This is a sort of intro to mirai. most if not all of this is available in the workbook. this is a more condensed walkthrough of what youll need to know in order to start operating mirai.

( you can always press H to show you the hotkeys for the current editor. ( i dont know if it shows all of them though))
all hotkeys are for selection/ navigation. manipulation tools are available through the menus

F5 brings up primitive object creation menu

Q = toggle between pan/ rotate ( the icons on the top left of the geometry window will tell you which mode your in )
alt+Q = toggles between free/ velovity mode. ( this is totally on crack...its fun as hell too :)

A = aim at current selection. ( so you can select a vertex or whatever and aim directly at it )
S = shade all objects
W = wireframe all objects
P= toggle between ortho/ perspective view.( ortho looks very ugly....i use it only for XYZ views.)
Z= Z axis
X= Xaxis
Y =Yaxis
pressing alt plus any of these will bring up the negative view

you can do a selective shade/ wireframe though...so only certain objects will be shaded....and others will be in wireframe...but you will have to press CRTL+[R] then go to shading and select the object to shade. ( [R] refers to mouse button)

of course you should be using the geometry graph to manage your scene instead of uring ctrl+R and then going through the shading/ visibility/ etc menus.)

C = collection mode. ( so you can select more than one vertex/ object etc.)
V = vertex select
E= edge select
F= face select
B=body select ( all the faces of the object )
O= object select

alt+E selects an edgeloop. ( i think...otherwise you can just select an edge..[R] and select edgeloop that way. )

you can do some things with these selections that you wouldnt in any other app...for instance...if i want to select the verticies that make up one face...i will select the actual face and hit V. this will do a selection switch. so you could keep manipulating the object without having the need to ever select anything. ( takes a long time to get a hang of it )

alt+[L] = does a lasso select. ( only selects the faces that face the camera )
alt+ctrl+[L] = same as above except selects through object

NOTE: make sure you look at the bottom of the screen ( maximize the mirai window ) you get an info bar....it will tell you what each and every single option in mirai does..
almost every function has 3 modes....so you can [L], [M], or[R] on the move and they will all do something different.

for example...if you [L] on move. itll do a global translation so....right/ left mouse movement is on the x axis, up/down does a translation on the Y axis, and if you press and hold the middle mouse button itll do a z axis translation. ( its kinda weird..and takes time getting used to )

if you [M] on move..itll do a screen relative transform...so the transformation that your doing is always in XY to the screen.

if you press [R]. you get the options for hte axes that you wish to use.

if you press alt + any transform..itll bring up a magnet falloff tool.

if you press CTRL plus any button youll get a numerical imput editor.

if you select a number of unequal edges...and scale them down they will try to even themsekves out to equal length...then just scale back up.
so lets say that i want to make a circle out of the uneven edges..i select the loop and scale down enough until most edges are equal..then scale back up and the edges are near equal :)....

try this.
select the whole skeleton.
save state. name it INERT ( or whatever...this is a saved pose )
now....edit the skeleton. ( scale some bones.. ( use free scale or something)
now...select the skeleton....save state...but in that menu choose linear displacement. name it whatever....and make sure that the previous pose is set to Inert

..select the skeleton....[m] on displacement and choose the inert pose ( which should be the pose that all the displacements will gererate from )

now...you can select the whole skeleton...or a few bones...and hit [L] on displacement ..and have fun :)

heres something else to try. :)

F5

make a human skeleton. with all the crap options selected. press ok ( not make sure both the skin and skeleton are visible)

now...select the tip of the hand..( any hand )....bring up the menu. press [M] on move...select the collar vertex and have fun stretching the arm bones :)

when you rotate/ move/scale...you can use any object ( vertex/edge/face /sleleton ( bone/ joint)) as a reference
so lets say that i have the characters arm twist...and it doesnt look right...what ill do is do a lasso select through the arm.....magnet rotate ( using the bone as a reference) and the elbow as a magnet falloff. then i can twist manually the skin so it looks right.

something to know about undos.

its a completely different system of undos. its a per object undo...and to me it seems like its VERY experimental.

once you know what does what...youll know when to save or copy your model

the way it works is....if i do something to an object...or skeleton..then go onto another object..and work on it for an hour...then notice that i made something wrong on the skeleton..i can select the skeleton and itll undo what i had done an hour ago.
its a good system...but its unstable. ( this is for mirai 1.1 ...maybe itll be fixed by the time 1.5 is out. not sure. )
this sure made me a more cautious user.

-m-k-