New Simply Maya Site
 

Hi everyone,

We have completed the new Simply Maya site and in order for us to be able to integrate the old and new database we will take the site off-line for a few hours some time over the next 24 hours. So I just wanted to give you a warning:)

The new site is great, we're really happy with the way the design came out and all the new features we've added. The community will have a lot more space on this site and we intend to make it a fresh start for Simply Maya so me and David hope you'll all be around and still make this the best Maya community online.

In case anyone's worried the site will keep it's identity, we decided to move away from the Simply3DWorld concept that was mentioned a few years back. We believe that there's plenty of sites for multiple apps and one of the unique features is that this is a clean Maya site so that's how it will stay in the future as well.

Thanks for all the help and understanding,
Nilla

Re: New Simply Maya Site
 

I assume discussion and posts involving other apps won't be discouraged... As they weren't before.

Anyway, can't wait to see the new site.

one thing i love about this site was that it loads extremely fast even if your on a mobile phone i hope that wont change

Cant wait...fresh site...new things etc..this should be good.

bullet

@Mayaniac: Other software discussions are always welcome, I just wanted to mention Simply3dWorld as there were a lot of discussions on this a few years back before my time and we do have the sites for Lightwave and Max as well. There was also a forum thread on this a few months back so I wanted to bring it up.

On the new Simply Maya we want to provide more diverse training than we currently have on this site, we will start by building up a lighting and dynamics section, and to do so for more than one application and keep the same quality across it would be a nightmare. Also to integrate the boards across the sites wouldn't really work as Simply Max has never had a community and Simply Lightwave has been dropping off over the past year. One of the great things about SM is that people usually get good repies to their questions as there's some great Maya knowledge in this community, and to expect the same level of knowledge for Lightwave and Max would probably be expecting a bit much and might end up damaging the community rather than enriching it we think. So that's the reason for why Simply Maya will remain a clean Maya site, rather than becoming Simply3dWorld.
@murambi: The site will be slower for the first weeks while we work out all the kinks, but after that it should run as fast as the current site does.

Like.

;)

Yay! But what will become of the SimplyMax/Lightwave sites?

Haha, I'm glad you "like" stwert:) I tell you what, we got those nice little like buttons all over the site and in the end we really didn't like. So they went, if that will be the fall of Simply Maya well then it was a huge mistake. I reserve the right to "like" in the future though...

Gen, for Simply Lightwave it will go through the same transformation as Simply Maya. I love the lighting content on that site, it's some of the best online. It will have to happen some time after Christmas though, when I've had a chance to recover from the 600 hours of Maya video I've watched and me and David are not only communicating via skype anymore. The amount of work that goes into turning these sites around is huge, I think that's why it took him so many years:) Simply Max is a pretty dead site so it's a story for another year, it's difficult to build when there's not really that much to build on. We decided to focus on Maya and Lightwave instead for now.

Also David's started to integrate the forums so there might be some problems with the site from now and for a few days until the new one is up I'm not sure exactly how long it will take until it's done.

At last!!

Well done to you both, especially to Nilla for holding the gun to Daves head.

I better get some new pants now to celebrate, these others have worn thin sitting on my arse all day, and theres only so much life left in them even after turning them inside out day in day out!!

cheers
Jay

Is the address ever going to change back to www.simplymaya.com instead of www.simply3dworld.com then ????

Looking forward to changes

Cheers Jay:) He actually deserves a lot of credit though for his work on the new site, I never knew how good he was at web design. You just have to stop him from adding too many funny icons because he really likes them, like child.

We will take back the simplymaya.com domain name again for the new site, the forum will be under that one as well. So changes will come;)

So, it's time for the annual snow chaos in continental europe again, every year it snows and every year they're just as surprised and all communication and transport breaks down. Being swedish i find this highly entertaining.

Anyway, the snow's caused our internet connection to slow down and drop out too much in order for us to establish a proper connection with the server so the site will stay online until everything starts working again here in the third world.

As soon as we have a proper connection the site will go offline.

took me a while to see where the login button was but this site is looking really really clean and tidy.

hmm, i wonder what this site looked like with the out-of-place "like" buttons.. I have to say though, the facebook stuff really does look amateur, so it's probably best that I haven't seen the "like" buttons pasted everywhere

The site is looking nice!

And I really like the sound of monthly challenges, I'll be visiting here more often again methinks....

Well well well...doesnt this look snazzy!!! Like a new shed with neverending beer in the beer fridge....I think its pretty damn goos so far.

Cheers bullet

:skull:

AWSOME!!!

LOL

Well this looked great on my huge monitor here at work - good job and well done. It loads nice and fast too

Jay;)

me again...

just had a look around, the whole site is great and has been nicely thought out. I'll look forward to posting again when I get time

Jay

Thanks for the nice comments, this type of design is quite tricky because you need to keep it clean and small things make a huge difference. It's still a WIP, many things will change over the next few days especially on the community side of things but it's just easier to do while the site's up. Also some of the elements on the front page like my links and resources don't work yet.

It's still not as fast as it should be. For the facebook page there's nothing there so it looks quite stupid atm, I'm doing it later tonight we just decided to do it all in one sweep and the site itself is more important.

BUGGER you Jay....I wanted to say it...you devil. AWESOME and its AWESOMNESS is so AWESOME...LOL...it is a rather nice Xmas present David and Nilla...well done.

cheers bullet

Onward and upward

LOL AWSOME!!

J

site looks good, dont see a "like"button anywhere tho.

do we really need the button....I reckon I like it..FB then like it there too...LOL

what a nice surprise coming to simplymaya and seeing this new design.

Im a web and graphic designer and have to say, I like it.

My only slight crit would be the text on the forums that users post is ...not hard to read but not too clear. I would say a darker tone in the font colour on the lighter background would be a bit better.

Everything else is TOP! :)

Well done everyone at SM.

No "like" buttons, they were removed before the site went up. Again it's that thing about keeping clean design, it's very limited how much you can add before it gets cluttered or confused. The SM Facebook page will go up some time in the evening though so you all better come to Facebook and like us there;)

Thanks s2-speedy, it's very nice to hear from a web designer. Dave designed the whole site and I did text and tutorial pages and we had quite a few heated discussions over some elements, he always wins in the end though:)

We're not done with the forums yet, I'm working on them now and I was thinking the same thing as you just mentioned. That text color is reflected throughout the whole site though and it's one of the things that connects the forum and tutorial pages so it creates a nice flow and transition. It works better on white for sure, I'll mention it to David later and see what we can do with it. Should be AWESOME!

haha, not bothered about the like button. I was only kidding.

Yeah the grey font looks great on the white, its just when its on the light purple background. Its not really hard to read, just think a shade darker would be sweet. Im just being a bit picky though :)

The like button didn't seem to be too popular in the thread posted last week, haha. I've looked at sites that have it and I just don't get it, but I've never used Facebook up until the past few days either.

I am thinking about the grey font though, if you had bad eye sight it would probably be blending a bit too well. It's funny when you lay down the same color text on different color backgrounds how it sometimes come out looking like a completely different color, I noticed that a lot in the past few weeks.

My eye sight is not good (old age) and it is hard for me to see without glasses. A tad darker would help.........dave

Oooooo shiiiiny!!!!

I'm off to explore.

I LIKE :D

Well done..

Again thanks a lot for the feedback Mayaniac and 3dStudent and everyone in this thread.

We just changed the color scheme for a test, we swapped the light purple and the white around between the actual post and the user details. I think it makes the text more readable but I also feel like it's a bit too white and bright like this, kind of jumps at you. I think what we'll do is swap it back to what it was and then just darken the text a bit to make it more readable. Does seem like the best solution.

Let me know what you guys think and we'll figure it out together.

I was just about to say that the text was hard to read in the posts, and then suddenly I realized that it wasn't so bad, and I didn't know if my eyes were adjusting, and then I saw you'd changed it. Yes, I'm not a fan of the light grey text... too hard on the eyes.

Other than that, looks super great! AWESOME! Although, I just noticed that there seems to be a problem with shift left or right arrow selecting text in this reply box... maybe it's my computer.

Cheers stwert:) We just changed the text to a much darker grey a few minutes ago, I think it works a lot better than the light grey so unless there's any objections we'll keep the text as it is now.

There is a problem with the arrow keys, we're working on getting it fixed right now.

Oh snap! This is nice! Loving the new smilies lol :giggle:. Now I'm off to poke around.

Text is a lot better now.

I also should say that I'm missing the logo icon in the location bar/tab page title :playfull: (?). Keep up the great work!

i feel like a kid in a candy store the site looks amazingly refreshing well done David and Nilla

Corrr! I Like!

Loving the new site, and really like the forums with the pictures next to the post title on the main screen. Awesome work. The new design/layout makes me want to buy tutorials.

Ya I love the little smilies :wavespin:

Dave :)