Re: Softimage and Alembic?

[Sergio Mucino]

I guess I'll have to be a part of the minority here. I had never worked with XSI before 2 months ago (although curiously, I got started in 3D with Softimage ~ 18 years ago). I jumped into ICE a few days, and it literally took me less than an hour to wrap my head around it. Granted, I'm not using it for super advanced stuff yet, and my experience with XSI is limited to the rigging department, but I found ICE to be one of the most user-friendly node-based environments I've used (along with Modo's schematic workspaces). I was delighted with how easy was to understand what the nodes do. Their names are clear, and their ports have names that actually depict what they do (in contrast to Maya's nodes, which require plain experience to understand what they do... and good luck if you're trying a few nodes by yourself at first!). Maya's nodes could really use a kick in the butt (a hard one) in the usability department, and Softimage should be the model to follow here. As for the rest of the Maya UI goes, I really don't understand what is the problem people have with it. I find it easy to go around once you know where things are (which will happen with ANY application you move into anyway), and I can work at a pretty good pace with it. I guess it's just a matter of familiarity... SI was difficult for me the first week. After that, I was able to start being productive. Anyway, I don't want to make this unnecessarily longer than needed. I just wanted to share my experience with SI in the usability department (and being an ex-software designer, I tend to unconsciously keep an eye on these kind of things). Okay... my only pseudo-nag is the overall plastic-y look of the SI UI (and it's brighter-than-I'd-like, non-customizable gray color scheme). It looks like my blender at home. That's all! *ducks* ;-) On 20/11/2013 7:58 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau wrote: Given the rate of development judging by past releases I'd say it's off by at least another three years, and even only if you guys manage to cram Bifrost into it in a usable way like ICE was crammed into Softimage, and do some major rework of the GUI. ICE in a conversation about usability? It's the most complex thing you need to spend time learning in Softimage, and I think most users have not wrapped their heads around it (? would need some statistics). I'll never be at ease with it myself, you need to need it and invest in it. This isn't the right thread for it, but it's always good in any case to send feedback about what you think makes Softimage more usable. It often boiled down to familiarity as opposed to actual ease of use (which should be measurable on a new user). You will always find your way around and be more productive in the software that you're the most invested in, it becomes second nature to you. You've got the hot keys burned into your muscle, you've got your habits (sometimes workarounds), etc. It depends when you learn it, too. There is an Anthony Rossano book out there about XSI that teaches new users in the first chapter how to make XSI awesome by turning all the preferences back to Softimage|3D emulation modes. F** those sticky keys and manipulators, right? There is a certain age (the 30s?) when we stop learning new things if we don't push ourselves in the butt.. On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 3:22 AM, Stefan Kubicek <s...@tidbit-images.com> wrote: Luc, that sounds like Maya will finally have it's user interface replaced with a usable interface. It's still a pity, I'd much rather see you working on Softimage than on anything else :-/ Five years ago I was arguing with a former colleague that if you'd start to develop Maya in the right directions it would still take at least five years to get it up to the reliability and userfriendliness we have in Softimage, and only if Softs development was stagnant during that period. In hindsight this estimate was overly optimistic. Given the rate of development judging by past releases I'd say it's off by at least another three years, and even only if you guys manage to cram Bifrost into it in a usable way like ICE was crammed into Softimage, and do some major rework of the GUI. In an attempt to think way out of the box I suggest we find a way to sneak someone Softimage-affine into the top ranks at AD$K to make decisions that are right for us instead of shareholders only. Any one around here with pointed elbows and a background in political engineering willing to conspire ? ;-)