One thing that may be very useful from seeing artists using our maya tools is to have the ability or choice to automatically keep the tabs for input and asset information, asset options, etc minimized by default. Currently when a node is dropped, people freak out a little bit when they see 500 inputs, then a plethora of buttons

I like those buttons, but they scare artists perhaps we could optionally hide them via a configuration?

The “asset information” and “asset options” can probably stay collapsed by default all the time. Not sure if “inputs” should be collapsed by default though… When you first load the asset, you'd want to connect the inputs. Afterwards, if you collapse the the inputs tab, Maya will remember it… but the collapse state is lost after Maya exits. So in general, since artists aren't always connecting inputs, it's probably better off to have it collapsed by default as well?

For the default state of the parameter tabs, I wonder what's a good way to control it. Maybe it can be done as part of the post-sync script, or maybe a post-AE script… Hm, right now, the collapse state is reset whenever the AE is regenerated (e.g. selecting a different node). It might be nice to remember the collapse state by using some dummy attributes on the node. In that case, the post-sync/AE script might be able to control the state through those dummy attributes.

One of the reasons why I brought up inputs as an issue is because in situations where you have, say, 100 inputs to support being able to bring separate meshes, Maya starts freezing up everytime it has to load the attribute editor (with 500, it basically feels like a crash although if you wait about 10 mins, it will come back ). Could we follow the same logic as the houdini does with input plugs where:

- 10 inputs are displayed as 10 plugs ==> inputs tab is expanded in Maya
- 11 and + inputs are collapsed into the multi input plug ==> input tab is collapsed in maya

if there are more than 10 inputs, most likely these are not being set manually (in my case, I set them with a script based on the members of a set) therefore they could probably be collapsed by default

A bit of an old post but maybe it's still relevant..

I've fixed this tabs state issue here by defaulting to being collapsed. This seemed the less frustrating.
It was easy to do.
Open the file:
…/HoudiniEngine/maya2015/scripts/AEhoudiniAssetTemplate.mel

and change:
-collapse false
to
-collapse true

There is a second frameLayout where the flag was missing and I have added this there.

So this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-label $multiNiceName;
became this:
frameLayout
-collapsable true
-collapse true
-label $multiNiceName;

cheers,
benS

Thank you Ben! That is awesome to know. Is it posublets to.embed logic on it so that if inputs > 10, it collapses, otherwise it does not? (To mimic houdini behaviour)

Not sure.. I'm not so familiar with Maya.. was just hacking around and found that collapse flag.
But I do see lots of if() statements so I guess it should be possible.

cheers,
benS