Explorer vs Outliner?

[nunoconceicao]

I think this one deserves its own thread.

How can the Maya Outliner be improved to maybe match all or some of the current Softimage Explorer functionalities. 

Ill start with just a few since I only used maya for 2.5 years and that was back in 2005/06, so I'm sure other users will add to my suggestions of what Softimage Explorer has to offer that could be implemented in Outliner.

These feature requests I can see happening without replacing any of the current Outliner funcionalities (so it wont hurt the current Maya user base), basically just adds to the Outliner experience!

For now I will only mention what is important to my workflow as a generalist with more specialization in character modeling, shading, lighting and scene layout.

1. Explorer has the possibility to view a bit more inside of each geometry, not just which objects I have in my scene, for example, for each geometry I can expand (clicking on the + sign) my individual object view to see assigned materials, kinematics including constraints, operators (stack), clusters, uvs, blendshapes, etc allowing a quick and comprehensive access to all the objects in your scene and detect what can be wrong too. This also helps you keeping your scene clean tidy and light (getting rid of excessive stuff inside your objects).

2. Explorer Modes or views. You can swith between  scene view, render passes, materials, image clips, just to name a few

3. You can spawn several explorer windows so you can drag and drop stuff from one explorer view to another, which brings us to the next funcionality

4. Drag and Drop funcionality! You can drag objects to objects (parenting); materials from one object to another; an object to a render pass/partition; a material from a material library straight to an object or partition, even a cluster from one object to another (if its the same vertex order its fine); im sure if forgetting a lot more

5. The possibility to arrange and setup your render passes with explorer is quite powerfull and fast, since the Explorer passes filters only geometries and lights and has all the objects visible in a background partition (no geometry is hidden from the explorer pass view) allowing a compreensive and intuitive way to start spliting up your scene in passes.

6...here is where other Softimage users can chip in 😉

http://i.imgur.com/Qtu0949.png

[szabolcsmatefy7891]

I'd add also the F3 explorer, that opens a mini explorer of the item selected. Awesome feature

[nunoconceicao]

PS: I know Maya Outliner has drag and drop parenting but why stop there?! There is plenty more stuff you can drag and drop in Soft

[AlanEddie]

This is the critical management tool in Softimage - from materials to hierarchys etc. Node editing suits Shader Trees and ICE coding type construction. 99percent of the time general scene managment requires an Outliner/Explorer, so more agressive development please!

Also per window keyboard shortcuts!!! yikes!

ie. in Softimage 

i in Explorer - images filter

i in Animation editor - insert key

i in views, insert edge

i in Texture view - etc.

i in Fcurve editor - insert key...

and so on.....

[Bravlin]

Absolutly agree with topic starter.

Compare to XSI Explorer,  Maya's Outliner is totally useless.

There is good try to solve this problem: Ouliner Plus by Tim Volcker

But this script didn't work in 2014 and 2015 Maya.

[AlanEddie]

I have started coding a better version for myself, achieving that Outliner plus shouldn't be too hard...

to create buttons to filter:

images / materials / geo/ mesh / anything you like really.

You have to look into the 'nodeType' and create filters. 

This was so easy in Softimage - I would hit 'i'  - Explorer would change to images, I select all,  COMBINED property editor would load up and I could

type in say a crop or starttime for all of them. Done in 5 seconds.  I know some like node based organisation, but I am resolutely convinced by Explorer organisation and layers. Neatness means I can do my job, relax and not have a breakdown with every gig!

[AlanEddie]

Most of it ain't working, right now but should be this year sometime!

[AnotherDave]

I can't agree more with this post.

The flexibility that the Explorer give you in Soft is essential to quickly navigating your scene and subeseqently speeding up your work flow. 

As a lighting artist it is incredibly easy for me to flick though any asset in a scene, press the 8 key, expand that asset and I can easily see what material is assigned to that asset and also what custer or UV maps it has. To find the equivalent out in maya is a massive ball ache, you have to click an object open up the attribute editor flick though the tabs (of which sometimes there can be loads of) find a material, expand it.

It's just not easily navigable and that is all in the hope of trying my best to avoid the hypershade as every time I do that I have to go make a cup of tea as the thing take ages to propogate the near useless material thumbnails that would be much easier to go through if they were just a list of names.

[FalconCrest]

The outliner needs a seriously redo in Maya.

[vitliskutin]

Yeah the Outliner is really bad in maya. You have to open other editors in maya to get to the same information you get in the explorer in xsi, and they take forever to open lol. Like the hypershade takes forever to open if you have lots of materials. Doesent matter that you turned of swatch generation and whateaver else. Also Node editor can take forever to open in a complex scene. Which is why it would be so nice to have a more "Functional" Outliner. Having filters for materials images etc would be really awesome. Looking at max c4d lightwave modo they all have better explorers then maya heh, why ? Where is the holdup ?