What’s wrong with Maya’s reference editor
Maya’s reference editor is fine for small scenes. In large environments with many references it stops being useful:
Two main problems:
- Flat layout. Every reference shows up as a single row in one list. No nesting, no grouping - you scroll through dozens of items with no structure.
- Search needs the full reference node name. Partial matches don’t work, which isn’t realistic in production.
The custom editor
Built for the studio, source can’t be shared, but I have approval to walk through the concept and features.
Standard CRUD operations work the way you’d expect - checkboxes for load/unload, right-click for everything else.
Display names are cleaned up. By default the editor hides namespaces and Maya-internal suffixes like RN (reference node) and PM (proxy manager). Toggle “Show full names” in the right-click menu to see them:
To the left of each name you’ll see tags like Or and Px - original and proxy. They show which version of an asset is active and whether alternates are loaded alongside it.
Groups
References are organised under the DAG groups they belong to, like an outliner view. This is the biggest practical improvement over the default - in large scenes where everything ends up loaded at the top level, the flat list is unmanageable.
Groups are interactive: load or unload a group and the action applies to every reference inside.
When a group is unloaded, the load state of each reference at that moment is stored on an attribute. Reloading the group only brings back the references that were loaded when it was unloaded - not everything indiscriminately.
Search
Partial matches, with autocompletion as you type. Instead of filtering the list down (Maya’s approach), the editor highlights matches in place and scrolls to the first one:
Search runs against full object names even when short names are displayed.
Selection sync
Selecting in the editor selects in Maya’s outliner, and vice versa. Works for both reference nodes and groups.
Copy
Ctrl+C copies the full node name to the clipboard. Multiple selection copies a list. The list can be pasted back into the search field - search accepts a Python-list-style string and matches all entries:
From / To
Two buttons at the top of the view. From selects in the editor whatever is currently highlighted in the viewport. To does the reverse: selects the editor’s current item in the viewport.
Asset representations
In our pipeline each character has multiple representations. Full versions are used for rendering; lighter proxies are used during animation and swapped to full versions pre-render. The editor handles CRUD for these representations.
A button at the bottom of the main view opens the list of representations for the selected item. Checkboxes load and unload, and only one representation is active at a time - loading a new one auto-unloads the previous and wires up Maya’s Proxy Manager.
The right-click menu on a representation can add, replace, or remove it. Deleting the last representation removes the reference entirely. Unloading the active one removes it from the scene:
Characters can have many representations, but most other assets only have Original and Proxy. For those there’s a Switch button at the top with an Original/Proxy selector, also available in the right-click menu. Switching activates the chosen reference, hooks up the Proxy Manager connections, and unloads the inactive one:
Context menu extras
Focus on selected (hotkey F) - selects the first DAG node of the reference and centers the viewport on it:
Open source / open folder - opens the reference file in a new Maya window, or opens its containing folder. Useful when the source scene needs editing:
Asset Info - meant for technical artists. Shows file size, creation date, last modified, and similar metadata in a table. Right-click in the table to open the asset’s folder:
Invert selection - two modes. Global inversion selects everything except the parent of the current item. Group-scoped inversion only inverts within the current item’s group.