Hi Alistair, good to hear from you. Hope you are well. As someone who has used Softimage since the late 90's but always faced a predominantly maya based job market, there are certainly features that I wish wete in maya. The difference however is that features from any other software are a lot easier to add to maya than the other way around, and thus most people would have simply done just that wherever there is a particular tool from soft that one really wants in maya. My own list of native cross-over features would be :
1) of course Ice. While maya node editor is on the right road, it has a long way to go to match ice, not least a big library of nodes and compounds. 2) i much prefer the pop-free, undoable weight painting and smooth mode in Soft. I also love the mirroring tables/maps. 3) good old deform-by-surface op. Still dead handy 4) tab-based script editor is soooo much better than maya's. Naturally, i've made my own, but it should be native 5) while writing every tiny ui based script for softimage has to be written as a damn plugin, the plugin design is very intuitive and easy to pick up. Ui's aside (as maya is streaks ahead in that dept) writing plugins in maya is a dark art and anything other than intuitive. Perhaps a simplified method for doing so in a softimage fashion, could be added, which would open the door to the powr of plugin writing to a lot more people than those of us with more td experience or rnd peeps. Simon Sent from my iPhone > On 15 Mar 2014, at 07:04, [email protected] wrote: > > Hello > > > My name is Alastair Hearsum. I'm head of 3d at Glassworks: > http://www.glassworks.co.uk/ > > We use Softimage and as you may have heard Autodesk is discontinuing it. It > has caused quite a furore amongst Softimage users , as you'd expect. I have > already canvassed opinion from the SI users about their views on what they'll > miss but I wanted to get a view from the "other side of the fence" as it were. > > > The question is very specifically aimed at Maya users who have had Softimage > experience or work alongside colleagues who use SI. The question is: > > > Do you have a view on what SI features you envy and wish you had in Maya. If > there are none then that is a valid answer. If you have some then please list > your top 5 and a very brief description of why. > > > For your information a summary of the Softimage users poll is: > > > Clean elegant efficient user interface and logical workflow: enabling us to > get things done quicker and with less pain. This so important and a really > fundamental part of the fabric of the software. > > ICE: its seamless powerful and all pervading presence; everything can connect > to and control everything else > > Render pass and partition system. It is absolutely robust and does all you > expect. Indespensible. > > Live operator stack and construction history. Its all alive all of the time > enabling highly complex layering of effects and processes > > Animation, modelling and rigging toolsets. They are peerless. > > > Thankyou > > > Alastair > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Python Programming for Autodesk Maya" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/python_inside_maya/d548a836-ee1b-4162-8086-9688d24b839b%40googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Python Programming for Autodesk Maya" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/python_inside_maya/9DB4440D-BA9C-4866-93EA-75A7840B161C%40gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
