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On 19/03/2014 22:32, Raffaele Fragapane 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] <mailto:[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
