While I think some folks would be satisfied with this I’m not sure it can fix the larger problem. Some people will struggle with a pick session in massively huge scenes. These selection orders, parenting, constraining, attaching to path, etc, should all have a setting allowing user preference for source->target direction.
This needs to be seriously thought through and applied as a method analogous to a human understanding of natural orders of action precedence within everyday life. When we hang something onto something else, throw a basketball in a hoop, even something as massive as place a train on a rail, most often we select the article first and then articulate it toward the object it will be constrained by. Not the other way around. We don’t select the basketball hoop first and move it to the ball. We don’t select the rail and place it under the train. We don’t take the closet rod and move it under the hanger’s hook. These are illogical and unintuitive procedures. If we are picking up fruit or nuts, we pick the article up off the ground or pull it from the tree before we put it in the bag that will become it’s parent. If we throw a baseball to a catcher, we have to pick up the ball first, or someone throws it to us, regardless we have to take possession of the baseball before we can do anything with it. It’s unintuitive/illogical to think that we should take possession of the basketball hoop before putting the basketball in it. This is how we as humans think. I specifically used the fruit/nuts gathering example to point out that we have been behaving in this way for millennia. 3D software should replicate this behavior wherever possible. We intuitively want to select the object then attach it to the path. Select the child then the parent. Select the object, then the thing it is constrained to. The object selected first and the path selected last. We pick up the arrow, put it in the bow, pull the bow string, find the target, aim, then we let it go so that it can hit the target. This is a normal human understanding of directionality of source and target and it repeats itself over and over in our actions. This concept of source and target is seriously ingrained in our being and thought. Creating software paradigms that operate contrary and contradictory to these established human actions only serves to slow down the process and utilization of the software because most people have to destabilize, rethink, and learn contradictory behaviors to what is instinctively understood as intuitive, if not normal. This needs to be fixed. Permanently. -- 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 Mario Reitbauer Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 12:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem Well easy solution for this one at least ;) For the old maya folk keep everything like it is. For everyone who don't want to get brain fucked do it like this: If nothing is selected and you call the parent constraint as example a pick session starts with a tooltip what to select. Problem solved. Old maya guys are happy, and new maya users don't need to brain fart. 2015-02-19 18:09 GMT+01:00 Mirko Jankovic <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: a big error in poster. it is at end of life but not at end of USEFUL life :) and while ppl spills tears and going bold with tearing up their hair working in maya.. some of lucky ones are swimming in beautiful waters of SI... shark here and thre is nothing compared to piranha and other monster infested waters of maya. no thank you! :) On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Eric Turman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: http://i.imgur.com/eOh7l6i.jpg [http://i.imgur.com/eOh7l6i.jpg] On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 10:37 AM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES] <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Maya selection order has always been like this, all over the app. But it’s even more confusing than you may already be aware. What if I select a sphere, then a curve second, and attach to motion path so the sphere constrains to the curve. But, if I select a sphere, then a curve second, and constrain point the curve constrains to the sphere? What the…! Why isn’t the context the same? Why isn’t the directionality the same? Why do I have to spend time thinking about this before I do each procedure? Is it source -> target, is it target -> source, or is target-> …..? Huh….what’d you say?…. What?! I can do what! Oh geez!.... no……, You’re telling me that the attach to motion path has no context? You can select either one first and it doesn’t care? I’ve been deceived into thinking directional context mattered for over a decade because it makes more sense to select the object first and the path second? You know, source -> target, start -> end, throw -> catch, 1->2? But the context for constrain is rigid you say? The context for attach to motion path isn’t rigid? Really? And constraints work by the throw doing the catching? 2 is first and 1 is second? Source receives and target sends? These contradicting behaviors have been there for so long I doubt anyone can tell you why they are this way. Add to that the fact that Maya is largely used in teams that are task centric, I’d argue its possible that a lot of people who use Maya have hardly noticed what the generalist who is using every part of the app will notice. For the record I complained to AW mightily, about many of these inconsistencies you are observing, back in the late 90s. I always got the sense they were so deeply invested in the meat and bones of the algorithm or giving the core interior of the application more functionality that they just did not have interface issues on their radar. The Humanize Maya folks have a significant amount of work ahead of them…. -- 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]> [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of Mario Reitbauer Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 8:23 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem Cause we are bitching about maya. Could a maya dev explain me why I have to select child and then parent if I want to parent something but I have to select parent and then child if I want to use a parent constraint. Makes my brain saaaaaaaad. 2015-02-19 14:10 GMT+01:00 Gerbrand Nel <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: Hahahah bitches, my maya hell is over tomorrow.....untill further notice G On 19/02/2015 13:26, Laurence Dodd wrote: "I can feel my mental health being eroded by having to "use" maya. Selecting things is making me want punch things. Thankfully this isn't permanent and i can go back to normality sometime next week. and breath....." I'm in exactly the same position Andi, two weeks for me, it's like like Christmas is around the corner On 19 February 2015 at 10:24, Andi Farhall <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I can feel my mental health being eroded by having to "use" maya. Selecting things is making me want punch things. Thankfully this isn't permanent and i can go back to normality sometime next week. and breath..... ________________________________ Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 20:50:49 +1100 Subject: Re: Maya thinks they're clever....and that's the problem From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Didn't Autodesk ACTUALLY buy something virology or pharmacology related recently? Vague memories of some scary piece of news. On 19 Feb 2015 12:12, "Bradley Gabe" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Sorry John, you didn't hear. I fixed Ebola a while ago. However, Autodesk bought out the technology and has discontinued it in favor of only supporting their Hanta virus cure. No worries, if you do contract Ebola, you can just use the Hanta treatment. Granted, it doesn't effectively treat Ebola, but a virus is a virus. Sent from my iPhone On Feb 18, 2015, at 2:01 PM, john clausing <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: i feel absolutely comfortable blaming Brad.....not just for the "cool names", but for virtually everything. dangit Brad.....why haven't you fixed Ebola yet sheeesh On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 2:54 PM, Ed Harriss <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: You know all those “cool” names? Well, it’s Brad’s fault. (Isn’t it always?) Long live Outliner Cheese and Directed Acyclic Monkeys! Ed -- Laurence Dodd Porkpie Animation E: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> W: www.porkpie.tv<http://www.porkpie.tv> M: 07570 702 576 T: 01273 278 382 -- -=T=-
