Maya - unintuitive?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Hey everyone, I just started fiddling around with Maya because the school I want to go to uses it, and I’m finding that the interface is really clunky and counter intuitive. I can’t help but compare it to blender, and have blender come out leaps and bounds above in my mind.

E for Extrude, simple.

S for scale, simple.

R for rotate, simple.

And there are so many buttons and submenus, which blender seems to integrate flawlessly without looking cluttered or daunting. Are there any Maya…modifications that make the interface handle like Blender? Because honestly I’ve been looking around like crazy for the “create polygon” tool, and all I can make are primitives. It’s frustrating me to no end.

2

Try ‘W’ ‘E’ and ‘R’ in Maya. Also try the spacebar.

3

what works best?
it all depends on the person, really.

but yeah, what tea monster said. :slight_smile:

4

One of Maya’s hotkeys for a common tool is ‘W’? And people on CGTalk think Blender’s hotkeys are wonky.

And there are so many buttons and submenus, which blender seems to integrate flawlessly without looking cluttered or daunting

HINT: Try Blender 2.25, you’ll appreciate the current interface a lot more once you use that old version.:wink:

5

I thought you could customize the stuffs in Maya. I haven used it in more than a year, so I could be wrong.

Blender is very intuitive.

It’s strange, the first time I used it I didn’t know about shortcuts and thus I repeated used mouse motions to do what I needed to do.

You know- draw a circle to rotate, a line to move. I’m not sure how you scale that way though.

6

Ah a new good topic! :slight_smile:
We must change Blender UI. We must. Now.

But the question: Maya or Max? :slight_smile:

7

Endi, we should change Blender’s UI to that of Blender, oh wait…

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Endi is the man. Period. You can all go home now.

(Dont make me turn this into a thread about Tina Fey)

9

LOL. What’s the deal with Tina Fey. Did I miss something?

10

She can see Russia from her house!
YOU did not know that?

OK, as far as the interface goes …
I think it should be half half. A split interface is the way to go!
// i just made a screenshot of maya/max together but I can not post attachments … bummer

@Adobewan:
you are comparing apples with oranges. Blender UI is ok for blender. I would prefer if things stay in place because it is hard for new users of blender to memorize the location of mesh tools if they never can be found at the same place. There are a few more things which would make it more practical but for the most part, it’s doable as is.
Maya has the interface that Maya needs. It works and v2009 has many improvements as far as usability goes.
The good news is that no one forces us to use ether. I loose a few jobs because I don’t have/use max/maya but there is so much work out there with realtors and other companies that advertise a lot who care little what you use compared to “how” you use it.

To the developers of blender:
Endi is a “superuser” who puts blender in the center of international game design and he has proven many many times that he is elite at a level that not many, if any, can surpass … ever!.
How long will you developers ignore his numerous requests to change the interface finally to Maya so that he can advance blender to the next level because God knows, none of us ever will.

P.S. Some are happy with having their user names changed, others need a different interface. MAYBE there was a way to include a new feature in blender that let’s you change your user name on blenderartists.org?
THAT would be another first as currently none of the others have such a feature. Maybe have this ready for 2.49?

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I defend maya for having “W” for scale, because then it is makes the layout of the hotkeys more organized.
edit: never used maya so I don’t know what it is like in practice.

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I also think blender’s gui need some fixes, after all I feel that all of us rely too much on hotkeys, and that doesn’t mean a good gui design, just good memory from the users XD

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I say we remove all buttons from Blender and force people to use only keystrokes, maybe even remove mouse control, think about it, creating an object would be like typing up a term paper, imagine how fast you could go if you just typed everything. :wink:

14

none of this is intuitive.

A friend of mine tried to explain to his gran how to use a computer… “use the mouse to click on an icon on screen…”

bless her, she picked the mouse up and put it over the monitor like it was some kind of touch screen…

“intuitive” is often ,misused when people really mean “familiar”. What is familiar? what we learned with…the more we learn the more familiar everything is…

a “power” maya user switching to max is in for a lot of pain if they’ve not used it before and vice versa. same goes for blender.

what’s “best” is not an objective thing, it’s often a preference…
programs that are described as “intuitive” usually have very simple rules that once learned allow you to use the software for tasks…

“make a selection and right click to operate on it, the context will populate the menu with the most appropriate choices” is what makes stuff like wings so attractive… of course you need to know about the modes, how to switch them, how to select, deselect, hide and un-hide and wings really sucks for architecture for example…

no 3d software is intuitive and most don’t share the same interactions at a basic level (eg navigating the screen, making selections, hiding/unhiding…

people often talk about “industry standards” and interactions, but compare max, maya, lightwave, XSI and blender against my last paragraph. there is absolutely no crossover. some of those apps have context menus, how they are accessed is different in each.

It’s true that many smaller market share apps use Maya navigation by default for example, interesting that these minority apps tend to offer a much higher degree of customisation so that they can simulate behaviors of “the big” apps… look at silo, modo etc.

15

I may be incorrect, but if I remember correctly, Maya’s entire interface is totally abstracted. It’s been a while since I’ve used it, but I believe the interface is basically a MEL script. Supposedly you could create an interface to work however you want. (Not sure to just how far you could push that concept though…)

16

So I wasn’t imagining that that?

17

Adobewan, I’m not sure if it’s any use to you or how up-to-date it is but here’s a link I found:
http://www.blendernewbies.com/tools/maya_blender_keys.html

18

Maya is a serious Pro tool and thus has more tools than there is space to show it.
Complexity comes with a different approach on how to store the information.

Maya is pretty intuitive. I hardly hear from non blender users that they think
Blender is unintuitive at all. Because of the interface users even do not bother with it.

You got used to Blender and that is the point. The same will be with Maya.

period.

19

Some of you need to reread the first post . . . he’s saying that he wants Maya to be more like Blender.

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I only got this much.

Please to editing for comprehensiveness.