Autodesk Softimage Mod Tool brings the rageface



  • @Justice said:

    Or, more likely: a lot of these products have a core user community that's been with them since version 1, and if it ever starts to feel non-shitty, it will seem less "professional grade" and said users will have a conniption because the product is being "dumbed down."

     

    "Core users" tend to customize the UI, right? Why not just change the default UI to a non-shitty one and leave the customized ones the way they are?



  • @Master Chief said:

    @dohpaz42 said:

    Eh, you're new here (at least posting-wise). Blakey likes to vent his frustrations on these boards, especially when it comes to UI's (OSS is another one of his favorite gripes). You learn to either take him with a grain of salt, or troll him for amusement. At least, that's what I've learned. :)

    It is pretty damn fun watching him fume.  He's so out of his depth here though, it's almost too easy to point out his logical errors.

    Yes, but you also suffer, because he's so out of his depth, it's difficult for you to see that he's partially right.

    Now, I'm not saying he's very right.  His basic premise, that it could use a better UI, and usability testing could help guide the developers in making it have a better UI, is almost certainly true.  However, I think that's the limit of where he's accurate about this program.

    Usability testing is, in my experience, helpful on any tool that hasn't had any usability testing since the last major remodeling.  In the case of a product like this, usability testing should probably focus on:

    • How intuitive is it that you *can* customize it.
    • How intuitive is the customization utility?
    • How easy is it for a typical inexperienced user to customize it to something that works well for them?

    That having been said, I can also see that it's complex enough that there are definite limits on what the developers are going to do to be able to improve the UI without significant trade-offs.  I agree that it doesn't look like usability testing has been performed - the default configuration looks far too intimidating for it to be the result of usability testing guided development.  However, it's possible that usability testing was performed, but the developers decided to ignore the recommendations about the default appearance, because they were happy with that.



  • The contents of the file can not be unpacked. You may obtain a new copy of the file, verifying its contents, and try again, but the contents of the file can not be unpacked.
    [edit] Looks like my tag eated itself. I didn't mean for that to happen, but it did.



  • @tgape said:

    Yes, but you also suffer, because he's so out of his depth, it's difficult for you to see that he's partially right.

    Now, I'm not saying he's very right.  His basic premise, that it could use a better UI, and usability testing could help guide the developers in making it have a better UI, is almost certainly true.  However, I think that's the limit of where he's accurate about this program.

    Usability testing is, in my experience, helpful on any tool that hasn't had any usability testing since the last major remodeling.  In the case of a product like this, usability testing should probably focus on:

    • How intuitive is it that you *can* customize it.
    • How intuitive is the customization utility?
    • How easy is it for a typical inexperienced user to customize it to something that works well for them?

    That having been said, I can also see that it's complex enough that there are definite limits on what the developers are going to do to be able to improve the UI without significant trade-offs.  I agree that it doesn't look like usability testing has been performed - the default configuration looks far too intimidating for it to be the result of usability testing guided development.  However, it's possible that usability testing was performed, but the developers decided to ignore the recommendations about the default appearance, because they were happy with that.

     

    The utility I suppose could be better.  Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.  Using it is easy, once you know where you need to edit, and that's easy enough too, just change something and see where the change is applied.

     



  • @Master Chief said:

    The utility I suppose could be better.  Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.

    Admitting a flaw? Oh no, more body snatchers!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Master Chief said:
    The utility I suppose could be better.  Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.

    Admitting a flaw? Oh no, more body snatchers!

     

    My God you are desperate.  



  • @Master Chief said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @Master Chief said:
    The utility I suppose could be better. Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.

    Admitting a flaw? Oh no, more body snatchers!

    My God you are desperate.

    Nah I was impressed. Your brainwashing cleared up a moment. For a few brief seconds there you were almost behaving like an independent thinker. There is yet hope!

    It's so rare you see zealots on this forum, kudos to everybody involved. But who would have expected in a million years coming across an Autodesk zealot? I didn't even know such a thing existed.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    It's so rare you see zealots on this forum, kudos to everybody involved. But who would have expected in a million years coming across an Autodesk zealot? I didn't even know such a thing existed.

    I've ran into some who think that having to install Textools to get anything done unwrapping wise under Max is a [i]good thing[/i]. Scary stuff, scary.



  • @Master Chief said:

    The utility I suppose could be better.  Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.  Using it is easy, once you know where you need to edit, and that's easy enough too, just change something and see where the change is applied.

     

    Now I've been lurking in the background following this thread.  I freely admit I suck at drawing so I have no use for a 3D modeling package.  But to someone who has never used the software, this doesn't sound at all WTF-y to you?

    ". . . just change something and see where the change is applied."  Translation (to me):  make the change and happy huntin'!

    If I'm making changes to an interface, I expect to have some idea as to where that change is going to be made.  And perhaps I would, but from the sound of the statement, and the admission that the utility could be better, it sounds like Blakey is right that the interface starts out bad and doesn't get any better.  It's not making a good impression to the unfamiliar user . . .

     



  • @nonpartisan said:

    @Master Chief said:

    The utility I suppose could be better.  Some of the wording of the different menus is a little weird.  Using it is easy, once you know where you need to edit, and that's easy enough too, just change something and see where the change is applied.

     

    Now I've been lurking in the background following this thread.  I freely admit I suck at drawing so I have no use for a 3D modeling package.  But to someone who has never used the software, this doesn't sound at all WTF-y to you?

    ". . . just change something and see where the change is applied."  Translation (to me):  make the change and happy huntin'!

    If I'm making changes to an interface, I expect to have some idea as to where that change is going to be made.  And perhaps I would, but from the sound of the statement, and the admission that the utility could be better, it sounds like Blakey is right that the interface starts out bad and doesn't get any better.  It's not making a good impression to the unfamiliar user . . .

     

     

    I'm not a programmer, for all I know these names are the perfectly correct ones for these UI elements.  I just don't know them.

     



  • I got a hold of 3D Studio Max, and it's significantly better than SoftImage. For whatever reason the version I installed, 2012, either doesn't have that weird psuedo-Ribbon or they've turned it off by default-- good move either way. The window controls are a complete clusterfuck, but tolerable-- it looks like they tried to give the app a Ribbon interface, then gave up halfway, ended up with normal menus but Office 2007-esque Ribbon file operations.

    As for actually being able to use the software to actually make things? I was able to make my globe and get it (correctly) imported into an XNA app in about an hour and a half. EDIT: Oh and it installed into "Program Files" just fine, even though it still defaulted to some other ridiculous path.

    If I were grading these apps, I'd give 3D Studio Max perhaps a C, and SoftImage a D-... the only thing that keeps it out of F territory is that it didn't actually crash while I was using it.



  • Funny how everyone likes to slag IE, and preach about Chrome etc., when in this case IE downloaded the installer file perfectly while Chrome kept screwing it up.  I'm just sayin'. 

    I'm not religous about my choice of browsers.  And in spite of the fact tha tI'm a professional programmer, I find that IE works great for me.

    And I hate, hate, hate software that wants to install into the root of C:\ in a folder without spaces.  As someone already said, we have only had spaces in folder names for, what, 17 years now?  It's high time we stopped putting up with broken installers that don't follow the standards.

    If the programmers can't figure out how to install to a folder name that contains spaces, what other hacks have they done that may fail if your system doesn't match the programmer's computer in odd respects?  Such as number of monitors, location of the Temp folder, phase of the moon, etc.

     



  • @DWalker59 said:

    Funny how everyone likes to slag IE, and preach about Chrome etc., when in this case IE downloaded the installer file perfectly while Chrome kept screwing it up.  I'm just sayin'. 

    I'm not religous about my choice of browsers.  And in spite of the fact tha tI'm a professional programmer, I find that IE works great for me.

    And I hate, hate, hate software that wants to install into the root of C:\ in a folder without spaces.  As someone already said, we have only had spaces in folder names for, what, 17 years now?  It's high time we stopped putting up with broken installers that don't follow the standards.

    If the programmers can't figure out how to install to a folder name that contains spaces, what other hacks have they done that may fail if your system doesn't match the programmer's computer in odd respects?  Such as number of monitors, location of the Temp folder, phase of the moon, etc.

     

     

    I was actually very impressed with IE9.  IE8 was a big step forward for MS, what with them finally deciding to join the rest of the world in terms of compliance.  Then they actually made a browser that I think stands toe to toe with the other big ones pretty well.  Also, they've gone the way of chrome and made each tab it's own process, which is damn nice.

    A note on monitors:  3ds max is both brilliant and retarded here.  All of the pop up dialogs (materials, environment, render setup, etc.) all remember their location, which is very handy when you're using a secondary display to hold them like I do.  However, if you happen to move or remove that display, the windows will still spawn outside your desktop area, and you have to edit an .ini file to get them back to their default position.

     



  • @Master Chief said:

    A note on monitors:  3ds max is both brilliant and retarded here.  All of the pop up dialogs (materials, environment, render setup, etc.) all remember their location, which is very handy when you're using a secondary display to hold them like I do.  However, if you happen to move or remove that display, the windows will still spawn outside your desktop area, and you have to edit an .ini file to get them back to their default position.

    I've had that one a number of times. If you can focus the window you can alt+space then hit M to move it with the arrow keys.



  • @DWalker59 said:

    Funny how everyone likes to slag IE, and preach about Chrome etc., when in this case IE downloaded the installer file perfectly while Chrome kept screwing it up.  I'm just sayin'.

    1. I don't slag IE. IE is the only sane browser-- "innerText", "readyState", etc. are all things the rest of the browser community badly needs to implement.

      2) No it didn't. Sorry, my post was probably unclear-- IE's download of the installer file failed in the same way Chrome did. IE was successful at downloading Akamai's download manager, which was then in turn successful at downloading the installer.


  • @nexekho said:

    @Master Chief said:
    A note on monitors:  3ds max is both brilliant and retarded here.  All of the pop up dialogs (materials, environment, render setup, etc.) all remember their location, which is very handy when you're using a secondary display to hold them like I do.  However, if you happen to move or remove that display, the windows will still spawn outside your desktop area, and you have to edit an .ini file to get them back to their default position.

    I've had that one a number of times. If you can focus the window you can alt+space then hit M to move it with the arrow keys.

     

    Eh, I'd rather just open the file and reset them.  Hate trying to use the Windows UI blind.



  • @nexekho said:

    @Master Chief said:
    A note on monitors:  3ds max is both brilliant and retarded here.  All of the pop up dialogs (materials, environment, render setup, etc.) all remember their location, which is very handy when you're using a secondary display to hold them like I do.  However, if you happen to move or remove that display, the windows will still spawn outside your desktop area, and you have to edit an .ini file to get them back to their default position.

    I've had that one a number of times. If you can focus the window you can alt+space then hit M to move it with the arrow keys.

    And you don't need to remember which edge of the screen it was off of; you only need to hit any one arrow key once to move it one step, then as soon as you move the mouse it'll jump to the mouse cursor position.



  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    doesn't have that weird psuedo-Ribbon
    Not argueing for or against Ribbons, but what's pseudo about theirs??



  • @nexekho said:

    @Master Chief said:
    A note on monitors:  3ds max is both brilliant and retarded here.  All of the pop up dialogs (materials, environment, render setup, etc.) all remember their location, which is very handy when you're using a secondary display to hold them like I do.  However, if you happen to move or remove that display, the windows will still spawn outside your desktop area, and you have to edit an .ini file to get them back to their default position.

    I've had that one a number of times. If you can focus the window you can alt+space then hit M to move it with the arrow keys.

    May be easier just to go into display settings and switch primary and secondary monitors, then drag the windows/boxes to the shared edge of the screens.


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