Improve Construction History

[trevor.adams]

Other applications like 3ds Max and Softimage give you more complete and more reliable control over the construction history (modifier stack) of an object.  Plus, the user experience in editing that history is better than it is in Maya.  Currently, Maya's construction history isn't very useful beyond the last-created node.

Here is a list of things we should be able to do with construction history in Maya, directly in the UI (e.g. Channel Box)

• Reorder operations in the history chain
• Easily turn an operator on/off (mute)
• Delete history nodes
• Delete "up to here" history nodes (like "Collapse To" in 3ds Max)
• Copy/paste history nodes
• Instantiate history nodes

[sublist]

This is so important!!!

[Anonymous]

In most cases it's already possible to delete history nodes. Just graph input connections in the hypergraph and delete it.

[sublist]

You can change the Node Behaviour to blocking as well, but this is not what non-destructive workflow is ment to be.

The History will break anyway if do these workarounds 😉

There has to be a complete rewrite, what a don't think will happen

[braden99]

I think its better to improve workflows to be more procedural, to reduce the need to reorder or rewire history.

For example a procedural bevel of target group components would allow the user to dynamically switch target components at any point later.

But yes, it should be easy to mute parts of the construction history, and visualize as cleanly as possible

[trevor.adams]

@Anonymous, you're right, for the most part it's possible to delete history nodes.  Part of this idea is to just make some of what's already possible, more accessible and discoverable - basically to improve the user experience of the Construction History in something like the Channel Editor.

@braden99, totally agree - Maya should be more procedural in its handling of data and mesh construction.  This idea posting is basically about improving the way Maya currently works with construction history.  While we may build procedural solutions in the future, we'll always have the current methods for how users create things in Maya and so I'm proposing that we just clean that part up and make it a better experience.  In other words, this wouldn't be considered a replacement for procedural solutions, but rather a cleaning up of what's already there with regards to construction history and the way Maya works.  Hope that made sense.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to comment.

[klaudio2u]

Definitely for improvement in this area!  
In my opinion, if possible, Maya should always have construction history method (but improved) of modeling as well as procedural like (3ds max modifier stack). Not one or the other but both you can freely choose because in certain situation it is just so much faster to model with construction history then manually adding modifiers for everything you do, on the other hand being able to do things in a true procedural way is really great too and certain things can be done only because of it. 

So, +1 for improved construction history and definitely as soon as possible Maya modifier stack!

- ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION - 
For construction history, i can see the list above has "Delete history nodes". I would suggest adding "Undo" option for construction history only which would work only on selected objects. 
I have a script for that, it is super simple but very useful. How it works is that you select the object(s) and if you have history on it then everytime you press the command it deletes last added in the history stack (or first node on the top of the list in Channel Box). In a way it is very similar to classic Undo command but instead of working globally where you Undo everything you do in Maya, this "History Step Delete" (i called my script like that) just deletes last history entry on the selected objects.  If that makes sense. 

Trevor, if you need more info about it i can make short video or something, no problem, let me know. 

[userX4542]

@trevor.adams Do you know if autodesk are actively working on this? And if so, what they are planning to implement for the next version of maya?

[userX4542]

I feel like the whole community is screaming to make maya more procedural and integrated but I literally have no idea what autodesk are working on, if anything at all. It's absolutely infuriating.

[johnkeates2865]

Yep!

Often Maya seems to think that a node is referring to particular verts so it doesn't want to change the order of operations, even if you assigned the node to the object. I think that is part of the problem.

[ValentinN84]

I've played around with Maya's history a lot in my 3d modeling job and I think I isolated two issues that might be worth looking into. I don't think they're the only ones, there might be more things that are needed for animation, riggind and other areas of Maya.

1. Most of Maya's lack of history editing flexibility comes from how it handles information that's passed from one node to the next. Component selections for example are passed as indexes, so if I go back in history and adjust a node that increases the polycount of an object, all the nodes that use polygon component selections after that gets messed up because the indexes change. This could possibly be improved by having an algorithm that passes on information from one node to the next by spatial position or another parameter that's more stable throughout the history chain. I think this is the hardest to implement (if not impossible) and might affect speed in a negative way.

2. It's missing the ability to keep nodes at the end of the history chain, similar to the top of the modifier stack in Max. This would allow artists to place some modifiers like Mirror, Poly Smooth always at the end of the history chain. It would also allow scripters to more easily implement things like a node that automatically bevels hard edges. This should be easier to implement I think and would really fix most of people's complaints of Maya's history not being Max's Modifier Stack...

[Anonymous]

Is there any interest in a modifier stack plugin? I would consider to build one (I know the Maya underworld very well :D). Would be complicated, but I think it is possible. Would be very useful for modelling.

[trevor.adams]

Setting this popular idea to "Under Review".

[Anonymous]

A lot of times I want to  adjust or delete or hide or even manipulate the sequence of modifiers like extrude or bevel ...etc. It will be great if Maya Has History editor) which I can use to better control my history.

[Kloworks]

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@Anonymous wrote:

A lot of times I want to  adjust or delete or hide or even manipulate the sequence of modifiers like extrude or bevel ...etc. It will be great if Maya Has History editor) which I can use to better control my history.

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there is already a topic a bout it and it's already under review, go and vote for it. post a comment if you want to add info : 

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-ideas/improve-construction-history/idi-p/7956890

[Kloworks]

finally, hopefully we see it in Maya 2019.
it will be huge step for hard surface user.

+modifier stack well be huge save time.

when you model the high poly in 3Dmax in modifier stack you add "bevel" then "edit poly" insert all edge loop after you done you copy it , then you just delete the "bevel" with "edit poly" and here you go you have the low poly.
in Maya you need to delete all edge loop manually. this is only simple example.

with modifier stack you can do a lot of thing. 

[norbyscook]

yes! Max's modifier user interaction design is amazing. use that design. or something close 🙂 

[moorf]

The ability to add for example a Symmetry Modifier or a Shell Modifier in a stack as can be done in 3DsMax would GREATLY simplify the process of poly modelling in Maya.

As a Max veteran who has spent the last 6 months in Houdini and Maya, I cannot stress how beneficial this would be. Given Maya is node based at its core, I would imaging this could be implemented as a node that 'sticks' to the shape node, external to and always processed after the deletable node history.

[briancallipari]

When I began to use maya, I collapsed the smooth to geometry in a lot of occasions. Headache.