You can turn on the labels for the Maya shelf in the shelf editor (in its Option menu) but the point is, the shelf, or toolbar in general, are quick shortcuts to things that are the menu, so having to decipher them is not an issue. The shelf is fun and made to play around. You can tear off a menu to get a quick toolbar for one-click access to menu commands. The only maya thing doesn't do correctly in that area is it's not showing you the shelf icon next to the menu item to help users learn that these two things are the same, which might be leading some of you to believe that these are different. Now about the wonderfulness of text labels, I have no clue what a QuadChamfer is and if there is an ointment for that. :P
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 3:28 PM, Octavian Ureche <okt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Icons are great for people comfortable with the application, not that much > for everyone else. A perfect example of an elegant solution would be what > the sidefx dev team did when doing their own version of "the shelf". They > added 3 modes for displaying it: icons, text and icons with text underneath. > The shelf in maya, has always been icons only. Yes you can hover the mouse > over the icons and it will show you what that icon represents, but it's > pretty annoying to have to do that all the time, or learn the shapes of the > icons. Yes, you can also hack it, by building your own custom color square, > and use that for every single shelf button, and then add a custom label for > each, taking into account that you can't use more than 6 or 7 letters for > each square, thus reducing things like "rigid link" to "rgdlnk"...and this > is exactly the point - this is the maya way...hacking your way through with > a mental machete, instead of just having things layed out elegantly in front > of you. > The truly great thing about text is that it is usually consistent throughout > all 3d applications. > A sphere, an extrude, a cut, a material, a vertex etc, are all usually the > same in all apps, or similar concepts very easy to translate mentally. While > a square cut in 4 sides with one side greenish and arrow pointing at it > (component selection icon), or a set of bowling pins with a large circle > around them (rigid body from selection) is only in maya. If i am a max, > lightwave, c4d, houdini, xsi etc user, and i see a set of bowling pins, how > does that make me think of rigid bodies from selection? i could think of > nurbs or game engine tools or shading or who knows what. Each of us > understands an image differently, but a "rigid body from selection" is the > same to everyone working in 3d. > > Does this make sense? > > Cheers, > Octav > > > On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 8:56 PM, Andy Goehler <lists.andy.goeh...@gmail.com> > wrote: >> >> Would you want to ged rid of that massive arrow in the MCP too? :-) >> >> Icons have their place, they need to communicate well and be used with >> care. The Nuke toolbar icons work great IMHO. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Andy >> >> > On 25.03.2014, at 17:40, Paul Griswold >> > <pgrisw...@fusiondigitalproductions.com> wrote: >> > >> > 1. Text based everything - I hate the shelf in Softimage as well as the >> > UV editor. Get rid of icons entirely. >> > > > > -- > Octavian Ureche > +40 732 774 313 (GMT+2) > CG & VFX > www.okto.ro
