www.si-community.com

Hi there, I wonder would a thread be useful for this.
Would people post any links to videos, keyboard shorcut files/ UI Layout etc that might ease transition ?
I know Soft has a Maya compatible keymap - so moving the other way...

in case someone wants to change to the dark side I accidentially stumbled upon this:
http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... &sandbox=1

A Maya keymap for Softimage users. I have not tried it. I stick with Si for the time being.

Nice find! Thanks for that. Will test it soon... ;)

This guy has also an interesting tutorial for a realtime toon shader for Softimage on his website. I have to look into this when I find some time.

Overly enthusiastic I opened a little blog to mark my own struggle with the move to Maya. Here you can so far find a way to get rid of the dark interface and a rather good workaround for a dual screen setup. Nothing special, just some of the things I found out so far.

Belated edit: I took down the entries mentioned above, as I am currently having a severe "difference of opinion" with Autodesk.

I ran maya with the "plastique" theme for a while at the very beginning two years ago. Now it's back to dark theme, it's fine.
Try pressing "Alt+b". it'll cycle through viewport background color.

The viewport background color tip is a good one, thanks.
The theme preference is obviously highly personal. In my case I have learned over the years I have a hard time concentrating on all dark themed stuff. Probably has something to do with my failing eye-sight in general. That's why I don't use the "subsilver_black" theme here either. While most people prefer darker themes, I just get headaches from them.
I am funny that way. But we already knew that...

Actually, UI brightness is not that personal. Someone on mail list already described the case of working together with compositing people in dark room, full of dark interfaces, where SI light GUI somehow emphasizes the always specific state of our beloved software. Icons ws txt, imho, that probably is personal, where SI is somewhere in middle - SI animation and texture editor are full of icons.

Mathaeus wrote:SI animation and texture editor are full of icons.

The Texture Editor is a good example of an icon junkyard.
Some of them are intuitive, others just not, like 'polygon bleeding', 'pinning selection'... not even 'toggle snapping'.
I still have to use the tooltips to check out what some of them mean. Besides, I tend to forget the icons after a while of not using the TE.

The ones with even just one letter in them (T), or three (ALL, ISL, CLS) are immediately clear, though. (At the moment I have the hope I won't loose my ability to read any time soon... =p )
That's the reason why I for my part prefer text over icons.

I don't have Maya installed yet, and don't know much about it's customization abilities, but the UI as it presents itself to a beginner looks - overloaded and cryptic.
Also the more proficient would profit from a simplified visual appearance.

Been using it for a bit - Im not obsessed with SI shortcuts but you can reassign anything. Learning the code in tandem so any toggle or anything that u like seems easy enough to code and shortcut.
first thing I got rid of was hotbox - will set it up later when I know what I want it for.

There is a nice cycle cameras function, which might replace my shortcut keys for top, bottom, perspective etc. So it is an adaptation. It really is a case of getting it under control.

The hypergraph, hypershade are being replaced by the node editor (We can see the softimage guys have been brought in here) - exposing ports and colour coding etc - obvious stuff.

Anyway - I like the dark UI and if you are feeling down about it, look up some Paint effects videos on youtube, they will cheers us up while waiting for ICE!
There is a nice new function for paint strokes to not intersect eachother and interpret collision geometery accurately.

Hirazi Blue wrote:Overly enthusiastic I opened a little blog to mark my own struggle with the move to Maya. Here you can so far find a way to get rid of the dark interface and a rather good workaround for a dual screen setup. Nothing special, just some of the things I found out so far.

If I can leave comments on your blog, Ill add bits and pieces I find.

1. There is an outliner docker script - google docker (Scene explorer always in UI)
2. There is outliner plus - 2011-2013 script but doesn't seem to work in 2014.

Really need a more comprehensive explorer - Hypergraph is just ten years ago (for me anyway.)

personally, it took me a long time to get use to a dark ui. I wasn't using the dark theme on this website either before the light one broke, and I can't stand the polycount forum. But.. after a few month you forgets it and can't recall exactly what problem you had with it. I do still find the maya viewport gradient so heavy, just turning that off feels to me like making clouds go away.

Yes unfortunatley Outliner plus didn't work in Maya 2014.
And edge ring selection via LMB didnt' work either.
But in Maya 2015 ring selection via LMB is working.

Do somebody already redefine "collapse" key ?
Maya can collapse edges and polygons but vertices ... how can i collapse vertices in maya ?