[Bf-funboard] Maya experience, anyone?
Gregor Mückl
bf-funboard@blender.org
Tue, 9 Sep 2003 20:46:13 +0200
Hi!
I've spent a weekend toying with Maya and I am really impressed by its
incredible interface.
I expected it to be very very cumbersome to use because of the myriads of
features it has and me always searching for the right one. But it wasn't
quite like that.
OK, the menu bar is stuffed with entries over and over again (up to 7
different menu bars for the main window - you have to select the right one
first :-). But I never thought that this could actually be a good thing. The
menus have a very well thought-out structure which makes finding things
relatively easy, although there are about 40+ entries in one single pulldown
(many commands can work immediately and can show a parameter dialog first,
when you select the box icon next to the actual menu entry)
The complete contents of all menu bars is also available through a star-shaped
menu which pops up when the user presses the space key. With that menu there
is no need to select a menu bar first via the dropdown in the lop left corner
of the main window.
And even if I had to search for a certain feature I used the (quite good, but
not complete) online help, which provides tutorials, reference manuals for
the individual modules and "How do I?" and "What went wrong?" sections (which
sometimes were unfortunately empty). The reference manual is in some way
comparable to unix man pages: it gives a short, sharp and complete
descriptions of the individual features.
Searching is a breeze in the apparently homegrown search engine. The top of
the browser window (in which the online help is displayed) always contains an
entry field awaiting your keywords.
To me using Maya seemed to be so easy because it does not try to hide anything
from the user. It shows everything and as a user you pick out the things you
want. It's the exact opposite of what blender does.
And this is the reason why I writie all this: "borrow" from them. In
particular:
- create well-structured pull-down menus (already worked on, I think)
- provide bigger and more meaningful icons for certain tools; try to create
icons that the user can immediately associate with the task at hand
- include a searchable online help; start out with a clean reference and a
search feature; other contents can be added lateron, possible in
topic-speicific FAQ sections
- replace the current button window with something more straight-forward: keep
the bits and pieces of settings and information related to a single object
closer together and seperate them more cleanly from global, scene-wide
settings (a possible start would be a huge gap in the button bar that
seperates the two topics).
I hope this oppinion helps. Maya really has a couple of nice ideas in its UI.
Regards,
Gregor