Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
ngSkinTools to the rescue! http://www.ngskintools.com/ On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed, point weighting in Maya is horrible. I'm doing some freelance Maya rigs now and bringing them into Softimage to point weight because Maya's point weighting wants to make me want to lobotomize myself with chopsticks through my eyes :P On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
One thing i just remembered, Dont know if its already been mentioned but pass options Where you could set output path per aov, check/uncheck which aov will be rendered place your environment, lens shaders and so on. In maya its all packed into the render settings which is quite a pita. On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Cesar Saez cesa...@gmail.com wrote: ngSkinTools to the rescue! http://www.ngskintools.com/ On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed, point weighting in Maya is horrible. I'm doing some freelance Maya rigs now and bringing them into Softimage to point weight because Maya's point weighting wants to make me want to lobotomize myself with chopsticks through my eyes :P On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Thank you for sharing Cesar, There are some interesting improvements there, but it still looks like you're dealing with Maya's goofy single-bone-at-a-time-mask-style weighting. So while, better than Maya standard, it still adhere's pretty hard to Maya's flawed core paradigm. The other and bigger problem--and this is a deal-breaker for me--is that it is only for 2014 and older. Since we received 2015 with our $0 transitions, this is a no-go. For the meantime I'll have to stick with the bind it in Maya, export to Soft, weight in Soft, export to Maya and constrain to rig in Maya approach. The relax algorithm looks much better than either Maya or Soft, and weighting on layers is intriguing. Maybe Viktoras would be open to adapting his tools to work more like a Soft paradigm. Cheers, -=Eric On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 2:01 AM, Cesar Saez cesa...@gmail.com wrote: ngSkinTools to the rescue! http://www.ngskintools.com/ On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed, point weighting in Maya is horrible. I'm doing some freelance Maya rigs now and bringing them into Softimage to point weight because Maya's point weighting wants to make me want to lobotomize myself with chopsticks through my eyes :P On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain. -- -=T=-
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Viktoras maitain also a GitHub account and a google group forum for the tool. Maybe you want to contact him there. He is looking for help to improve the tool. https://github.com/viktorasm/ngSkinTools https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ngskintools On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 8:33 AM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you for sharing Cesar, There are some interesting improvements there, but it still looks like you're dealing with Maya's goofy single-bone-at-a-time-mask-style weighting. So while, better than Maya standard, it still adhere's pretty hard to Maya's flawed core paradigm. The other and bigger problem--and this is a deal-breaker for me--is that it is only for 2014 and older. Since we received 2015 with our $0 transitions, this is a no-go. For the meantime I'll have to stick with the bind it in Maya, export to Soft, weight in Soft, export to Maya and constrain to rig in Maya approach. The relax algorithm looks much better than either Maya or Soft, and weighting on layers is intriguing. Maybe Viktoras would be open to adapting his tools to work more like a Soft paradigm. Cheers, -=Eric On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 2:01 AM, Cesar Saez cesa...@gmail.com wrote: ngSkinTools to the rescue! http://www.ngskintools.com/ On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:00 PM, Eric Turman i.anima...@gmail.comwrote: Agreed, point weighting in Maya is horrible. I'm doing some freelance Maya rigs now and bringing them into Softimage to point weight because Maya's point weighting wants to make me want to lobotomize myself with chopsticks through my eyes :P On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain. -- -=T=-
RE: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Hey guys, A couple of you mentioned 'really contextual menus' (see Aliastair's number 3 below). Can you explain what's missing for you in Maya in this regard? Thanks, Jill From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alastair Hearsum Sent: March-25-14 6:16 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: humanize maya, SOFT top 5 Hello friends Me again with my TOP 5's I have had some minimal contact with the Humanize Maya people. Lets get our views across with our TOP 5 Softimage user workflow/interface experiences. As usual a list with a brief description. Here are some random examples 1)Middle mouse to repeat last function 2)Multiple windows You can have many graph editors, outliners, property pages open at once. 3) Really contextual menus 4) Comprehensive universal drag and drop of parameters Quickly set up expressions. 5) Text rather than icons, general stylishness of interface Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.ukhttp://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system. attachment: winmail.dat
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain. On 16 April 2014 21:13, Jill Ramsay (Contractor) jill.ram...@autodesk.comwrote: Hey guys, A couple of you mentioned 'really contextual menus' (see Aliastair's number 3 below). Can you explain what's missing for you in Maya in this regard? Thanks, Jill From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alastair Hearsum Sent: March-25-14 6:16 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: humanize maya, SOFT top 5 Hello friends Me again with my TOP 5's I have had some minimal contact with the Humanize Maya people. Lets get our views across with our TOP 5 Softimage user workflow/interface experiences. As usual a list with a brief description. Here are some random examples 1)Middle mouse to repeat last function 2)Multiple windows You can have many graph editors, outliners, property pages open at once. 3) Really contextual menus 4) Comprehensive universal drag and drop of parameters Quickly set up expressions. 5) Text rather than icons, general stylishness of interface Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.ukhttp://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Agreed, point weighting in Maya is horrible. I'm doing some freelance Maya rigs now and bringing them into Softimage to point weight because Maya's point weighting wants to make me want to lobotomize myself with chopsticks through my eyes :P On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com wrote: Has anyone mentioned the horrible Maya weight painting ? the fact you have to lock every bone you are not skinning to, less influences be splattered throughout the mesh Jackson Pollock style? I know it's a classic complaint but a lot of people are going to feel the pain. On 16 April 2014 21:13, Jill Ramsay (Contractor) jill.ram...@autodesk.com wrote: Hey guys, A couple of you mentioned 'really contextual menus' (see Aliastair's number 3 below). Can you explain what's missing for you in Maya in this regard? Thanks, Jill From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alastair Hearsum Sent: March-25-14 6:16 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: humanize maya, SOFT top 5 Hello friends Me again with my TOP 5's I have had some minimal contact with the Humanize Maya people. Lets get our views across with our TOP 5 Softimage user workflow/interface experiences. As usual a list with a brief description. Here are some random examples 1)Middle mouse to repeat last function 2)Multiple windows You can have many graph editors, outliners, property pages open at once. 3) Really contextual menus 4) Comprehensive universal drag and drop of parameters Quickly set up expressions. 5) Text rather than icons, general stylishness of interface Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.ukhttp://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system. -- -=T=-
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
It would have been easier to kill Maya and ask what would you want to add into Soft. - Viewport 2.0 Jb Sent from my iPhone On 16 Apr 2014, at 21:13, Jill Ramsay (Contractor) jill.ram...@autodesk.com wrote: Hey guys, A couple of you mentioned 'really contextual menus' (see Aliastair's number 3 below). Can you explain what's missing for you in Maya in this regard? Thanks, Jill From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Alastair Hearsum Sent: March-25-14 6:16 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: humanize maya, SOFT top 5 Hello friends Me again with my TOP 5's I have had some minimal contact with the Humanize Maya people. Lets get our views across with our TOP 5 Softimage user workflow/interface experiences. As usual a list with a brief description. Here are some random examples 1)Middle mouse to repeat last function 2)Multiple windows You can have many graph editors, outliners, property pages open at once. 3) Really contextual menus 4) Comprehensive universal drag and drop of parameters Quickly set up expressions. 5) Text rather than icons, general stylishness of interface Alastair -- Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d [GLASSWORKS] 33/34 Great Pulteney Street London W1F 9NP +44 (0)20 7434 1182 glassworks.co.ukhttp://www.glassworks.co.uk/ Glassworks Terms and Conditions of Sale can be found at glassworks.co.uk (Company registered in England with number 04759979. Registered office 25 Harley Street, London, W1G 9BR. VAT registration number: 86729) Please consider the environment before you print this email. DISCLAIMER: This e-mail and attachments are strictly privileged, private and confidential and are intended solely for the stated recipient(s). Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Company. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If this transmission is received in error please kindly return it to the sender and delete this message from your system. winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Is there a reason that Maya does not save my preference for 30 frames per second ( I hit save preferences) but when I open a new scene it goes back to 24 fps? Is this a new feature? I am using 2014 sp2. I went to do a new project for a client and of course after the render I realize its not matching the VO because it is at 24 fps. I LOVE using Maya. :) J On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: yes... preserve child transformations.. on the transform node. On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 6:30 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-bounces@ listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0Y Wxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb- 7aa77184e20f]ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]%E1%90%A7 -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Did you change fps in Window-Settings/Preferences-Preferences-Settings-Working Units-Time? If you save this and close and restart Maya is the setting still changed? -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 2:57 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) Is there a reason that Maya does not save my preference for 30 frames per second ( I hit save preferences) but when I open a new scene it goes back to 24 fps? Is this a new feature? I am using 2014 sp2. I went to do a new project for a client and of course after the render I realize its not matching the VO because it is at 24 fps. I LOVE using Maya. :) J On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.commailto:adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: yes... preserve child transformations.. on the transform node. On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 6:30 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frmailto:olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f%5d%E1%90%A7 -- www.johnrichardsanchez.comhttp://www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Hello John, You need to set this in New Scene Options to have it affect new scenes and not just the current scene. More info here: http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2014/en_us/index.html?url=files/File__New_Scene.htm,topicNumber=d30e48442 I agree it’s confusing. Jill. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: April-07-14 2:57 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) Is there a reason that Maya does not save my preference for 30 frames per second ( I hit save preferences) but when I open a new scene it goes back to 24 fps? Is this a new feature? I am using 2014 sp2. I went to do a new project for a client and of course after the render I realize its not matching the VO because it is at 24 fps. I LOVE using Maya. :) J attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
I did. But will try it again after I re Render. J On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 3:03 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Did you change fps in Window-Settings/Preferences-Preferences-Settings-Working Units-Time? If you save this and close and restart Maya is the setting still changed? -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2014 2:57 PM *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) Is there a reason that Maya does not save my preference for 30 frames per second ( I hit save preferences) but when I open a new scene it goes back to 24 fps? Is this a new feature? I am using 2014 sp2. I went to do a new project for a client and of course after the render I realize its not matching the VO because it is at 24 fps. I LOVE using Maya. :) J On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: yes... preserve child transformations.. on the transform node. On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 6:30 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [ https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f] ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f%5d%E1%90%A7 -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Thanks Jill. That seems to have worked. :) On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 3:30 PM, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: I did. But will try it again after I re Render. J On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 3:03 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Did you change fps in Window-Settings/Preferences-Preferences-Settings-Working Units-Time? If you save this and close and restart Maya is the setting still changed? -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2014 2:57 PM *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) Is there a reason that Maya does not save my preference for 30 frames per second ( I hit save preferences) but when I open a new scene it goes back to 24 fps? Is this a new feature? I am using 2014 sp2. I went to do a new project for a client and of course after the render I realize its not matching the VO because it is at 24 fps. I LOVE using Maya. :) J On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: yes... preserve child transformations.. on the transform node. On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 6:30 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [ https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f] ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f%5d%E1%90%A7 -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Sorry, just checking you did exactly this… I just tried it and it worked for me. File - New Scene - [ ] Set working units as required (Apply) or Edit - Save Settings File - Save Preferences. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: April-07-14 3:30 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) I did. But will try it again after I re Render. J attachment: winmail.dat
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Sorry, our messages crossed in the ether! attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧ
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
yes... preserve child transformations.. on the transform node. On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 6:30 AM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: Love what you did Brent ! Ever thought of sending your resume to SideFX ? Working on a software rather than a puzzle ? Le 03/04/2014 16:33, Brent McPherson a écrit : Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-bounces@ listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0Y Wxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb- 7aa77184e20f]ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]%E1%90%A7
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
That's amazing how poor seems to be maya when I read you guys. Fortunatly, I should never have to use it. I'm edititing very fast some subd hard surface here, the pivot is dancing in every diretion, snaping where it has to, aligning on the fly with whatever i ask at the speed of light though, I must say, I'm a little sleepy.. Ah, my looping techno music comes to the end, and the modeling is done. Le 03/04/2014 01:00, Raffaele Fragapane a écrit : Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com mailto:luceri...@gmail.com wrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Great Olivier, Softimage flow! .:. Christian Lattuada tel +39 3331277475 ... On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 1:49 PM, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.frwrote: That's amazing how poor seems to be maya when I read you guys. Fortunatly, I should never have to use it. I'm edititing very fast some subd hard surface here, the pivot is dancing in every diretion, snaping where it has to, aligning on the fly with whatever i ask at the speed of light though, I must say, I'm a little sleepy.. Ah, my looping techno music comes to the end, and the modeling is done. Le 03/04/2014 01:00, Raffaele Fragapane a écrit : Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
For modeling proposes with nex it's actually not bad at all, though you do have to memorise more tricks and steps than you would with soft, and a handful more clicks. My comments are solely regarding the centre manipulation, something that Maya does differently at a fairly low level to begin with, and that out of the box sorely lacks some tools. I don't think it healthy to confuse the two things :) On 3 Apr 2014 22:50, olivier jeannel olivier.jean...@noos.fr wrote: That's amazing how poor seems to be maya when I read you guys. Fortunatly, I should never have to use it. I'm edititing very fast some subd hard surface here, the pivot is dancing in every diretion, snaping where it has to, aligning on the fly with whatever i ask at the speed of light though, I must say, I'm a little sleepy.. Ah, my looping techno music comes to the end, and the modeling is done. Le 03/04/2014 01:00, Raffaele Fragapane a écrit : Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
How many of you are utterly shocked at how LITTLE anyone at all from Autodesk seems to know about Softimage it's capabilities? It's almost like they bought it never opened it (regardless of which Marc was in charge). -Paul ᐧ
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
In my opinion this post is exactly what the other recent posts on the other thread (March 28th, 2014) about how every single thread keeps getting pushed back off topic and turns into a hate-fest are all about. Sorry Paul, but this post isn't really productive is it? It's only stirring things up again when this thread has been pretty useful to many users to be able to explain what we find useful from this feature in Softimage. I don't care if Luc-Eric knows about it or not. Point is, we need to voice the usefulness of it for those of us who will be moving to Maya so we can have a fighting chance to have something similarly useful to keep working. Can we please keep the useful threads useful? Thanks, Eric T. On 4/3/2014 9:48 AM, Paul Griswold wrote: How many of you are utterly shocked at how LITTLE anyone at all from Autodesk seems to know about Softimage it's capabilities? It's almost like they bought it never opened it (regardless of which Marc was in charge). -Paul ᐧ
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧ attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
there are a lot of things that simply can;t just fit to top 5 :) it is not joke when ppl say just strap name Maya on top of Softimage and there you go ;) On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [ https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧhttps://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]%E1%90%A7
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) In all honesty I've never even considered life without it... ... Damnit., Now I have. :(
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
I'm in the same boat. It's this small stuff that we're all going to take for granted until we realize it's not there. It would be one of the essential features I'd want, but then there are about a 1000 of those for me. :\ Going to be difficult. Eric T. On Thursday, April 03, 2014 10:42:30 AM, Peter Agg wrote: Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) In all honesty I've never even considered life without it... ... Damnit., Now I have. :(
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
People that haven't used Maya that much don't realize how useful that n SI feature was because they though it was so basic that they assumed every DCC had it. Center is one of those. At first, I though that Maya's Pivot was the equivalent to SI Center and Pivot. It may take you a while to realize that it isn't. About SI pivot, now I understand why the pivot rotation option in Softimage never worked for me. Martin On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 11:33 PM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-)
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
People that haven't used Maya that much don't realize how useful that n SI feature was because they though it was so basic that they assumed every DCC had it. Center is one of those. Exactly. I had my shock moment actually working on a project with a deadline looming. At first, I though that Maya's Pivot was the equivalent to SI Center and Pivot. It may take you a while to realize that it isn't. Yes I am now enlightened about how that stuff works under the hood in both Maya and XSI. Brent I wish you the best. As Eric said there are many little things like this we will miss but we wont realize till we actually start working and using Maya. ( if we end up going that route.) On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: People that haven't used Maya that much don't realize how useful that n SI feature was because they though it was so basic that they assumed every DCC had it. Center is one of those. At first, I though that Maya's Pivot was the equivalent to SI Center and Pivot. It may take you a while to realize that it isn't. About SI pivot, now I understand why the pivot rotation option in Softimage never worked for me. Martin On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 11:33 PM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
After being one of the original developers on Maya, brent joined Softimage in 1998 and is responsible for many things people love in Softimage, including the transform manipulators and the tweak tool. Interaction design and implementation. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 10:33 AM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Yes I did work on this. The plan was always to replace the guts of Center with the pivot stuff I added to kinematics since it could handle rotation. We just never got around to actually doing that and finishing off that part of the pivot workflow... As I said before I always thought the way center worked was a bit hacky (push points in one direction and modifying the transform in another) but it seems the interactive/pervasive nature of it far outweighed the strange way it works for you guys. Now I'm curious if it was even on anyone's top 5 list. ;-) I'm not a really good person to comment on the general issues discussed in relation to Maya workflow. While working on Soft I worked on hair, animation layers, lip sync, modeling, object view/isolate, tools, kinematics, fcurves, ICE (well in fact every part of the software except Rendering) My current involvement in Maya is limited to the modeling team but I feel pretty comfortable that I can have a positive impact on workflow in that area. Cheers. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 03 April 2014 15:04 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) ...but from what he said Brent actually developed that part of Soft in the first place. :/ [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=acGdyaXN3b2xkQGZ1c2lvbmRpZ2l0YWxwcm9kdWN0aW9ucy5jb20%3Dtype=zerocontentguid=84bd8330-649c-42ca-b0bb-7aa77184e20f]ᐧ
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Child Comp would probably be another essential feature people take for granted, the ability to move objects independently of their hierarchies. On 3 April 2014 19:06, Steven Caron car...@gmail.com wrote: i am most 'proud' of your custom tool sdk... a great parting gift which will give softimage some legs after it's demise. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 10:53 AM, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: But I am most proud of bringing the view cube to Softimage. :-P
Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38 To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by what 'the main case uses are' - I just use it to do exactly what it says it does! It's just a flexible and intuative way of working. For example: if I've made a rig control that floats outside some geometry, but I want it's pivot to match an object I have in the rig already (maybe a bone it's meant to control... something like that). I can make and shape the control curve how I like, turn on Centre mode, do a Match Transforms to that object and hit Freeze. Very quick and very easy to do. On 2 April 2014 09:55, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38 To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Thanks. That is an interesting use of center I hadn't thought of before... From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 02 April 2014 10:19 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) I'm not 100% sure what you mean by what 'the main case uses are' - I just use it to do exactly what it says it does! It's just a flexible and intuative way of working. For example: if I've made a rig control that floats outside some geometry, but I want it's pivot to match an object I have in the rig already (maybe a bone it's meant to control... something like that). I can make and shape the control curve how I like, turn on Centre mode, do a Match Transforms to that object and hit Freeze. Very quick and very easy to do. On 2 April 2014 09:55, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38 To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF attachment: winmail.dat
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
No problem - it's always hard to answer these questions when all these things have been so deeply ingrained into your work patterns. :) On 2 April 2014 10:33, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: Thanks. That is an interesting use of center I hadn't thought of before... From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Peter Agg Sent: 02 April 2014 10:19 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) I'm not 100% sure what you mean by what 'the main case uses are' - I just use it to do exactly what it says it does! It's just a flexible and intuative way of working. For example: if I've made a rig control that floats outside some geometry, but I want it's pivot to match an object I have in the rig already (maybe a bone it's meant to control... something like that). I can make and shape the control curve how I like, turn on Centre mode, do a Match Transforms to that object and hit Freeze. Very quick and very easy to do. On 2 April 2014 09:55, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38 To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Yeah that is something that I do very often as well.
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
'center to vertices' command, just another way to quicly change the center of an object. And using the TAB key for quickly moving the pivot around for snapping, moving stuff around is a no-brainer. Things I use a lot on a daily basis.. Rob \/-\/\/ On 2-4-2014 12:38, Eric Thivierge wrote: Yeah that is something that I do very often as well. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com http://www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4355 / Virus Database: 3722/7284 - Release Date: 04/01/14
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
I think the key thing with something like this is that Centre mode isn't something that's used for a specific, single problem - say you implemented a 'Match Centre to Object' button in Maya, that would only solve that single workflow I mentioned earlier. Having the Centre mode work the way it does in Soft, I know I can carry on working the same way I would normally - I can Match Transforms (Maya really needs this as well, btw :) ), use constraints or whatever I feel like and the Centre mode toggle handles it all behind the scenes. It's a far more elegant way of adding functionality than throwing more buttons and tools at each individual problem. On the flip side there's Child Compensation in Soft, which is really nice and everything, but doesn't work with Match Transforms, which turns a useful tool into something very frustrating. Keeping things consistent is key with this kind of working. Anyway, I'm sure you're fully aware of all this, Brent. But better to say it than to not. On 2 April 2014 11:50, Rob Wuijster r...@casema.nl wrote: 'center to vertices' command, just another way to quicly change the center of an object. And using the TAB key for quickly moving the pivot around for snapping, moving stuff around is a no-brainer. Things I use a lot on a daily basis.. Rob \/-\/\/ On 2-4-2014 12:38, Eric Thivierge wrote: Yeah that is something that I do very often as well. No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2014.0.4355 / Virus Database: 3722/7284 - Release Date: 04/01/14
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
All the time. Say I have an aileron, flap or other control surface on an aircraft. Most of these surfaces ( in planform view) are similar to trapezoids, parallelograms, or other irregular surfaces. More importantly however most of these shapes have sides which are never parallel to an X or Z axis and are often deviant in both axis (or diagonal). The rotation angle for these surface are 99% of the time on the diagonal. So how do I deal with this in Maya vs Softimage? Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Soft:I select Center, rotate it to the angle I need, select the object and rotate. If I have to change the pivot after the fact: Maya: I have to deconstruct part of the hierarchy, rotate the null responsible for the rotation angle, and then reconnect the hierarchy so that Maya will not adversely rotate the objects underneath the rotation angle. Soft: I select the Center and rotate. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 4:56 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: 27 March 2014 16:38 To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
In SI we use both pivots and centers. Pivots lack rotation or at least I've never found how to use them so we use Centers for that. Being able to use SRT in custom angles is quite useful. In SI you have centers and reference planes. You have also pivots. In Maya you only have a pivot that you can only specify it's position. The rotation axis works only for rotation and custom axis orientation are Translation and Scale tools options that work separately from the object rotation axis and you can only manipulate it in the viewport. And since it's a tool option you can only have 1 custom angle for translation and scale (1 per tool). You can't move, let's say, an object 10.54 units in diagonal 30 degrees without calculating it or scripting. In SI you can do it in a few seconds with precision and you have multiple ways to do it. You can't do this with components either in Maya. So, I think Maya needs at least half of the Softimage MCP. Martin On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: All the time. Say I have an aileron, flap or other control surface on an aircraft. Most of these surfaces ( in planform view) are similar to trapezoids, parallelograms, or other irregular surfaces. More importantly however most of these shapes have sides which are never parallel to an X or Z axis and are often deviant in both axis (or diagonal). The rotation angle for these surface are 99% of the time on the diagonal. So how do I deal with this in Maya vs Softimage? Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Soft:I select Center, rotate it to the angle I need, select the object and rotate. If I have to change the pivot after the fact: Maya: I have to deconstruct part of the hierarchy, rotate the null responsible for the rotation angle, and then reconnect the hierarchy so that Maya will not adversely rotate the objects underneath the rotation angle. Soft: I select the Center and rotate. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Brent McPherson *Sent:* Wednesday, April 02, 2014 4:56 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) So, do you folks really use Center mode all that much? That was really a pre-pivot workflow that XSI inherited from SI|3D and it simply applies a transform to the object and a mirror transform to the geometry thereby giving the *illusion* that that center has changed. Of course, reset transforms will mess up the center. (unless you also set the neutral pose) As someone who worked on that area in SI I'm really curious to know what the main use cases for Center are? Thanks. -- Brent *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* 27 March 2014 16:38 *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Trying to look at this from a high-level non-TD user perspective... In Soft, whether it was intentional design or just fell out of the toolset that evolved, any geometrical object (not using the word in the programming sense) has, through centers, pivots, reference planes, neutral poses, constraint compensation and child compensation, effectively got a complete and fairly intuitive rig already embedded. The ability to toggle in and out of various manipulation modes easily is very important in terms of usability. The combination of the tabbed PPGs and operator stack allow people to drill down to the atomic level if necessary, but don't tend to interfere with the user experience. The fact remarked on above, that all the tools continue to work in all modes, is also key. In Maya, it seems to me that an underlying assumption was made that everything should be REALLY atomic, and that users should do everything by assembling things into mostly single-purpose, single-mode rigs or tools. I guess this makes sense in a pipelined, scripted environment, especially when you have TDs to build and deploy a stable toolset, but it's hell on Earth for a sole-practitioner/generalist who is expected to quickly produce results from scratch. I gather that you *could* devise a rig, using locators and constraints and whatnot, that would emulate the flexibility of all the Softimage transform controls, and use a script to apply it to any object that gets a transform node, but unless you also spend considerable time to make a custom UI for it, the usability would be awful. Not to mention the mess you'd have in the node editor or outliner. To me, this goes along with the silly amount of clicking on things you have to do in Maya -- it's all very logical and sensible from a really granular standpoint, but scales poorly (in the sense that repetitive tasks become REALLY repetitive) and neglects the difference between things that need to be done frequently and things that are rarely needed. And I guess the tendency toward single-purpose single-mode tools and operations is also related to this, with the often-disastrous effect of being unable to make even a simple change without recreating the whole history of operations. Again, if you do everything with a script, that might not be a big deal -- you edit the script to make the change, then run the whole thing again. But if you are trying to keep everything live and editable, and don't have scripting skills, or a TD who does, Maya is intrinsically more limited. I'm resigned to the prospect of dusting off scripting skills I haven't exercised in nearly 20 years, but I'm not happy about what is basically a regression in the state of the art. And I know that scripting and coding are hugely powerful tools -- there are things that you can, or should, ONLY do with them -- but I am not nearly as facile with those tools as the ones in the Softimage workflow/toolset. Besides -- it's wasteful and inane to use a sophisticated, powerful tool to do a simple frequent task. Just because I could use a 6-axis CNC milling machine to drill a hole in a board doesn't mean it's a better tool for the job than my old Makita driver drill. Yes, if I needed to make several dozen holes, all precisely sized and spaced, at different angles, in several different boards meant to fit together at a later stage, that CNC machine would be handy -- but 99.99% of the time, all I need is that one simple hole, right NOW, and I don't want to take the workpiece off the jobsite back to the machine shop.
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them.
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
On 02/04/14 17:25, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. Whenever I need to relocate a pivot temporarily for whatever reason I usually snap a mesh to R/T 0/0/0 world space, leave the offset of the mesh in place (aka don't freeze S/R/T), then move/rotate the pivot to some other position, do whatever I need to - when i'm done I reposition the pivot to R/T 0/0/0 world again and roll everything else back - Tadaa.. \o/ It's just a few clicks AND is completely nondestructive, too ...without ever even touching the operator stack... also i use tiny polygons outside of (mostly character-) meshes regularly to simulate whatever COG of an object i might need... sometimes using this trick to storing several COG's outside the geometry (as in: another object), quickly deleting and merging them back into the mesh as needed... location location location :) Cheers! Chris
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Hi Luc-Eric: A simple problem I had with the lack of a center/offset rotation pivot attribute in Maya was when I was rigging this guy: http://1drv.ms/1lndvDS His eyelids are using a combination of weighted joints to control major movement and clusters, to control the side-to-side. For the clusters, however, I needed their centers to match the rotation of the eyelid bones exactly so that I could use set driven keys to connect the control curves to their movement. I ended up having to make a quick hack script that would makea temporary orientConstraint, grab the offset values, then delete the constraint and piping those values into the rotateAxis of the clusters instead to bring them back into original position. There is probably a better way to do this and avoid having to work around like this (I was originally going to do bones all over the eyelids but it would have been a nightmare setting SDKs for that), but with the time limit, it was all I had and what I could do. A secondary transform attribute that was common to all transform nodes would go a long way towards helping XSI Maya transitions, I think, especially when you need like exact pivot matches instead of rotating things around manually to kind of estimate it. :P Plus then you wouldn't have to worry about geometry VS clusters VS whatever node it is, as long as it has a transform, you know you're safe since you have access to a second pivot instead of having to create an intermediate null object for that purpose (and in any case that doesn't work as well for relative-deforming clusters) Hope that makes sense! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 4/2/2014 8:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them.
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
The point of the center mode (from the user's perspective) is to be able to preserve the geometry as you see it while being able to correct the transform. Center mode is heavily used here. It's not strictly for corrective purposes, but also for assisting in setting up manipulations for modeling and rigging. We align centers to ensure that objects enveloped to the same deformers move together in unison without separating from each other. That's *really important* when doing squash n' stretch or other non-uniform deformations. Center mode is a staple in the toolset, please implement it into Maya if not already there. While you're at it, implement softimage scaling. It would save us months/years of re-rigging a very large arsenal of assets. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 8:26 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them.
RE: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
I'm not sure I see how that would easily solve my problem without introducing other problems, risks, or complex workflow. I don't even see how it competes with Softimage's method. I have geometry that is sometimes generated in CAD or provided from other sources. The geometry, and its relative components often have to remain in their relative positions. But I need to define custom articulations. I often have more freedom to cheat on the articulations than I do on the topology. If in Maya I select the aileron, rotate it till the pivot matches the rotation angle I want, then select all the points of the aileron and attempt to back rotate them until the geometry matches its previous position against the new rotation angle, can I do that? Yes, but with caveats: 1. If I select components and proceed to back rotate the geometry by using the Channnel editor, why do I lose the numerical channel editor transform entries. This would have been the intuitive approach because that's how we do this with object selection. But there is no congruency here. It would be my first anticipation on how it might be achieved. 2. Might it be possible to eyeball the back rotation with just the manipulator? Yes, but what does that do to the accuracy of my geometry position? I might possibly be less concerned for the accuracy in the rotation angle than in the placement of the geometry. Either way one or the other must sacrificed. In this scenario Maya forces me to sacrifice geometry position. What if I don't want to sacrifice that? 3. What if I am rotating this on more than one axis? Can I use the Channel Editor's CV list to accomplish this? How do I know what vertex coordinates to enter here? Can I use it at all? Strike three in anticipating a potential method. 4. polyMoveVertex . So yes there is a way to do this in Maya. Assuming I have an object under another in a hierarchy I: a. select the child object that I want change its pivot angle b. rotate the object -30 degrees in Z c. select component type *in the event you were in component type already and selected the object from the outliner, component type is still active but object is selected, you then have to select object type and reselect component type just to get back to component selection or make a new component selection. d. select all components on the object e. go to polygon module (if you're not there already) f. go to Edit mesh - Transform Component (I now get a polyMoveVertex operator in my Input stack). g. enter a positive 30 degrees in Z, geometry is now back rotated h. return to object type i. hit Edit - Delete by Type - History ( Assuming I have construction history on. Further why can't Ijust right-click delete history on this operator?) Yet how simple are any of these approaches compared to: Select the Object, Select Center, enter -30 at the Rotate transform? Yes in Maya I can do this, but is it easy? Is it risky if I tried to do it using solely a manipulator? Is it intuitive? Why must I use a polyMoveVertex operator to do this? Why can't I just switch to Component Type and maintain use of the Channel editor's Transform entries? How much planning is required? Is there another way in Maya to do this? I don't recall, I got used to making null rigs. In Maya its easier, more forgiving, and simpler to just go the null rig route. I think its potentially appropriate to argue that it might also be good form. It introduces far less risk or possibility of mis-selecting vertices, putting the vertices in the wrong place, damage to geometry. But it's not more intuitive than Center. Yes the null rig method can also be done in Softimage as an alternative method to using Center. Softimage also supports the vertex back-rotation through a Cluster. This is not an issue of whether Maya provides us the ability to do these things. It does. And very reliably. The question is whether it provides these abilities in an intuitive and user friendly manner. It's a matter of human factors. But to be fair, Softimage had its own issues with this problem. Just far fewer than Maya. -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage- boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 11:26 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
(was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage- boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 11:26 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
to using Center. Softimage also supports the vertex back-rotation through a Cluster. This is not an issue of whether Maya provides us the ability to do these things. It does. And very reliably. The question is whether it provides these abilities in an intuitive and user friendly manner. It's a matter of human factors. But to be fair, Softimage had its own issues with this problem. Just far fewer than Maya. -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage- boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2014 11:26 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Maya: I have to create a set of multiple nulls with custom rotations to set up the angle of rotation properly for the surface. If I want to rotate the surface I have to dig through all these nulls to get to the right one, select and rotate it just to rotate the surface. Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Totally agree. And just to chime in, I use center mode many times per session, per day. Essential workflow. Sent from my iPhone Please excuse typos and brief replies. Thank you! On Apr 2, 2014, at 7:00 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.com wrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
You guys have said it all.. absolute agreement On Apr 2, 2014 6:40 PM, Perryharovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Totally agree. And just to chime in, I use center mode many times per session, per day. Essential workflow. Sent from my iPhone Please excuse typos and brief replies. Thank you! On Apr 2, 2014, at 7:00 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Center mode (was RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5)
Yep center is useful when you ant to keep the points in place...kind of like the difference between moving the house closer to the mountain rather than moving the mountain closer to the house ;) On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:59 PM, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com wrote: You guys have said it all.. absolute agreement On Apr 2, 2014 6:40 PM, Perryharovas perryharo...@gmail.com wrote: Totally agree. And just to chime in, I use center mode many times per session, per day. Essential workflow. Sent from my iPhone Please excuse typos and brief replies. Thank you! On Apr 2, 2014, at 7:00 PM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: Harder than that, the equivalent would be to select all components, move and rotate them numerically, then figure out the reciprocal transform of what you just did and apply it to the object's transform. Center mode is also not equivalent or obsoleted by neutral poses, nor it's equated by Maya's pivot control. It's sorely missed by many in Maya. On top of that, Maya snapping facilities, particularly when it comes to rotations, are wonky and often don't work at all. The modelling toolset, several interaction modes with the pivot, and many other things don't support snapping, and most certainly don't support matching transforms. Adding insult to injury, matching or resetting transforms in Maya is highly deficient out of the box, as it will often work on the whole hierarchy regardless of what you intended to do. Lastly, center mode worked seamlessly with all manipulation tools, you could switch to center mode and have child compensation on and snap/match to another object. This offers unequalled control over geometry handling in relation to its center. In Maya I've always found pivots superior to neutral pose for a long list of reasons, at least functionally, though the manipulation itself is weak (again, Maya is generally weak and fragmented in dealing with rotations). Maya's handling of reciprocating transforms between transform proper and geometry though leaves A LOT to be desired, and a page or two from XSI's book should be taken. On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 2:25 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau luceri...@gmail.comwrote: Is that always true in your scenarios? Moving center in Softimage is like moving all the points of the geometry. (What brent calls transforming the geometry) Knowing that it does that, wouldn't the simplest work-around for your specific scenario in Maya be to select all points and move/rotate them. -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- -=T=-
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
After brooding about MMB vs. M key for a day or two. I just realized that I use Softimage´s beveling a lot. But differently. When adding an edgeloop or edges in general, I will usually resort to beveling that selection instead of just adding an edge loop. Beveling gives better curvature, averaging the postion of the now two egde (loops) nicely in relation to the selected edges and it´s neighbours. It is convenient to adjust the bevel width slider and interactively tune the result to taste. For that, I often use bevel settings wider than 2. The benefit is that the polygon surface´s curvature doesn´t get as unevenly modified and it becomes easier to add detail or even out topology in wip basemeshes/cleaned up meshes. Together with the option to slide components across the surface and the phletora of transformation modes (REF, Global, etc) this makes clean organic modeling a lot easier. Cheers, tim On 27.03.2014 07:48, Tim Leydecker wrote: Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options. On 27.03.2014 00:45, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: We are keeping MMB Repeat under consideration for Maya, thanks all for the feedback. On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: I fully understood what your post was about, Luc-Eric. What I stated is what many users here liked MMB upon learning about it as, other than myself and one other person, nobody had used Softimage before. They had all come from 3DSMax and/or Maya. Many of them have commented they wish the MMB feature was in Maya as it's simple, intuitive, and saves repetitive work freeing up a spot or two on the keyboard for something else. While you can use 'g' in Maya, it's not the same as MMB in the menus as each menu can have its own history remembering a different command whereas 'g' can only remember one command - the most recent. That's important. Users here have a mentality burned into their skulls from those other software that they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars to get anything done. Introducing something like a MMB is a revelation as it's both simple and powerful. What should also be conveyed is that when artists feel like they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars, they often tend to start dabbling in scripting to make those customizations. Artist code tends to be a frequent cause of fires I have to exterminate and generally a waste of my time as a TD. If artists have these nice UI workflow touches such as MMB to repeat, they're less inclined to write crappy code which means fewer fires to fight and more focus on productivity not only for the artists, but also for me as it allows me to spend more time focusing on writing tools which can provide bigger impact than quickie buttons. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
means fewer fires to fight and more focus on productivity not only for the artists, but also for me as it allows me to spend more time focusing on writing tools which can provide bigger impact than quickie buttons. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn off and merged into a toolbar, then that would be ideal. Implementing MMB to repeat a command in a menu would be a popular move. that's OK, but that's in Softimage. The bit that's not obvious is whether someone using Maya needs a MMB, that's what my post is meant to be about. In Maya, you can even hold shift+ctrl while selecting a menu to make it a button the shelf. (Doing the same thing in Softimage would be a pain) You'll be working differently, have different reflexes.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 8:43 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. So for Maya on Mac OC you're SOL?
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Is it an actual workstation or a laptop workstation? If it's the actual workstation, did you have to strap it to a mule and walk it through the subways? haha On Friday, March 28, 2014 10:00:40 AM, Ed Manning wrote: No kidding. that's why I've brought in my own workstation running Windows. And Softimage.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
That's probably not the rotate pivot. Hit the E key to display the Rotate tool and my guess will be that you will see that the Rotate orientation is unchanged. This should be reflected in the Channel editor as well. This appears to be a reorientation of the manipulator, not the object's rotate pivot. What the original poster was asking for was the ability to alter Orientation(the angle of the object's centre) without altering the position/orientation of the object's geometry relative to world space. In other words he wants to do what he can do in Soft, which is to select the center and simply rotate it and see an inverse rotation occur to the geometry when they return to Object. In Maya this appears to be a tool to assist in manipulator behavior, but does not appear to affect the actual rotate pivot. For example If you hit key W(Translate) or key R(Scale) then hit the Insert key you will see the blue switch icon appear. When you hit the icon it changes the manipulator to a rotation manipulator but is only affecting the Translate pivot. Same with Scale and scale pivot. But if you hit E(Rotate) and try hitting insert, it will convert to the Rotate Pivot but give you no switch to rotate the Rotate Pivot. To make matters worse in 2014 there is a new feature in the Modeling Toolkit which claims to allow pivot adjustments through the MTK transform options. But this only looks to permit adjustments to a secondary custom component manipulator which is only available through the Modeling Toolkit. Once you exit the Modeling toolkit none of the adjustments appear to be carried back to the pivot point, rotate pivot or scale pivot. However, when returning to the MTK it does appear to remember those adjustments made within the MTK. Mind you these are only component pivots apparently being adjusted here, not the object pivot which is what the original posting was about. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Cristobal Infante Sent: Friday, March 28, 2014 8:43 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. On 28 March 2014 09:13, Gaël Honorez g...@nozon.commailto:g...@nozon.com wrote: Kind of the same topic, Maya is the only software we are using that can't read EXR file natively (it requires a plugin), and even more dramatic, a plugin you have to modify compile so they are read correctly (linear - sRGB). On 27/03/2014 19:53, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] wrote: It goes back to the late 90s actually. Everyone migrating from TAV didn't really have a sense for this being something they should have. New users we're just without reference. Everyone else who knew better wrote MEL scripts to compensate for the shortcomings. The weird thing is that the term rotate pivot to us is an action. To Maya users it is a thing, a noun if you will. A separate pivot. To make matters even weirder, it appears you can alter the rotation of the translation manipulator and scale manipulator through the pivot tool, but it only affects the way that translation and scale works through their pivots, not the rotate pivot itself. For example, select an object, select translate manipulator, hit the insert key, look for the cyan keyhole icon on the screen. Clicking on this will allow you to rotate the translate pivot, but not the rotate pivot. Same with scale. This action looks to be affecting only the manipulator, as all new objects get the same adjusted manipulator orientation. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 2:34 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 oh and try to search rotate pivot in the docs. Good Luck trying to find a way to do it! I had to go to the forums and I see complaints about this from Maya users going back to 2006. I really want to curse on here. #$% On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, afaik you can only rotate the rotation axis of your rotation pivot. Martin Sent from my iPhone
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Maya has 3 pivots that are not synchronized. With insert or keep pressing D you can rotate the translation one and the scale one (separately), and with the ? mark you can rotate the rotation one. Inside the Translation and Scale tool you have a Custom axis orientation, this is your pivot orientation. So these 2 pivots are tool based. For Rotation you have the Rotate Axis in the Attribute Editor of the object. Now you want all 3 to have the same angle ? good luck. And pivots in Maya are not the same as Centers in SI, but more like SI pivots. To be honest I don't know exactly how to use SI pivot rotation values. The Parent workaround is to rotate the object Center. I don't think Maya uses this concept or terminology, does it? and I don't know any way to manipulate directly the object center either. Martin On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 11:43 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: That's probably not the rotate pivot. Hit the E key to display the Rotate tool and my guess will be that you will see that the Rotate orientation is unchanged. This should be reflected in the Channel editor as well. This appears to be a reorientation of the manipulator, not the object's rotate pivot. What the original poster was asking for was the ability to alter Orientation(the angle of the object's centre) without altering the position/orientation of the object's geometry relative to world space. In other words he wants to do what he can do in Soft, which is to select the center and simply rotate it and see an inverse rotation occur to the geometry when they return to Object. In Maya this appears to be a tool to assist in manipulator behavior, but does not appear to affect the actual rotate pivot. For example If you hit key W(Translate) or key R(Scale) then hit the Insert key you will see the blue switch icon appear. When you hit the icon it changes the manipulator to a rotation manipulator but is only affecting the Translate pivot. Same with Scale and scale pivot. But if you hit E(Rotate) and try hitting insert, it will convert to the Rotate Pivot but give you no switch to rotate the Rotate Pivot. To make matters worse in 2014 there is a new feature in the Modeling Toolkit which claims to allow pivot adjustments through the MTK transform options. But this only looks to permit adjustments to a secondary custom component manipulator which is only available through the Modeling Toolkit. Once you exit the Modeling toolkit none of the adjustments appear to be carried back to the pivot point, rotate pivot or scale pivot. However, when returning to the MTK it does appear to remember those adjustments made within the MTK. Mind you these are only component pivots apparently being adjusted here, not the object pivot which is what the original posting was about. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Cristobal Infante *Sent:* Friday, March 28, 2014 8:43 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. On 28 March 2014 09:13, Gaël Honorez g...@nozon.com wrote: Kind of the same topic, Maya is the only software we are using that can't read EXR file natively (it requires a plugin), and even more dramatic, a plugin you have to modify compile so they are read correctly (linear - sRGB). On 27/03/2014 19:53, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] wrote: It goes back to the late 90s actually. Everyone migrating from TAV didn't really have a sense for this being something they should have. New users we're just without reference. Everyone else who knew better wrote MEL scripts to compensate for the shortcomings. The weird thing is that the term rotate pivot to us is an action. To Maya users it is a thing, a noun if you will. A separate pivot. To make matters even weirder, it appears you can alter the rotation of the translation manipulator and scale manipulator through the pivot tool, but it only affects the way that translation and scale works through their pivots, not the rotate pivot itself. For example, select an object, select translate manipulator, hit the insert key, look for the cyan keyhole icon on the screen. Clicking on this will allow you to rotate the translate pivot, but not the rotate pivot. Same with scale. This action looks to be affecting only the manipulator, as all new objects get the same adjusted manipulator orientation. -- Joey
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Your first problem is that you're using a Mac. :P On Friday, March 28, 2014 9:53:52 AM, Ed Manning wrote: On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 8:43 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. So for Maya on Mac OC you're SOL?
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Exactly martin. DOES not matter if you are on PC/ Mac/ Linux/ SGI/ etc Maya just sucks.The best you can do is hit a y button and go to local rotation axis and change in attribute editor. BUT good luck trying to make an object center move AND rotate the way you want. On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 11:26 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has 3 pivots that are not synchronized. With insert or keep pressing D you can rotate the translation one and the scale one (separately), and with the ? mark you can rotate the rotation one. Inside the Translation and Scale tool you have a Custom axis orientation, this is your pivot orientation. So these 2 pivots are tool based. For Rotation you have the Rotate Axis in the Attribute Editor of the object. Now you want all 3 to have the same angle ? good luck. And pivots in Maya are not the same as Centers in SI, but more like SI pivots. To be honest I don't know exactly how to use SI pivot rotation values. The Parent workaround is to rotate the object Center. I don't think Maya uses this concept or terminology, does it? and I don't know any way to manipulate directly the object center either. Martin On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 11:43 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: That's probably not the rotate pivot. Hit the E key to display the Rotate tool and my guess will be that you will see that the Rotate orientation is unchanged. This should be reflected in the Channel editor as well. This appears to be a reorientation of the manipulator, not the object's rotate pivot. What the original poster was asking for was the ability to alter Orientation(the angle of the object's centre) without altering the position/orientation of the object's geometry relative to world space. In other words he wants to do what he can do in Soft, which is to select the center and simply rotate it and see an inverse rotation occur to the geometry when they return to Object. In Maya this appears to be a tool to assist in manipulator behavior, but does not appear to affect the actual rotate pivot. For example If you hit key W(Translate) or key R(Scale) then hit the Insert key you will see the blue switch icon appear. When you hit the icon it changes the manipulator to a rotation manipulator but is only affecting the Translate pivot. Same with Scale and scale pivot. But if you hit E(Rotate) and try hitting insert, it will convert to the Rotate Pivot but give you no switch to rotate the Rotate Pivot. To make matters worse in 2014 there is a new feature in the Modeling Toolkit which claims to allow pivot adjustments through the MTK transform options. But this only looks to permit adjustments to a secondary custom component manipulator which is only available through the Modeling Toolkit. Once you exit the Modeling toolkit none of the adjustments appear to be carried back to the pivot point, rotate pivot or scale pivot. However, when returning to the MTK it does appear to remember those adjustments made within the MTK. Mind you these are only component pivots apparently being adjusted here, not the object pivot which is what the original posting was about. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Cristobal Infante *Sent:* Friday, March 28, 2014 8:43 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. On 28 March 2014 09:13, Gaël Honorez g...@nozon.com wrote: Kind of the same topic, Maya is the only software we are using that can't read EXR file natively (it requires a plugin), and even more dramatic, a plugin you have to modify compile so they are read correctly (linear - sRGB). On 27/03/2014 19:53, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] wrote: It goes back to the late 90s actually. Everyone migrating from TAV didn't really have a sense for this being something they should have. New users we're just without reference. Everyone else who knew better wrote MEL scripts to compensate for the shortcomings. The weird thing is that the term rotate pivot to us is an action. To Maya users it is a thing, a noun if you will. A separate pivot. To make matters even weirder, it appears you can alter the rotation of the translation manipulator and scale manipulator through the pivot tool, but it only affects the way that translation and scale works through their pivots, not the rotate pivot itself. For example, select
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 9:53 AM, Ed Manning etmth...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 8:43 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. So for Maya on Mac OC you're SOL? Can we have a little more faith here? :P On the Mac, pivot manipulation is on the Home key. On a mac laptop keyboard, the home key is FN+left arrow
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 9:55 AM, Eric Thivierge ethivie...@hybride.comwrote: Your first problem is that you're using a Mac. :P On Friday, March 28, 2014 9:53:52 AM, Ed Manning wrote: On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 8:43 AM, Cristobal Infante cgc...@gmail.com mailto:cgc...@gmail.com wrote: I've just tried it and you can rotate the pivot without any scripts. Just press insert and the you get a small blue widget to rotate the pivot from. So for Maya on Mac OC you're SOL? No kidding. that's why I've brought in my own workstation running Windows. And Softimage.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options. On 27.03.2014 00:45, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: We are keeping MMB Repeat under consideration for Maya, thanks all for the feedback. On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: I fully understood what your post was about, Luc-Eric. What I stated is what many users here liked MMB upon learning about it as, other than myself and one other person, nobody had used Softimage before. They had all come from 3DSMax and/or Maya. Many of them have commented they wish the MMB feature was in Maya as it's simple, intuitive, and saves repetitive work freeing up a spot or two on the keyboard for something else. While you can use 'g' in Maya, it's not the same as MMB in the menus as each menu can have its own history remembering a different command whereas 'g' can only remember one command - the most recent. That's important. Users here have a mentality burned into their skulls from those other software that they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars to get anything done. Introducing something like a MMB is a revelation as it's both simple and powerful. What should also be conveyed is that when artists feel like they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars, they often tend to start dabbling in scripting to make those customizations. Artist code tends to be a frequent cause of fires I have to exterminate and generally a waste of my time as a TD. If artists have these nice UI workflow touches such as MMB to repeat, they're less inclined to write crappy code which means fewer fires to fight and more focus on productivity not only for the artists, but also for me as it allows me to spend more time focusing on writing tools which can provide bigger impact than quickie buttons. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn off and merged into a toolbar, then that would be ideal. Implementing MMB to repeat a command in a menu would be a popular move. that's OK, but that's in Softimage. The bit that's not obvious is whether someone using Maya needs a MMB, that's what my post is meant to be about
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Yes! Agreed! -Original Message- From: Tim Leydecker [bauero...@gmx.de] Received: Thursday, 27 Mar 2014, 6:49AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com] Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options. On 27.03.2014 00:45, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: We are keeping MMB Repeat under consideration for Maya, thanks all for the feedback. On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com mailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: I fully understood what your post was about, Luc-Eric. What I stated is what many users here liked MMB upon learning about it as, other than myself and one other person, nobody had used Softimage before. They had all come from 3DSMax and/or Maya. Many of them have commented they wish the MMB feature was in Maya as it's simple, intuitive, and saves repetitive work freeing up a spot or two on the keyboard for something else. While you can use 'g' in Maya, it's not the same as MMB in the menus as each menu can have its own history remembering a different command whereas 'g' can only remember one command - the most recent. That's important. Users here have a mentality burned into their skulls from those other software that they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars to get anything done. Introducing something like a MMB is a revelation as it's both simple and powerful. What should also be conveyed is that when artists feel like they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars, they often tend to start dabbling in scripting to make those customizations. Artist code tends to be a frequent cause of fires I have to exterminate and generally a waste of my time as a TD. If artists have these nice UI workflow touches such as MMB to repeat, they're less inclined to write crappy code which means fewer fires to fight and more focus on productivity not only for the artists, but also for me as it allows me to spend more time focusing on writing tools which can provide bigger impact than quickie buttons. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
A little good thing in the disaster that ex-Softimage developers are sitting now in the development team I think a well prepared poll could help your work Make sure, that all feature that is exclusive to Softimage is present in the list, like GATOR, Sticky/Supra Key, MMB for last menu command, Snapping System with ALT key pivot manipulation, animation icons (feedback on keys, animation types), etc. Make then sure, that you can separate the user feedback based upon their area of work (like VFX, films, games, ads, etc) Then you will get a really good overview of what is essential to inject into Maya. Good luck guys. It's hard task. And to quote Lord Farquaad: Some of yoy may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make! :) From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:46 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 We are keeping MMB Repeat under consideration for Maya, thanks all for the feedback. On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.commailto:ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: I fully understood what your post was about, Luc-Eric. What I stated is what many users here liked MMB upon learning about it as, other than myself and one other person, nobody had used Softimage before. They had all come from 3DSMax and/or Maya. Many of them have commented they wish the MMB feature was in Maya as it's simple, intuitive, and saves repetitive work freeing up a spot or two on the keyboard for something else. While you can use 'g' in Maya, it's not the same as MMB in the menus as each menu can have its own history remembering a different command whereas 'g' can only remember one command - the most recent. That's important. Users here have a mentality burned into their skulls from those other software that they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars to get anything done. Introducing something like a MMB is a revelation as it's both simple and powerful. What should also be conveyed is that when artists feel like they have to make lots of keyboard shortcuts and toolbars, they often tend to start dabbling in scripting to make those customizations. Artist code tends to be a frequent cause of fires I have to exterminate and generally a waste of my time as a TD. If artists have these nice UI workflow touches such as MMB to repeat, they're less inclined to write crappy code which means fewer fires to fight and more focus on productivity not only for the artists, but also for me as it allows me to spend more time focusing on writing tools which can provide bigger impact than quickie buttons. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comjavascript:; [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comjavascript:;] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:25 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.comjavascript:; Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.comjavascript:; wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn off and merged into a toolbar, then that would be ideal. Implementing MMB to repeat a command in a menu would be a popular move. that's OK, but that's in Softimage. The bit that's not obvious is whether someone using Maya needs a MMB, that's what my post is meant to be about. In Maya, you can even hold shift+ctrl while selecting a menu to make it a button the shelf. (Doing the same thing in Softimage would be a pain) You'll be working differently, have different reflexes.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the The GUI is not as simple and straight forward as the M key, but it does the job done and I guess a simple script to change the options automatically and assign it to a hotkey may do the trick. - Move Tool Select your object, Active Multi-Component in the MTK, press W to change the mode to Translate, Activate Tweak/Marquee option and now you have your Move Tool. - Slide Components If you want to slide like the magnet tool, Change the Transform Constraints. I asked this in another thread. - Weld point Although you have the Merge Vertex Tool for this, MTK has also it's own Target Weld. Pretty similar to the M key + weld, but this one works with edges too. - Split Edges The equivalent to Split Edge would be MTK Connect, MMB to control the number of segments. The same Connect tool has an option of Slide that would be the equivalent to Split Edge with split Control (slide with MMB). - Raycast This MTK also has a selection mode with a Raycast Option that would work just like SI raycast. The good thing is that now with MTK, unlike the previous Maya preferences, you can select backfaces that you are seeing in wireframe mode ala Softimage. The problem with the Raycast/Marquee option is that the Marquee only works if you start to drag outside the object. So if you want to do a drag select a bunch of polygons in the center of your object just like you could with Lasso or Raycast Rectangle in SI, you can't. You'll have to do it with a Raycast. I miss SI Lasso tool. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Great summary Martin but I'd like to add two little timesaving tips: 1) Tab hotkey temporarily activates raycast selection mode 2) Backtick hotkey (the key above Tab) temporarily activates tweak mode -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 09:53 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the The GUI is not as simple and straight forward as the M key, but it does the job done and I guess a simple script to change the options automatically and assign it to a hotkey may do the trick. - Move Tool Select your object, Active Multi-Component in the MTK, press W to change the mode to Translate, Activate Tweak/Marquee option and now you have your Move Tool. - Slide Components If you want to slide like the magnet tool, Change the Transform Constraints. I asked this in another thread. - Weld point Although you have the Merge Vertex Tool for this, MTK has also it's own Target Weld. Pretty similar to the M key + weld, but this one works with edges too. - Split Edges The equivalent to Split Edge would be MTK Connect, MMB to control the number of segments. The same Connect tool has an option of Slide that would be the equivalent to Split Edge with split Control (slide with MMB). - Raycast This MTK also has a selection mode with a Raycast Option that would work just like SI raycast. The good thing is that now with MTK, unlike the previous Maya preferences, you can select backfaces that you are seeing in wireframe mode ala Softimage. The problem with the Raycast/Marquee option is that the Marquee only works if you start to drag outside the object. So if you want to do a drag select a bunch of polygons in the center of your object just like you could with Lasso or Raycast Rectangle in SI, you can't. You'll have to do it with a Raycast. I miss SI Lasso tool. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.demailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options. attachment: winmail.dat
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Guys, I'm now using maya to find out the major differences... Bevel tool - how on Earth I can bevel a bunch of polygons with beveling their common edges???!?!!!?!???!?!?!?!!!! Connect tool - how on Earth I can change the number of segments connecting edges after the tool is applied!??? Etc. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Brent McPherson Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 11:12 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Great summary Martin but I'd like to add two little timesaving tips: 1) Tab hotkey temporarily activates raycast selection mode 2) Backtick hotkey (the key above Tab) temporarily activates tweak mode -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 09:53 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the The GUI is not as simple and straight forward as the M key, but it does the job done and I guess a simple script to change the options automatically and assign it to a hotkey may do the trick. - Move Tool Select your object, Active Multi-Component in the MTK, press W to change the mode to Translate, Activate Tweak/Marquee option and now you have your Move Tool. - Slide Components If you want to slide like the magnet tool, Change the Transform Constraints. I asked this in another thread. - Weld point Although you have the Merge Vertex Tool for this, MTK has also it's own Target Weld. Pretty similar to the M key + weld, but this one works with edges too. - Split Edges The equivalent to Split Edge would be MTK Connect, MMB to control the number of segments. The same Connect tool has an option of Slide that would be the equivalent to Split Edge with split Control (slide with MMB). - Raycast This MTK also has a selection mode with a Raycast Option that would work just like SI raycast. The good thing is that now with MTK, unlike the previous Maya preferences, you can select backfaces that you are seeing in wireframe mode ala Softimage. The problem with the Raycast/Marquee option is that the Marquee only works if you start to drag outside the object. So if you want to do a drag select a bunch of polygons in the center of your object just like you could with Lasso or Raycast Rectangle in SI, you can't. You'll have to do it with a Raycast. I miss SI Lasso tool. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.demailto:bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
A couple of things form someone making the transition: 1. The script editor dumping my script once its been run is very painful 2. This might just be a linux thing - but if I have, say, a muscle weights menu open, I have to select something in the viewport before I can adjust brush size etc 3. Not every impressed by the muscle weight paint tools so far - I can't work out a way to easily see the selected muscle through the mesh while painting and not being able to see the weights in XSI's 'everything in all the colours' style - would be good to have a similar option. On first glance the skinning tools are a bit nicer, at least. 4. Easily locking and tearing off channel boxes and attribute tabs would be immensely handy - I'm very used to having the mute envelope box around (for example), or being able to easily compare two object's attributes. I know the voxel weighting is coming in 2015, fingers crossed that the weight painting process is improved as well (not that Soft's couldn't have had extensive work done to it either, of course). I'll probably reserve comment until I've had a play with that. On 27 March 2014 09:52, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the The GUI is not as simple and straight forward as the M key, but it does the job done and I guess a simple script to change the options automatically and assign it to a hotkey may do the trick. - Move Tool Select your object, Active Multi-Component in the MTK, press W to change the mode to Translate, Activate Tweak/Marquee option and now you have your Move Tool. - Slide Components If you want to slide like the magnet tool, Change the Transform Constraints. I asked this in another thread. - Weld point Although you have the Merge Vertex Tool for this, MTK has also it's own Target Weld. Pretty similar to the M key + weld, but this one works with edges too. - Split Edges The equivalent to Split Edge would be MTK Connect, MMB to control the number of segments. The same Connect tool has an option of Slide that would be the equivalent to Split Edge with split Control (slide with MMB). - Raycast This MTK also has a selection mode with a Raycast Option that would work just like SI raycast. The good thing is that now with MTK, unlike the previous Maya preferences, you can select backfaces that you are seeing in wireframe mode ala Softimage. The problem with the Raycast/Marquee option is that the Marquee only works if you start to drag outside the object. So if you want to do a drag select a bunch of polygons in the center of your object just like you could with Lasso or Raycast Rectangle in SI, you can't. You'll have to do it with a Raycast. I miss SI Lasso tool. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Tim Leydecker bauero...@gmx.de wrote: Can I trade the MMB functionality against the M key workflow? Personally, I don´t use MMB much because when modeling, I will usually resort to using either the M key or rick-clicking to access polygon operations. Sliding a component (selection) around on a polygon surface is a wonderful feature in Softimage. I would say that using a combination of variations of the M key settings, add edge, and extrude is covering 65% of my work for modeling, with a Split Edge (with split control) here and there. I tend to model my bevels due to legacy shortcomings in tools. A good 15% is the ease of using U/T/E with raycast perference options that prevent selecting unwanted (backfaced) areas. 10% is viewport interaction. Tumbling around and view modes. 10% is unfold3d. (It´s a lot more this brings but it´s become so easy :-) Using wheighting edges in subD models I refuse to use until it is consistenly supported in something as reliable as a blank *.obj format in any other app available. There´s no point in wheighting a (subD style) edge hardness when you realize you can´t import/export it anywhere like that. Cheers, tim P.S: Merging vertices in Maya is nicer, with it´s treshhold options.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the attachment: winmail.dat
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.comwrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto: furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.comwrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto: furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null's rotation to the rotation that you want the object's pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.commailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.comhttp://www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
All of a sudden I feel sorry for Maya users.. ... http://www.hackneyeffects.com/https://vimeo.com/user4174293http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/ http://spylon.tumblr.com/ This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd.If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone.Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. From: j.ponthi...@nasa.gov To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 17:16:56 + Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null’s rotation to the rotation that you want the object’s pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Yes I did it finally. But I mean seriously I have to go through all that to rotate a center This is what we are talking about. Poor poor Maya users. :( On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null's rotation to the rotation that you want the object's pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto: furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
yeah, afaik you can only rotate the rotation axis of your rotation pivot. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/28, at 2:31, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I did it finally. But I mean seriously I have to go through all that to rotate a center This is what we are talking about. Poor poor Maya users. :( On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null’s rotation to the rotation that you want the object’s pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
oh and try to search rotate pivot in the docs. Good Luck trying to find a way to do it! I had to go to the forums and I see complaints about this from Maya users going back to 2006. I really want to curse on here. #$% On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, afaik you can only rotate the rotation axis of your rotation pivot. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/28, at 2:31, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I did it finally. But I mean seriously I have to go through all that to rotate a center This is what we are talking about. Poor poor Maya users. :( On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null's rotation to the rotation that you want the object's pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.commailto: furik...@gmail.com wrote: Maya has a Modeling Toolkit since 2014 and it is quite similar to Softimage Move Tool. And it is IMHO the best addition Maya has had in the last few years from a Modeler POV. I mean it is now pretty close to Softimage (without the -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
It goes back to the late 90s actually. Everyone migrating from TAV didn't really have a sense for this being something they should have. New users we're just without reference. Everyone else who knew better wrote MEL scripts to compensate for the shortcomings. The weird thing is that the term rotate pivot to us is an action. To Maya users it is a thing, a noun if you will. A separate pivot. To make matters even weirder, it appears you can alter the rotation of the translation manipulator and scale manipulator through the pivot tool, but it only affects the way that translation and scale works through their pivots, not the rotate pivot itself. For example, select an object, select translate manipulator, hit the insert key, look for the cyan keyhole icon on the screen. Clicking on this will allow you to rotate the translate pivot, but not the rotate pivot. Same with scale. This action looks to be affecting only the manipulator, as all new objects get the same adjusted manipulator orientation. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 2:34 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 oh and try to search rotate pivot in the docs. Good Luck trying to find a way to do it! I had to go to the forums and I see complaints about this from Maya users going back to 2006. I really want to curse on here. #$% On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.commailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, afaik you can only rotate the rotation axis of your rotation pivot. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/28, at 2:31, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.commailto:youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I did it finally. But I mean seriously I have to go through all that to rotate a center This is what we are talking about. Poor poor Maya users. :( On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.govmailto:j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null's rotation to the rotation that you want the object's pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of John Richard Sanchez Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM To: XSI List to post Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.commailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.commailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.commailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Hi John: I wrote a really quick hack to handle this previously, using a temporary constraint and then adjusting the rotateAxis attribute to handle the offset to bring it back into position: http://pastebin.com/QbEkGcJJ Using it, you can match the pivot from the 2nd selected object to the 1st. Hope it helps! Yours sincerely, Siew Yi Liang On 3/27/2014 11:33 AM, John Richard Sanchez wrote: oh and try to search rotate pivot in the docs. Good Luck trying to find a way to do it! I had to go to the forums and I see complaints about this from Maya users going back to 2006. I really want to curse on here. #$% On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:34 PM, Martin furik...@gmail.com mailto:furik...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, afaik you can only rotate the rotation axis of your rotation pivot. Martin Sent from my iPhone On 2014/03/28, at 2:31, John Richard Sanchez youngupstar...@gmail.com mailto:youngupstar...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I did it finally. But I mean seriously I have to go through all that to rotate a center This is what we are talking about. Poor poor Maya users. :( On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 1:16 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov mailto:j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: Create an empty group(null). Make sure it is still selected. Set the null's rotation to the rotation that you want the object's pivot to be. Make the object as a child to the null. Middle click drag and drop the object on the null in the outliner is the easiest way. Open the new hierarchy and select only the object under the null, and not the null. Execute Modify-Freeze Transformations( make sure at least the Freeze Rotate is selected in the option box) Execute Edit-Unparent The object will now have the pivot orientation you want. It may also have some transformGeometry history as well if you had construction history turned on. Edit-Delete by Type-History if you want to get rid of it. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *John Richard Sanchez *Sent:* Thursday, March 27, 2014 12:38 PM *To:* XSI List to post *Subject:* Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 So I got my first Maya job in years and here I am trying to figure out how to rotate a Pivot ( center in xsi). No you cant rotate a center in Maya you can just move it. WTF On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Peter Agg peter@googlemail.com mailto:peter@googlemail.com wrote: Oh, and another one for my list: Maya's propensity for removing my selection is also fairly annoying - simple things like toggling visibility become a bit of a pain (of course the lack of a visibility toggle doesn't help in the first place). On 27 March 2014 11:07, Brent McPherson brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com mailto:brent.mcpher...@autodesk.com wrote: True, that has always been a problem with US-centric keyboard layouts and it always makes sense to do some basic personal customization for international keyboards... P.S. Apple keyboards in the UK have *spiral-galaxy* key where back-tick normally is!? I think I'll start calling it the Hawking key for lack of a better name. ;-) http://markinns.com/articles/full/apple_keyboards -- Brent From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Martin Yara Sent: 27 March 2014 10:32 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Oops I pressed send too soon. I meant it is now pretty close to Softimage but without the non destructive workflow (edit topology without breaking your weights) which is a huge difference but still modeling is better than a few years ago. Thanks Brent for those tips ! I don't think the backtick is usable in a japanese keyboard though. I can't find the japanese equivalent. Martin On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 6:52 PM
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Can someone elaborate the middle click for repeat action? Is that default? I've always had to press period. I agree with everyone else's opinions. Out of all if them though I think Maya's fcurves are the most annoying. Also being able to paint objects in the viewport as different render methods. So mix wireframe/ solid / texture that's handy.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Oh god, only 5? Well, off the top of my head. Hypershade vs. Rendertree w/Compounds. This one is a no brainer, they Hypershade is the same limited interface from early Maya releases. While Soft’s Rendertree has input ports listed on each node, that are collapsible if you don’t want to see them, Maya tucks all that into a very inconvenient/convoluted connection editor pop-up that doesn’t even show data types for outputs and inputs. Completely missing compounds, etc. etc., the Hypershade is dated and simply bad. Little things, like pulling down a menu, and shift clicking display flags without having to constantly dive back into the menu or tear it off. Little things, like one hotkey for parenting that depending on which mouse button you use, determines whether you set your selection as a child or the parent. Sticky keys. (aka like in photoshop when you alt-click to sample a color while painting, once you let go of alt, your are back to the paint brush without having to press ‘b’ again. Sensible, brilliantly thought out defaults for hotkeys and menu/interface. I’d add to this to get rid of the stupid messy shelf system and spacebar menu altogether (or at least make sure the interface is great with the shelves hidden). The big problem with Maya and Max is always that each seat is customized. I can’t work fluently off a default Maya install and if I sit at your desk your customizations aren’t going to be the same as mine, I always have to start by loading extra tools, making custom shelves, setting custom hotkeys, etc. etc.. I don’t even want to have to load a custom user file. With softimage, I can sit at any machine, make sure it’s set to the system defaults which it usually is, and every tool is where it should be with great hotkeys. These ones are important to me but there are so many more. It’s a shame that Autodesk, sometime over he last 6+ years, didn’t tackle Humanize Maya first before EOL’ing Softimage, if they are serious about this now however, they have a lot of hard work ahead of themselves. I’m hopeful but sadly not confident, though I do know they have good devs over at AD, hopefully they will get the go ahead to work their magic, if so they might just pull this and more off.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Sorry Eugene who are you quoting? I haven't seen that email. They are two different functions The period key is Repeat. Repeat the last command. Just like Maya The middle click is to repeat the last command executed under that menu or button. Ex, create a cube by going to Primitive, PolyMesh, Cube. Now middle click Primitive to create a Cube again and again and again. That last command you executed under the Primitive button will be remembered forever in that session. The same with all SI button-menus. While I like this MMB repeat function, but I don't see how it could be implemented in Maya without having to heavily change its interface. Martin On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Eugene Flormata eug...@flormata.comwrote: Can someone elaborate the middle click for repeat action? Is that default? I've always had to press period. I agree with everyone else's opinions. Out of all if them though I think Maya's fcurves are the most annoying. Also being able to paint objects in the viewport as different render methods. So mix wireframe/ solid / texture that's handy.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
I don't see a problem having each seat customized and I think the easy customization (Ctrl+Shift+click to add a button) of the Maya Shelf has always been a nice thing. I've always heavily customized my Softimage to move my hand as little as possible to avoid time loss and wrist pain, even customizing it depending on the project sometimes. SI keyboard hotkeys aren't perfect, in fact, I dislike them, but SI|3D were even worst. The problem with Maya is that it doesn't have multiple Keyboard Maps that you can switch to in a second. It doesn't have a Workgroup that can install in an instant the same plugins and share them in your lan. In SI i can go to my colleague PC, load my keymap, load my Workgroup (or shared wg) and work almost like if I were in my PC. The workflow in Maya is with Hotbox and marking menus. If you can get used to them it will speed up your workflow. If you can't you'll struggle with its clumsy hotkeys unless you customize them. On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 8:16 PM, sku...@gmail.com wrote: The big problem with Maya and Max is always that each seat is customized. I can't work fluently off a default Maya install and if I sit at your desk your customizations aren't going to be the same as mine, I always have to start by loading extra tools, making custom shelves, setting custom hotkeys, etc. etc.. I don't even want to have to load a custom user file. With softimage, I can sit at any machine, make sure it's set to the system defaults which it usually is, and every tool is where it should be with great hotkeys. These ones are important to me but there are so many more. It's a shame that Autodesk, sometime over he last 6+ years, didn't tackle Humanize Maya first before EOL'ing Softimage, if they are serious about this now however, they have a lot of hard work ahead of themselves. I'm hopeful but sadly not confident, though I do know they have good devs over at AD, hopefully they will get the go ahead to work their magic, if so they might just pull this and more off.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Martin, I’ve been using Maya since version 1. I mean, thanks for your input, but this is a thread about suggesting your Soft top 5 to the Maya devs for their humanize Maya project. Why don’t you stick to tell the Devs what you want and not respond to my personal wishlist with a post trying to convince me that I don’t want what I want because I find it insulting. Ok?
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Wow ! we need to chill out a little. I don't know what part of my email was insulting but I apologize. I though this was an email discussion list where people exchange ideas and that's what I was trying to do, but anyway cheers Martin On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:29 PM, sku...@gmail.com wrote: Martin, I've been using Maya since version 1. I mean, thanks for your input, but this is a thread about suggesting your Soft top 5 to the Maya devs for their humanize Maya project. Why don't you stick to tell the Devs what you want and not respond to my personal wishlist with a post trying to convince me that I don't want what I want because I find it insulting. Ok?
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Ok sure, but in that case please don’t try to convince me that I just lack knowledge about the context insensitive Maya hotbox spacebar menu. When I alt Right click an object in Softimage I get context sensitive utilities that work on that object and change depending what component is selected, not a giant messy list that is just a debate-ably faster way to get to the top menu bar and it’s many sub-menus. When I jump on to Photoshop, or Softimage, and it isn’t my seat, they just work as is. Not true for Maya. I think that's clear enough, and I think they should work to fix that, but hey, what do I know. Anyways, since we were asked and there is some understanding that the devs are listening to this list, that's my truncated suggestion list to the Maya devs, and best of luck to them all, I’m sure they are buried in various wish-lists and their own internal roadmaps, gl.
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
I just noticed another one, again it’s the little things. When splitting edges on a poly mesh, in wireframe mode. In Softimage, I can split edges that are not in direct view of the camera, in Maya, even though were in wireframe mode and can see through the object, I have to tumble around the object and make sure the edge is in view, as if we were working in shaded mode. The list of little things like this, is insanely comprehensive. But it’s the little things.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
The shelf is more than just a quick shortcut to existing menu commands resident on the filebar. While the idea that shelves are to there to play around is intriguing, in 16 years I've never had that impression about shelves. Shelves are an integral part of the Maya workflow, unless you work strictly from the hotbox. With the hotbox you can remove everything but a single viewport and still have access to almost every command. This is useful when modeling but I never found it comfortable for anything else. If you don't use the hotbox much or at all, it's going to be difficult to avoid shelves if you want to improve your workflow in Maya. Maya, like most 3D apps is multi-modular, meaning that in Maya the filebar and the menu commands it presents changes context with each Module you are working in such as Polygons, Surfaces, Animation, etc. Soft does the same thing except in Soft the filebar does not change. Rather in Soft, the Main Toolbar changes with modular context instead. Since Softimage's filebar never changes and provides access to all commands all the time, it provides the same level of access as the hotbox, plus additional functionality such as construction modes, passes, and search abilities. Why might you find shelves important to your workflow in Maya? In general, while in Maya, and in a particular module, say Polygons, the Maya filebar will not present all menu commands available to you. This becomes critical to understand when you are modeling polygons with deformers since deformers are located in the Animation Module. Therefor you can't access deformers while modeling in the Polygons module unless you A. Use the Deformation Shelf in the Polygon Module, or B. Use the Polygons Shelf in the Animation Module, or C. Use the hotbox. Your workflow then consists of mixing shelves and general filebar menu commands and potentially hotbox commands if you are willing to put up with the hotbox. Other examples of combination practices will include polygons and materials, surfaces and materials, polygons and subdivisions, and animation and dynamics. If you are like me and refuse to use the hotbox anymore, because it has grown to a ridiculously overbearing capacity of things over the last 16 years, shelves are an imperative. You really can't avoid shelf use unless you choose to constantly switch modes which in Maya is far less comfortable than using shelves and the filebar menus simultaneously. You can use shelves to make custom tool groups and store custom commands or scripts for immediate callback. You add commands to shelves by executing a filebar command via CTR+SHFT+Command and the icon will be added to the currently selected shelf. As for having to decipher shelf icons not being an issue, I completely disagree with this assertion. Some icons such as chamfer vertex or gravity or nonlinear bend are easy to decipher. Others such as Attach Surfaces looks like Measure Surfaces and can be really difficult to decipher if you've not been using them over and over for a couple years. As you will quickly find that shelves are an integral part of the Maya workflow, and can't easily be ignored, the need to decipher icons will not go away. They idea that shelves can just simply be ignored, especially for someone trying to learn Maya and develop productive long term practices on this software, is debatable. And while you can turn the shelves off and ignore them, you may ultimately find this to be a far more uncomfortable practice than committing to the long term effort and continual practice of learning and relearning the shelf icons. After more than a decade of using Maya, I found Soft's interface to be far easier to use and while Soft offered shelves, I never had a need or desire to use them there because all Module commands were directly accessible from the Softimage filebar. I can't say the same about Maya and the hotbox is not a comfortable option. This is definitely something on the long list that needs to be addressed in Maya. -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage- boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 4:06 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5 You can turn on the labels for the Maya shelf in the shelf editor (in its Option menu) but the point is, the shelf, or toolbar in general, are quick shortcuts to things that are the menu, so having to decipher them is not an issue. The shelf is fun and made to play around. You can tear off a menu to get a quick toolbar for one-click access to menu commands. The only maya thing doesn't do correctly in that area is it's not showing you
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
In regards to Maya, default out of the box, and to my knowledge: The hotbox and its contents are never context sensitive. The Hotbox is activated by holding the space bar down. It presents most commands typically available in the filebar menus of all modules of the application. There is no sense of identity for the HOTBOX-rightMB-click. It performs exactly the same function as left or middle mouse button click while hotbox is active. So there is effectively no right-click menu from the hotbox. Yet another example of wasted opportunity. What is context sensitive in Maya is: The filebar menus: These are located on the top bar of the application and the menus change depending upon what module you are in(Polygons, Surfaces, Animation, Dynamics, etc) Marking menus: This is a form of right click menu available from the viewport that is context sensitive to whatever object you are focused upon. Marking menus appear similar to but should not be confused with the hotbox. Right click menus generally: These are typically activated over windows other than the viewport and are generally contextual to the window or editor for which focus is applied. Softimage’s Main Toolbar, the sidebar on the left side, is context sensitive to whatever module you are in(Model, Animate, Render, ICE, etc). The available array of commands change, not necessarily the context of the buttons themselves. This action is similar to Maya’s filebar(or menubar if that makes more sense). Softimage’s filebar menu is not context sensitive. To my knowledge it never changes. For Softimage’s part, I never understood why it needed to be Alt-Right-Click instead of just Right-Click. -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of sku...@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 10:39 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Correct me if I am dead wrong, but default out of the box Maya’s hotbox, nor it’s main menus are context sensitive (depending on what you have selected, bone, object, vertice, edge, etc.), nor is it’s right click menu. Softimage’s main menus and sidebar menus are not context sensitive either?, only it’s alt right click menu is, the rest is handled by a side-bar with a very well thought layout and default hotkeys that make sense, and it’s hotkeys are context sensitive behaving how you would expect across multiple areas of the application, like ‘f’ for framing an object in viewport is the same as framing in an item in the outliner or a node view. Perhaps NASA has a heavily customized version of Maya? Anyways interesting post, but I’m completely lost, none of that stuff works like you mention it to in my experience, but perhaps my various teachers and studies left something serious out. Best regards and it’s not really important the above, I’m just confused now. Time to go back to learning Houdini, we’ll see in 2 years when Humanize Maya is actually in place. GL to the Maya devs and Autodesk, please don’t forget about Mudbox, of all your applications that's the one you have done the best on so far and I hope you keep that up and bring that sort of love to Maya to make it great. Cheers everyone, this might very well be my last Softimage list post. Bye all, good luck, and thanks for the years worth of searchable Softimage and 3D QA’s. It was amazing while it lasted.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Correct. Another way to look at it is that the list of available menus are contextual in relation to the active module. Best. -- Joey Ponthieux LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES) Mymic Technical Services NASA Langley Research Center __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of sku...@gmail.com Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 12:36 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 Ok now I get what your saying. Your just talking about the drop-down menu that in Maya changes what menus are available in the top menu bar and in Soft, changes what menus are available in the side menu bar. Neither is context sensitive based on what you have selected, it’s just providing a different set of menus depending on what mode you chose. In softimage, if you alt+right click an object, you get a different menu depending on the object/component type, so one menu for what makes sense for faces, and other for edges and another for points, etc.. I only use that sparingly, normally for getting to things like ‘bevel’ quite quickly after I have my selection ready. For most other things, like welding and splitting edges, there are way more interactive options that Soft provides by default. Cheers, thanks for explaining that, I was very confused Joseph, my bad.
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 7:40 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: While I like this MMB repeat function, but I don't see how it could be implemented in Maya without having to heavily change its interface. I think technically MMB could possibly be implemented in Maya's menu (although perhaps not on OSX), but I'm not 50% sure that this is a true problem. In Sofitmage, we structured some menus knowing that you would be doing MMB on those big buttons to repeat commands burried in there two levels deep. (More so in Softimage 3D, for example to set keys, but anyway) But in Maya, you'll be interacting with the software differently, including using marking menus, hotkeys, and hotbox. In the XSI viewport, you can MMB to toggle between the two last modes, for example wireframe and textured, but that's not a 'repeat last command', it's a special case for that button. I'm not opposing MMB, but I'm not totally sold on whether this is essential and not simply a legacy user / muscle memory thing. Don't forget also tear off menus as a way to repeat commands quickly. we did add to Maya the ability to keep a menu open to do check several checkmarks like in XSI; in Maya in on the CTRL key
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:44 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] j.ponthi...@nasa.gov wrote: If you don't use the hotbox much or at all, it's going to be difficult to avoid shelves if you want to improve your workflow in Maya. Maya, like most 3D apps is multi-modular, meaning that in Maya the filebar and the menu commands it presents changes context with each Module you are working in such as Polygons, Surfaces, Animation, etc. Soft does the same thing except in Soft the filebar does not change. Rather in Soft, the Main Toolbar changes with modular context instead. Since Softimage's filebar never changes and provides access to all commands all the time, it provides the same level of access as the hotbox, plus additional functionality such as construction modes, passes, and search abilities. Why might you find shelves important to your workflow in Maya? In general, while in Maya, and in a particular module, say Polygons, the Maya filebar will not present all menu commands available to you. This becomes critical to understand when you are modeling polygons with deformers since deformers are located in the Animation Module. Therefor you can't access deformers while modeling in the Polygons module unless you A. Use the Deformation Shelf in the Polygon Module, or B. Use the Polygons Shelf in the Animation Module, or C. Use the hotbox. Your workflow then consists of mixing shelves and general filebar menu commands and potentially hotbox commands if you are willing to put up with the hotbox. Other examples of combination practices will include polygons and materials, surfaces and materials, polygons and subdivisions, and animation and dynamics. It's rather new that you have access to all the module menus in XSI at the same time; I added this I think XSI 5.1 or 6.0. In Maya, don't forget tear off menu. You can easily tear off the deformer menu from Animation, and change to the modeling menu set, and therefore get both, The default shelf is indeed there to play around and explore the program, for new/casual users. It doesn't have everything in there.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn off and merged into a toolbar, then that would be ideal. Implementing MMB to repeat a command in a menu would be a popular move. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 11:51 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 7:40 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: While I like this MMB repeat function, but I don't see how it could be implemented in Maya without having to heavily change its interface. I think technically MMB could possibly be implemented in Maya's menu (although perhaps not on OSX), but I'm not 50% sure that this is a true problem. In Sofitmage, we structured some menus knowing that you would be doing MMB on those big buttons to repeat commands burried in there two levels deep. (More so in Softimage 3D, for example to set keys, but anyway) But in Maya, you'll be interacting with the software differently, including using marking menus, hotkeys, and hotbox. In the XSI viewport, you can MMB to toggle between the two last modes, for example wireframe and textured, but that's not a 'repeat last command', it's a special case for that button. I'm not opposing MMB, but I'm not totally sold on whether this is essential and not simply a legacy user / muscle memory thing. Don't forget also tear off menus as a way to repeat commands quickly. we did add to Maya the ability to keep a menu open to do check several checkmarks like in XSI; in Maya in on the CTRL key
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Here at Carbine, users like the MMB to repeat a menu command. It's popular. They're not as fond of tear off menus. They don't hate tear off menus, but given the choice they'll use a custom key as 1st option, custom toolbar as 2nd option, and tear off menu as last option. The issue being that tear off menus don't allow for customized menus. You only get the existing menu structure in a different place. What users want is clutter free and minimal effort to execute commands or a series of commands. Tear off menus are good for situations where the entire menu is a custom menu of commands like a custom toolbar would be, and the commands in that menu are very closely related to the task at hand. If the menu is full of built-in commands, they're less liked because usually the user only cares about one or two tools in the menu but is stuck having to take all of them as part of the package deal resulting in clutter. For example, go to the property menu and you have entries for visibility, display, etc..., but also a lot of unrelated tools such as rendermap or gator. It's a very tall menu but the user only wants 3 or 4 items out of 30. If tear off menus allowed individual items to be torn off and merged into a toolbar, then that would be ideal. Implementing MMB to repeat a command in a menu would be a popular move. that's OK, but that's in Softimage. The bit that's not obvious is whether someone using Maya needs a MMB, that's what my post is meant to be about. In Maya, you can even hold shift+ctrl while selecting a menu to make it a button the shelf. (Doing the same thing in Softimage would be a pain) You'll be working differently, have different reflexes.
RE: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
I'd argue that having 100 g keys in Maya would be far better than 1. It's a real pain to have to re-initialize a tool just to get it to repeat because you did something else that erased the g memory. There is wasted time and effort there. There is the temporal factor as well. In Maya g is only useful if you use it immediately after the command you want to repeat. I make a sphere, then duplicate with transform at 10 units. I hit g eight times I'll get ten sphere total ten units apart. In Soft, if I don't use the primitive button all day long I can middle click repeat the sphere creation command eight hours later, regardless what else I do. That's just not possible in Maya. The significance of this one seemingly mundane command really can't be ignored. It's far more than just a repeat tool. -- Joey Ponthieux __ Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party. -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage- boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 2:51 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5 On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 7:40 AM, Martin Yara furik...@gmail.com wrote: While I like this MMB repeat function, but I don't see how it could be implemented in Maya without having to heavily change its interface. I think technically MMB could possibly be implemented in Maya's menu (although perhaps not on OSX), but I'm not 50% sure that this is a true problem. In Sofitmage, we structured some menus knowing that you would be doing MMB on those big buttons to repeat commands burried in there two levels deep. (More so in Softimage 3D, for example to set keys, but anyway) But in Maya, you'll be interacting with the software differently, including using marking menus, hotkeys, and hotbox. In the XSI viewport, you can MMB to toggle between the two last modes, for example wireframe and textured, but that's not a 'repeat last command', it's a special case for that button. I'm not opposing MMB, but I'm not totally sold on whether this is essential and not simply a legacy user / muscle memory thing. Don't forget also tear off menus as a way to repeat commands quickly. we did add to Maya the ability to keep a menu open to do check several checkmarks like in XSI; in Maya in on the CTRL key
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
I will repeat, the middle mouse button option should be in every app not just maya. It makes sense in ANY app with drop down menu systems in place. Please don't disregard this request. *Greg Punchatz* *Sr. Creative Director* Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com http://www.janimation.com
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
Hello Alastair Just to say, I checked-out your page, and every single peice is just truly inspiring. http://www.glassworks.co.uk/node/549 I burst into laughter at the very first singing cat/bird clip, and then yet again just as hard at the very next (mutant) cat/bird clip lol! :) To share a little story, while at softimage, then doing demo material on the almost toy-like SI3D, (using Metamesh Extreme under polymesh cages with the "UV editor" doing "interactive smoothing" :) My (or "our") first experience with Maya, was just then (*years* ago on SGI's), when we were comparing ways of doing things, sort-of assessing what we were up against with our own coming thing. (while while striving to surpass -through innovation-) So the first impression that came to mind was, man... talk about "long lists of parameters".. it was pretty daunting to wrap our head around it, it was hard to select, move things (like components) around, shading stuff with the hypershade, with relationships of nodes to other nodes felt like being guesswork, having then only just recently experienced the render tree which was then only a prototype and also being new to us, (perhaps the programmable openness of maya escaped me, mostly having an "artist" background) But already we saw that we were like in a different universe on how to approach things and also that we were definitely on to something. After an "iffy" launch of XSI 1.0, while introducing things like passes, and non-linear or otherwise streamlined workflows, there was only nurbs-stitching to get smooth uniform surfaces.. the constant crashing was enough to give headaches. Yet already with the 1.5 did people see what it was all about.. With the advent of Sub-d's (very fast performance subd's, with direct on surface points allowing for speed organic modeling), is when XSI actually really picked-up as not only usable, but really like an overall "easy" solution to everyday otherwise tricky ways to getting things done quick. And since that time has there been some sort of a struggle between impression of potential, and perhaps a more down to earth everyday people approach to achieving higher level stuff, all the way leading to "Moondust". So earlyer this week, I opened-up Maya Demo (after years) to practice for an upcoming particle FX job, and it was like more or less XSI 4.0-6.0 particle functionality, but with (pages of) parameters all "listed", yet again after ~15 years. The hypershade is still there and basically the same (with a node editor on top while having to manage both) Clicking viewports to activate them, deselects whatever you had selected.. I could go on with TONS of little things off the bat, and I constantly find other comparative "things" by the hour. (after some research on each point to see if I'm just missing something, and perhaps I still am but..) The thing is, anyone submerged in knowing only Maya (being most people working on it i suspect) could just never grasp how many subtleties were thought about when designing SI's workflow. (and therefore what it represents to it's users) Alastair, one of your clips is the Bjork android video, and I clearly remember when that came-out, being around when XSI also came-out, and I was really "aww-ed" :) And then on the words "you'll be given love..", said when giving life to a robot, I recall thinking how that really applied to what we were doing.. cause not unlike a good song, anything well thought-out in every subtlety, or "made with 'love' " can indeed qualify as having "soul" that you can "feel". And "soul" is something you couldn't buy with billions of dollars. As it has to be real for it to be, otherwise it's just not. And I think that's what made DS so "intimidating" to Avid, and XSI so "intimidating" to Autodesk, especially with the advent of ICE. So how about "Soul" as bullet-point feature request ;) And I think I will end on that, Cheers, J On 03/25/14 13:52, Alastair Hearsum wrote: Jean louis You beat me to it. I was just about to say that. Alastair Alastair Hearsum Head of 3d On 25/03/2014 17:49, Jean-Louis Billard wrote: Hi Shuting, That’s not the same thing at all I’m afraid. In Softimage *every* menu has it’s own memory of the last command accessed. So you can middle click any menu and repeat its last command (as long as there has been one used within the session) Regards, Jean-Louis Jean-Louis Billard Digital Golem BE: +32 (0) 484 263 563 UK: +44 (0) 7973 660 119 jean-lo...@digitalgolem.com http://www.digitalgolem.com/ 53 Rue Gustave Huberti 1030 Brussels
Re: humanize Maya, SOFT top 5
+10 Greg should be in every single drop down menu of every app. Are we safe AD is not going to claim patents ? Probably not, AD had no clue until very recently it had this in its catalogue :| On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 10:39 PM, Greg Punchatz g...@janimation.com wrote: I will repeat, the middle mouse button option should be in every app not just maya. It makes sense in ANY app with drop down menu systems in place. Please don't disregard this request. -- *Greg Punchatz* *Sr. Creative Director* Janimation 214.823.7760 www.janimation.com
Re: humanize maya, SOFT top 5
my 2c 1. Toggle Show/Hide and keep selected. I like pressing 'h' a lot to toggle visibility of an object. Having to press Shift-H and Ctl-H after finding the object has always been counter-intuitive to me. 2. Copy Skin Weights. Transferring weights from one object to another requires too many steps. In maya, both objects must have the same input joints before the transfer command can be used. This can be challenging on a complex creature with a large number of joints. Could be made easier if there was a pulldown menu for the command to select all inputs of a skinCluster (i.e. skinCluster -q -weightedInfluence $theSkinCluster;) Would be even easier if Copy Skin Weights, found all the inputs to the skinCluster, bindSkinned the target object to them, then transferred the weights. 3. Joint weight colors. Use color to differentiate joint weighting assignment and not for intensity. 4. Smooth brush. Painting weights in Maya is overly complex and unpredictable. Copying Softs smooth brush would go a long way to fixing this. I still paint weights in Soft and transfer the weighting to Maya. Andy wrote a python script to export the weights inside of soft to a mel script. 5. Saving weights. In Soft, I can save weighting on an object almost instantaneously as a simple spreadsheet with transforms, vertices and weights. I can also load it instantly from a file. 6. Damn, I only get 5. I know the requests are coming through fast and furious and people may not get to read them all but if anyone has better solutions to the problems posed above, I'm open to a different workflow. 7. Trax - make it name-based and not index-based. (Sorry slipped) Regards, On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 9:40 PM, Jason S jasonsta...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Alastair Just to say, I checked-out your page, and every single peice is just truly inspiring. http://www.glassworks.co.uk/node/549http://www.glassworks.co.uk/video/love I burst into laughter at the very first singing cat/bird clip, and then yet again just as hard at the very next (mutant) cat/bird clip lol! :) To share a little story, while at softimage, then doing demo material on the almost toy-like SI3D, (using Metamesh Extreme under polymesh cages with the UV editor doing interactive smoothing :) My (or our) first experience with Maya, was just then (*years* ago on SGI's), when we were comparing ways of doing things, sort-of assessing what we were up against with our own coming thing. (while while striving to surpass -through innovation-) So the first impression that came to mind was, man... talk about long lists of parameters.. it was pretty daunting to wrap our head around it, it was hard to select, move things (like components) around, shading stuff with the hypershade, with relationships of nodes to other nodes felt like being guesswork, having then only just recently experienced the render tree which was then only a prototype and also being new to us, (perhaps the programmable openness of maya escaped me, mostly having an artist background) But already we saw that we were like in a different universe on how to approach things and also that we were definitely on to something. After an iffy launch of XSI 1.0, while introducing things like passes, and non-linear or otherwise streamlined workflows, there was only nurbs-stitching to get smooth uniform surfaces.. the constant crashing was enough to give headaches. Yet already with the 1.5 did people see what it was all about.. With the advent of Sub-d's (very fast performance subd's, with direct on surface points allowing for speed organic modeling), is when XSI actually really picked-up as not only usable, but really like an overall easy solution to everyday otherwise tricky ways to getting things done quick. And since that time has there been some sort of a struggle between impression of potential, and perhaps a more down to earth everyday people approach to achieving higher level stuff, all the way leading to Moondust. So earlyer this week, I opened-up Maya Demo (after years) to practice for an upcoming particle FX job, and it was like more or less XSI 4.0-6.0 particle functionality, but with (pages of) parameters all listed, yet again after ~15 years. The hypershade is still there and basically the same (with a node editor on top while having to manage both) Clicking viewports to activate them, deselects whatever you had selected.. I could go on with TONS of little things off the bat, and I constantly find other comparative things by the hour. (after some research on each point to see if I'm just missing something, and perhaps I still am but..) The thing is, anyone submerged in knowing only Maya (being most people working on it i suspect) could just never grasp how many subtleties were thought about when designing SI's workflow. (and therefore what it represents to it's users) Alastair, one of your clips is the Bjork android video, and I clearly
