Shelf¶

The shelf is a horizontal toolbar below the menu bar. It exposes the most-used commands for the current menu set as one-click buttons, so you do not need to drill into deep submenus. It is the same idea as Maya's shelves: per-task, customizable, savable.

Shelf showing the Modeling, Animation, and Rendering tabs

Shelf tabs¶

The shelf has one tab per menu set, plus a Custom tab for your own commands.

Tab	Default contents
Modeling	New Skin · Import 3D · Import Image · Landmark tool · Transfer Polar · Transfer BBox · Frame All
Animation	Set Key · Auto Key · Graph Editor · Step Frame ← / → · Play
Rigging	Create Joint Chain · Bind Skin · IK 2-Bone · Paint Weights
FX	Hair · nCloth · Bullet Rigidbody
Rendering	Render Selected · Render Quality cycle · Light Directional · Color Space cycle · Export .esk
Custom	Empty until you fill it

Switch tabs with the small dropdown on the left of the shelf or by pressing F2-F6 (which also switches the menu bar's contents).

Adding a button¶

Right-click any menu entry and choose Add to Shelf. The shelf gains a new button with the action's icon. Buttons can be reordered by drag.

For commands that take parameters (e.g. "Set Render Quality to Production"), the shelf saves the parameter set with the button. Repeated clicks re-run the command with the same parameters.

Custom shelves¶

Right-click the shelf's empty area and choose New Shelf…. Name it (e.g. "Wing Authoring"), then drag any combination of actions onto it. Custom shelves save to your user data folder and follow your account.

Resetting¶

File > Preferences > Reset > Shelf to Defaults puts the five built-in shelves back to their ship-day contents. Your Custom shelf is left alone.

Hide / show¶

Window > Toggle Shelf hides the shelf entirely. The menu set switcher moves into the menu bar's right edge when the shelf is hidden. Some users prefer this for the extra vertical room.