Yes, pretty much everything requires a lot more clicking in Maya. BTW, you can't change topology without messing up your weights, so you'll need to or save your weights by global position with an script like doraSkinWeights, or duplicate your mesh and keep it as a weight container to copy weights to your edited mesh.
I don't think there is a way to edit your mesh and keep the original weights just like they are, like you can in Softimage. You can get only approximations with copy weights or scripts, relying in UVs or global position. After doing all of this, now you need one more edge in your model? well, start again with the whole process. So yes, the workflow is a mess compared to SI and is a lot more time consuming. I disagree with Graham. You can't do GATOR inside Maya. You can get a similar final results with 10x more clicks, but it isn't the same, and you don't have a Gator op alive. The send to Softimage is a good alternative when you can do it (basically envelope, uv and mesh modeling). Sadly, there are a lot of features that can't be translated between them like Maya crease edges or sets, or Softimage hard edges, so you'll have to re-build them. I haven't tried shapes + send to SI. Martin
