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: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 10:39 AM
To: [email protected]
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 Q&A’s. It was amazing while it lasted.
