What’s the difference between a Character Set and an Asset?

we're still on maya 2009 but one important thing that I just can't find information on - how are character sets and assets supposed to co-exist?

an example to show the issue:

if I have some joint transform attributes published to an asset and then try and add the PUBLISHED attributes (ie the public interface) to a character set (which is necessary since we need to use TRAX for mocap) then the character set seems to add the PRIVATE supposedly 'hidden' original attributes and not the published ones on the asset interface... this would seem to defeat the entire purpose - ie it breaks the encapsulation completely

anyone come across this or understand how the two systems are 'supposed' to co-exist?

thanks for the info - as we develop new things in Maya, if they make older functionality obsolete, we do thing about removing the older functionality, or making it less prominent so that it's more clear what the preferred/recommended way is.

yeah i think thats more what i'm trying to say and evolution is good. for me one of the problems with max for example is it has so many old tools which are still there and many ways to do the same thing rather than 1 right way. its the number 1 reason i dont return to max no matter how many cool new tools are added.

im a teacher on the side and taught max for 4 years and now maya for a few years too hence my concern about keeping things as simple as possible

Characterize works on the joint hierarchy so it should work independently of Assets.

I look at it more as the evolution of Maya. We could not get rid of character sets altogether as some people are still using them in their pipeline. That's not to say that there may be things we should remove in the future to simplify the UI. Feedback on that is welcome.

on another note....can you characterize an asset?

this is interesting but i'm concerned about the future proliferation of tools which are somewhat similar but different. they leave the older tools sort of stranded and it makes maya much more difficult to learn. maya is getting some interesting tools but this article almost highlights a loss of the streamling which made it so easy to switch to and learn maya

Yes - definitely :)

Hi, This is cool! I clearly understand the difference.
I briefly translated your post in Japanese and posted to my SNS blog. Was that OK?