Oh god.  Sure the new features of Maya 2009 are nice and Nparticles is great but holy melon pie!  Fix the stinking UI...you would think a 10 year anniversary would introduce a new ui but it’s the same clunky ui of yesterday and I am sure it has the same issues...if you look at any of the new 3d packages (houdini, CD4, others) they are sprouting a slick animation area WITH LAYERS!!!!!!  It is great to get new features but please, please please....fix the ui!! fix the ui!  FIX THE UI!!!!  thank you.

I personally like the Maya GUI, I think is very flexible and intuitive. At the beginning it could seem hard to create (from MEL) or use it, but once you get to know it well it becomes very easy to use it in any task that you have.
Though this is only my humble opinion.

I have an eye for details… the other one is for seeing in perspective.

My personal fav is Modo. so nice and clean and easy on the eye’s.

I just think it deserves a update.  Some new animation timeline features, better use of windows, that type of stuff.

Are you requesting an animated UI? You mention Windows, which leads me to believe that you want them to animate the windows shrinking and things like that Basically make it look pretty. I have to disagree with you on this point, I turn all of those feature off in windows, because they use are using up unnecessary amounts of memory. When I am animating in Maya, I need all the memory I can get! I alos, have to disagree with a change in the UI, because frankly I hate it when companies change things, that I have spent years learning (An example of this being Microsoft Word, which changed completely and now it takes me 10 minutes to find what I need). Sorry to disagree, but I wanted to get in my 2 cents.

Campion J. Kirkham

Just some ideas on the user interface, maybe new cleaner icons made with vectors, so they can scale to any size. allowing the shelf to be larger or smaller, or other interface elements to be scaled in a cleaner manner. Change gray color everywhere to a darker color with very subtle graduations. Allow attribute editor and channel box to be interactively scaled, make attribute editor less wide be defualt. Allow shelf tabs to be grouped, their are to many of them, without order, so I dont use them as much as I should. Icons should have colour as they already do, I dont like the 3d max interface, with monochromatic icons. A faster viewport and hypershade would definitely improve the experience of using the interface. Should be able to tear off channel box and attribute editor from right hand side of screen. More control of BG displayed in camera viewport (gradients like Mudbox), make it real easy or even default, the graduated BG makes the program feel more professional (can this already be done, how?). Lots of small icons look Win 95 style, like drop down arrow on menu set, save icons, print, etc. Shelf icons should have alpha channels, so they can float anywhere on any colour background. Tabs on attribute editor should have slight graduations.
>:::::::::::::::::::::  These weird symbols should be changed in UI, and allow scaling and closing of all UI elements. Be cool if you could sort of close individual UI elements, like Time slider, range slider, command line, help line, or just drag straight down, and close them all, or some of them in one drag. I like the menu set system, and where all the tools currently are, and the marking menu system, mainly just aesthetic changes.

It would be neat to somehow in a very subtle manner to visually invoke the dragon maya symbol with a new UI. Dark colours, with a bit or red, But yeah interface is complex, so that probably wouldn’t work. Maybe im wrong, but I guess you have to try things to see what works. I like the Maya interface, just subtle improvements to make it look more professional, and more substantial changes if it improves the speed of workflows. A more node based hypershade approach, with clearer connections between attributes, and easier access to attributes, would be great (houdini style). Does anyone use the Multilister? does it have any benefits over hypershade?.

Braden99 in some cases you are right about the UI, but in most cases you just don’t know how to do this things, so as I’ve said in a previous post most users of Maya that are not very pleased with the interface should get to know it better, most of the things they want it to do are already there. For example:

1. You say that “shelf tabs ... are to many… and without order”, but you can create, delete or order any shelf (shelf tab) from the “Shelf Editor”. Also you can hide the shelf tabs and only display one shelf at a time by selecting it with a click of a mouse.
2.  “Those weird symbols” take very little space from your screen and allow you to make many useful things by left/right clicking on them.
3. “Close individual UI elements like Time slider… in one drag” you can hide individual UI elements like Time slider just right click on “those weird symbols”. Also did you try holding Ctrl and pressing Space it could be faster then to do it in just “one drag”

So I think you get the point.
Some of the thins in Maya UI need improvements, but most of them as you say just need you “to try things to see what works” and also read the Maya help that is very well organized and you can find what you need very fast, and they also have a lot of tutorials in the help about most of the things in Maya.

Regards

I have an eye for details… the other one is for seeing in perspective.

Braden99 & m_raduu, Both of you have good points.

In my opinion, Maya deserves “Interface” (the look & feel) modernization. A face lift to be exact without ever changing its (layout and behavior) proven workflow speed and interoperability. And that’s it, nothing more, and nothing less. To mention one specific change, I think it’s better if Maya’s Typeface will inherit the host OS’s font so that there is stylistic unity. Or maybe things similar to adobe photoshop - the ability to adjust the size of the UI Font in the preferences. While doing so won’t just promote cleaner UI, but also it will help to compensate different screen resolutions. Maya’s current UI size best complements resolutions with 1900x1200 and over.

That’s it for me. Maya’s GUI by default is the fastest working layout for me anyways, and I think for others also.

I work on both Mac and PC with Maya, and the Mac version really needs to be fixed in the UI.. The fonts are too big, the sliders are sometimes long then short and then long again..

I really like the way that Maya works becuase its efficent when you get used to it, and the best thing about maya is the ability to do the same stuff in different ways - the way that suit you the best. So for me its minor stuff that need to be fixed. One thing though that I could use is the marking menus from the good old PowerAnimator - the maya marking menus are not as fast to use, you need to be more precise. And on mac, I could use the straight line from the center of the markin menus, instead of that freeform painting line..

One big issue for me was when Autodesk bought Alias, they started to “Max’ify” Maya - that was so annoying. It took a while to figure out the new names for same things.. Polygons > Meshes is one example of the name change

Kind regards

Carsten Lind
Senior 3D Artist
Lego Systems A/S
Denmark

Kind regards

Carsten Lind
Senior 3D Artist
Maya Software Manager & Maya Instructor
Lego Systems A/S
Denmark

How is everyone seeing Maya 2009 UI and other upgrades?  Can you post the weblinks?

I saw Maya 2009 UI in the live transmission from Siggraph, but it looked the same as maya 8+ excpet a few minor changes, like the gradient background.

Kind regards

Carsten Lind
Senior 3D Artist
Maya Software Manager & Maya Instructor
Lego Systems A/S
Denmark