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On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 6:32 PM, Raffaele Fragapane < [email protected]> wrote: > Sorry Luce-Eric, I have to disagree with this, and I find your examples > defeat your own argument. > I have had years to develop muscle memory in Maya, and I'm comfortable > nearly anywhere in the software, at least everywhere I might need to be, > and it's still very frequently an uphill struggle. > > Maya is hugely inconsistent, especially in the views you mention, compared > to Softimage. > You can get to decent operational speed in Maya, but a double digit number > of years in I still have to write a script for something at least once a > week... when it can be written at all. > > The main problem is twofold. The first part is that Maya absolutely > requires you become a power user with an intimate understanding of the > choices and modes of operation to be fluid when working. There is no hints > to shortcuts, the shortcut editor is a mess, A LOT of absolutely key day > one stuff is simply not available in the interface (if you don't watch a > tutorial you will never find you need insert and x,c,v on a constant > basis), and in general it actively discourages exploration by being > punishing of any single mistake. > Comparatively speaking Soft is a lot more in your face and immediate. Even > if you don't know the software you can usually bumble your way around into > finding what you need and first develop knowledge of what's available, and > then developing muscle memory through simple repetition. > > The second part is developing muscle memory itself. > You're a UI guy, I'm sure you've read your literature on user experience, > learning patterns, conditioning and so on. > XSI will generally confront you with about four or five key interaction > models, and it hardly ever excepts them. Everything is a sticky key, every > menu unfolds and works the same way, every panel toggles and offers options > the same way and has functionality aggregated nearby that is generally > understandable and correlated by similar rules. > Conversely, Maya requires constant exceptions to learning. > Altering interaction, which should all be part of the same learning group, > is inconsistent. Some modifiers are sticky. Snapping is semi-sticky, as in > it sticks only if you enter snapping before you draw/drag, whereas some > things are completely non sticky, such as moving a pivot. > Menus are generally click through, unless you access them from the hotbox, > in which case they are, uselessly, hold-to-traverse. > > I could write you a long list, but my point is that while I do find people > being excessively contrary and biased, but can't blame them for it given > the situation, lets not pretend Maya's user experience is comparable but > different: it simply isn't, and there's work to do. Hopefully H-Maya will > go part or all the way to address it, but there are some very, very > fundamental issues that worked their way backwards into the actual > functional guts of Maya coming from its extremely poor, inconsistent, > frustratingly fragmented and arbitrary interaction model. > > The GUI itself is probably not even worth discussing in depth. I mean, no > arbitrary viewport arrangement after 16 years? F'in Seriously? And if you > want me to use the stupid buttons on the left you're not even providing one > with the left view vertical and a horizontal split on the right? Only the > opposite. Come on, Luc, get on it and fix that shit already :p You did > infinitely better work than this on XSI, bring it to Maya if you want > people to use and don't be dismissive of people's opinions by saying you > can only compare power-user experiences (beside the fact a Soft Power User > will run circles around a Maya one in nearly any task when it comes to > interaction). > > > > On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 1:45 AM, Luc-Eric Rousseau <[email protected]>wrote: > >> None of these products are for newbies; we spent years learning >> Softimage. Sounds like you wanted to edit a history node, doing a >> procedural modification. You'd open the node editor or try the input >> section of the channel box. This is a first days stuff. We would probably >> not have had a render tree in XSI if we had focused on simplicity over >> power. And certainly not Ice. God you have to guess node name and search >> for them, are you kidding me. Even with classic simulation it's not always >> obvious to know what to select and when to call menu. There is all sort of >> stuff we just learn - the measure of usability is how well you can do more >> complex stuff once you know the basics >> >> -- www.johnrichardsanchez.com
