got an element just the way I want it, I can very quickly gesture up, down and up to the right, and then move on. Ok, ok, Duplicate Special has no place being here and, frankly, I forget that it's there. I nearly always grab that tool from the Hot Box instead of from here. Maybe I should swap Combine and Duplicate Special. That actually makes a certain amount of sense, because after Combining it's a good idea to "reset" your geometry before modeling away.
Well, there you have it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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