What if Softimage died?

[bergj]

Now switch your Viewport to quad. Or tear the outliner off and dock it beside the AE. Docking doesn't mean switching a panel to a view. Also you don't have two instances of the outliner. You have one instance with two halfes of an outliner. You can't have two floating outliner. That's a fact.

Ok

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

Yes, I have that startup scipt too. It is unreliable and can lead to unexpected behaviour. Tear it off and close it, then try to open it again through the menue.
Why do you think, a dockable outliner is not the default in maya, nor are most other windows only dockable through scripting?
And you can not dock it freely wherever you want. Not interactively.
And of course you can anything in maya if you script it. If I could program I would write my own 3d software. You can script whole scenes without even using a GUI. That's how it all started. Even I started this way. But the reason why GUIs exist is to make things easier, faster and accessible to nonscripters/coders.
If I have to script in a GUI, than it is not a good GUI, because the purpose of a GUI is not having to script.

But who am I to tell anyone not to work slowly... ;)

[bergj]

Wow

[McNistor]

Tell me bergj, if I expand (press on the little +) one object in the upper Outliner doesn't the lower one show the same thing?

[bergj]

Tell me bergj, if I expand (press on the little +) one object in the upper Outliner doesn't the lower one show the same thing?

Sure

[McNistor]

not needing is the best way you can shield yourself from wanting and not having
I'm speaking generally here, because if you'd want it you'd swing around that script in no time.

[bergj]

not needing is the best way you can shield yourself from wanting and not having

Yes, you're absolutely right

[MauricioPC]

You can argue that about scripting and possibilities, but Maya menus and tabs are terrible to work with. You have to click on a slider or arrow to find tabs at the side. Everything looks the same. Even if you watch a tutorial from a Maya super-user, the guy eventually loses himself at the UI trying to find what he needs.

So yes ... the UI is terrible. The program is great though.

If you open Cinema 4D, it's a joy to look at it and find things in it. The software in itself is not as powerful, but the UI design is better. I think only LightWave can win Maya on the major terrible software UI.


Heck, I find even 3ds Max has a better UI than Maya. But you have to ditch that horrible dark gray and go back to the light gray color. Much easier on the eyes.

[myara]

You can dock anything in 3 lines of code that I know and you dont

I've never though I would read this kind of childish posts in an specialized forum for professionals. lol

I don't like Maya UI, tools and options are hard to find under tabs and tabs and drop menus, it is a little messy and you have to at least spend some minutes/hours to create your own custom shelf or your workflow may be slower than SI with default Maya qwerty Keymap. But I don't think it is that bad and I don't agree that it is the worst thing in Maya. (I do think it is less friendly and effective than SI)

Anyway, in case someone was wondering, to open a second Outliner I use this to make it work like SI explorer:

window -t "Outliner" -wh 200 500;
frameLayout -labelVisible false;
string $panel = `outlinerPanel`;
showWindow;

Now if you replace showWindow; with

dockControl -area "left" -content $panel -label "outliner" -width 200;

it will open a docked outliner in the left area.

I don't use docked panels very often, not even in SI. I prefer floating windows and work minimizing and maximizing them so I can have a bigger picture of my main view, but I hate Maya minimizing them always over the status line.

So to be fair, to "fix" these kind of "problems" like being easily dockable or not would be endless to find something that can work for everyone just out of the box. I think Maya has more serious problems.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

OK, just to make my point, the thing here is not what any UI must be like for everyone or about the outliner, but having the option to change what I one doesn't like, easily and without any line of code. That is possible in XSI and not possible in maya. Eg. you cant get rid of the vertical tabs, the number one no-go in interface design. If you want to have floating windows you can have it, if not, you can have it to. But all that doesn't even touch usability of tools. Read the list (not poll) of suggestions in the little annoying things forum and you get an impression what maya users think about that.

@myara
If you like a big main view, I cannot understand why you would object an interface like the one I show in my SI screenshot. It comes with the benefit of not having to maximize and minimize windows and having the largest mainview possible ;) ....

[Bellsey]

The problem for many people is that if you're coming from another package to a new one, you simple can't just continue in the same way of working that you have been used to. It just doesn't work. And yet, this is one of the most common mistakes people make, even now.
Many can just go through some basic tutorials, then just dive in, can't find what they need and then get frustrated.

I've often heard that Maya is hard to learn, or its UI is tricky, but frankly this is a myth. It's really no better, or worse than any other package to learn really. The one thing to remember about Maya, is that it's very open, it was designed that way. So there can be different ways to do the same thing. Also, Maya has a lot of preferences, so you can actually change many things, including the UI. It's mastering those things, that can often be the trick. I still see people now, who aren't using the hotbox or marknig menus correctly and they're key to Maya's UI and usability.

[Bellsey]

OK, just to make my point, the thing here is not what any UI must be like for everyone or about the outliner, but having the option to change what I one doesn't like, easily and without any line of code. That is possible in XSI and not possible in maya. Eg. you cant get rid of the vertical tabs, the number one no-go in interface design. If you want to have floating windows you can have it, if not, you can have it to. But all that doesn't even touch usability of tools. Read the list (not poll) of suggestions in the little annoying things forum and you get an impression what maya users think about that.

@myara
If you like a big main view, I cannot understand why you would object an interface like the one I show in my SI screenshot. It comes with the benefit of not having to maximize and minimize windows and having the largest mainview possible ;) ....

There's nothing wrong with the image and if that's how you like to work, then fine. But what works for you, doesn't mean it will work for everyone else. I like dockable panels etc, but I also like having floating windows as well. They can be less restrictive and I can move them to wherever I want, outside of the main UI.



And yeah, despite being some Autodesk bozo, I have used the SI UI.

[Lord Futzi Voldemort]

OK, just to make my point, the thing here is not what any UI must be like for everyone or about the outliner, but having the option to change what I one doesn't like, easily and without any line of code. That is possible in XSI and not possible in maya. Eg. you cant get rid of the vertical tabs, the number one no-go in interface design. If you want to have floating windows you can have it, if not, you can have it to. But all that doesn't even touch usability of tools. Read the list (not poll) of suggestions in the little annoying things forum and you get an impression what maya users think about that.

@myara
If you like a big main view, I cannot understand why you would object an interface like the one I show in my SI screenshot. It comes with the benefit of not having to maximize and minimize windows and having the largest mainview possible ;) ....

There's nothing wrong with the image and if that's how you like to work, then fine. But what works for you, doesn't mean it will work for everyone else. I like dockable panels etc, but I also like having floating windows as well. They can be less restrictive and I can move them to wherever I want, outside of the main UI.



And yeah, despite being some Autodesk bozo, I have used the SI UI.

That is basically what I say in the post you quote ;)
What I'm trying to say is, in maya I have a lot more restrictions when I try to make the UI work the way I like than in Si. Or C4d. Or blender, modo, Nuke, Houdini... well basically everywhere but max and maya.
So the point is: I could live with a lot of the quirks maya has, if I could at least have the workflow that suites me best. I would not pay for a software forces me to work slower than I'm used to. I'm sure many Si users would agree.
Luceric said maya is QT heaven for TDs. Yes it is. Sadly we cannot all be TDs.

Oh, and with a dualscreen layout there is no outside the ui. And with no floating windows, there is nothing you have to move outside the ui. But again, your choice

I do sometimes record tv shows on my hd recorder, so I have something to delete when I need the space.

[luceric]

OK, just to make my point, the thing here is not what any UI must be like for everyone or about the outliner, but having the option to change what I one doesn't like, easily and without any line of code. That is possible in XSI and not possible in maya. Eg. you cant get rid of the vertical tabs, the number one no-go in interface design. If you want to have floating windows you can have it, if not, you can have it to.

that's a pretty contrived argument. It's saying is that Softimage has a an interactive layout editor (which I originally wrote, btw), which Maya does not. But that's where the UI customisability options ends.

Also, the "docked editor" that the guy creates with MEL is something you can drag to the sides of the screen with the mouse, add to the tab deck, or tear off. You can reorder the tab deck. No need to get into layout editing mode and save the layout. Try "un-docking" a docked view in XSI to make it floating and free up the layout space? Is it just dragging it away like in Maya? Yeah, anyone can pick contrived examples. Another example: you can't put any of the panels (like Selection) at the right of the XSI UI in a floating window, or have them in two places in a layout. It's simply impossible. and XSI doesn't save the floating views you had between sessions, etc. Layout editing is just one feature of XSI.

[SreckoM]

Damn it LucEric on which side are you

[McNistor]

Damn it LucEric on which side are you

Your question must be rhetorical.