Re: Coming back from Maya

["Ponthieux, Joey" <j.ponthieux(at)nasa.gov>]

You asked.....

1. The XSI interaction model, as a whole, is far better for XSI than 
attempting to apply  someone else's interaction model on top of XSI.

2. After just barely 5 years on Soft3D, for nearly 8 years I tried to 
shake ZOP on Maya, I just couldn't do it. The ALT-Key navigation system 
on Maya just didn't cut it. It just wasn't natural. Most importantly 
their system made it very difficult on people with wheel mice, zoom and 
orbit were always a a hairs hit away from being right on cue when you 
pressed the buttons, too many different mouse button combinations for 
something that should be really simple, and they don't make mice the way 
the used to(sans wheel), which is what they designed the nav keys for in 
Maya back in 96 on SGI. Without even considering the 1-2 years overlap 
where I was using Soft3D and Maya simultaneously, six years later I was 
still habitually, and erroneously,  hit ZOP in Maya for navigation. I 
took that as a signal that the ALT key just wasn't as comfortable a fit. 
It wasn't until Maya ended up  on Windows did they correct a major flaw 
with  the  ALT mouse worklfow where they assigned dolly to  ALT-RMB.  
They couldn't do this on SGI, this was bound to a special XWindows 
command within Irix. But by the time I moved to PC about 3 years ago, 
Maya on Win vs XSI on Win.....well ....you be the judge of that.

3. The ALT Nav system on Maya also limited finer control, the mouse 
buttons were taken up with Pan, Dolly, Orbit. Zoom in Maya was embedded 
into the interface for the Camera's Attributes under Focal Length. In 
XSI it is exposed under Z. It was an extra step any time you wanted to 
limit Orbit to X, Y, or Z, slow Dolly vs Fast Dolly, etc. Roll was two 
tiers down under the viewport View command. On XSI, its just one key 
press, L. 

4. For selections Spacebar,T,E,U is a lot more efficient than Q and a 
visual hunt for the right Component icon. You could assign any of these 
to keys which I did, but you shouldn't have to do this.

5. For transforms, there is Maya's WER(move,rotate,scale) and Soft's 
VCX(move, rotate scale). I always liked the fact that Space(select) was 
closer to VCX in Soft. In Maya it was nerve wracking to no absolute end 
why the heck did they assign Scale to R? Duh?

6. Hotbox and Marking menus? What can I say? Theyre both wonderful and a 
real headache at the same time. Theyre fast and elegant, but there's 
nothing more absolutely frustrating than to use a stroke on the HotBox 
because you used it as a Marking menu, and now your current view has 
disappeared because it been replaced with a new view. Admittedly the 
marking menus are faster, but only if your scene is simple and not as 
cluttered, if you have a real heavy scene, marking menus can be a real pain.

7. Manipulators, that was new to 3D, and quite revolutionary. But just 
about every app implements that now, it's no longer an issue.

8. Middle Click. Absolutely nothing like it Maya's arsenal. Not even the 
nonsacred tool(Y) or repeat key(G) come close.

These are just interaction issues. I set up Max to behave like Soft 
once, got it pretty close.  It was impossible to reengineer Maya's 
interface close enough to Soft to make it worthwhile. You could do this 
with Max. Frankly I don't buy the myth that Soft3D's mindset is old or 
out of date. It was good, clean, efficient, and didn't place things in 
conflict with each other. It exposed almost everything you needed for 
selection and navigation right on the keyboard. If that interaction 
model is bad, then I'll take bad.

Joey Ponthieux
NCI Information Systems Inc.
NASA Langley Research Center
____________________________________________________________
Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and
do not represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.



Gene Crucean wrote:
> Can I ask why you old school Soft users think the native interaction 
> model is better than every other piece of software out there that all 
> relatively mimics the same qwerty setup?
>
> I'm looking for solid reasons why it's /better/. Is it faster because 
> you guys are so hardcore that you don't even use a mouse... therefore 
> freeing up your right hand for O,P usage? ;)
>
> I'm calling you guys out. XSI dragging along the old Soft mindset just 
> further alienates potential users from hopping on board. IMO, SI would 
> be better off in the long run if in V7 they just dropped it and kept 
> the qwerty setup as default. Maybe drop it completely from the 
> software but offer the keymap as a download from the site... at least 
> until the "old dogs" retire.
>
>
> $0.02 ching ching
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Julien Stiegler 
> <julien.stiegler(at)free.fr <mailto:julien.stiegler(at)free.fr>> wrote:
>
>     Hey eric,
>
>     it's a great initiative to host tested/working/quality scripts and
>     plugins on
>     your site.
>     What about contacting ALL the xsi addons authors and ask them the
>     permissions to
>     host it on your site ?
>     I have a good collection of them but the authors still need to be
>     contacted for
>     permissions ....
>
>     regards
>
>     Selon Eric Thivierge <eric(at)xsidatabase.com
>     <mailto:eric(at)xsidatabase.com>>:
>
>     > Well Kim,
>     >
>     > It's a community based site. I don't script too well myself so it's
>     > pretty much up to the others on the list and in the community to put
>     > some things on the site. The site is for hosting the files of
>     various
>     > resources to get rid of the horrible "File not found" errors. So I
>     > counter your comment with, "Shouldn't YOU put some scripts in
>     it?" :)
>     >
>     > Cheers Kim. Hope all is well.
>     >
>     > Thanks,
>     >
>     > Eric Thivierge, XSI Database Admin
>     > www.xsidatabase.com <http://www.xsidatabase.com>
>     > eric(at)xsidatabase.com <mailto:eric(at)xsidatabase.com>
>     > Forum Username: EricTRocks
>     >
>     >
>     > kim aldis wrote:
>     > > Shouldn't you put some scripts into it? ;-)
>     > >
>     > >
>     > >> -----Original Message-----
>     > >> From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM
>     <mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM> [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM
>     <mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM>] On
>     > >> Behalf Of Eric Thivierge
>     > >> Sent: 01 February 2008 03:32
>     > >> To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM <mailto:XSI(at)Softimage.COM>
>     > >> Subject: Re: Coming back from Maya
>     > >>
>     > >> Right on Marcus! Don't forget we have a new scripts section
>     as well.
>     > >>
>     > >>
>     > >
>     > >
>     > > ---
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>
>     --
>     Julien Stiegler
>     Réalisation de film d'animation, vidéo interactive,
>     pré-production, post-prodution.
>     http://animatic.no-ip.com/cv.html
>
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