2024 Feature requests wishlist

[jammer42777]

Firstly to the dev, thank you for responding.

To OP have you clicked on customize UI in a custom room?  you may be able to not have so many options all at once if you combine those two.

To the Dev if I hopefully still have their ear.  
I am wondering if in the custom room dialog above, can you could please add a browse button so we (the users) can add a custom hotkey file just for that room?  where that hotkey file loads Only when we select that room?
That way would wouldn't have to manually open a hotkey file every time we switch rooms.

Thank you!

[MJonathan]

I think at this moment that the User Experience needs to be more important for developers than User Interface. Both are related, but actually it's so complex to work with a same model in all the rooms. In the menus are options that aren't relation with the current room. Blender had the same problem with user experience in older versions, but now in 2.8 and above, they improved It, and It's very friendly to change between different contexts.

[Elemeno]

2 hours ago, Gorbatovsky said:

It would be great if you could be more specific.

for example baking tools are in Edit menu .

be nice if they was specifically in an area ,

 

maybe in paint a specific area just have all baking options inside there , much clearer instruction for some of the features ...

there are a lot of transfer paint to sculpt options , 4 options all doing the same thing

[poeboi]

2 hours ago, Elemeno said:

would be really nice to get a more simplified ui , the ui is extremely confusing not just new users but even old users

2 hours ago, Gorbatovsky said:

It would be great if you could be more specific.

I personally maintain, UI layout itself is fine,

UX is challenging because the problem area lies more in the idiosyncrasies of 3DCoat opposed to other DCC apps, in that you have very many occurrences of tools that perform very particular actions, and so there is an enormous saturation of options in every menu. That makes it difficult to reduce the UI. Quick thought exercise: how would you lay out the RMB menu options for layers, or Curve options menus, or Tools panel options, for example in Blender's UI or 3DS Max UI or ZBrush UI? One quickly finds it's a disproportionate effort, you would just end up with a very bloated side panel or at best a few shelves with options underneath, e.g. the exact same problem again, this is because the tools' actions are so distinct

I'd like to quote my own thread, in which I proposed "favorites menu"

On 2/19/2023 at 5:39 PM, poeboi said:

3. "Favorites/Bookmark Menu"
    - Like the Quick Menu in Blender
    
    - It is empty to start with, but one can add any one command to it, and only be presented with one's "most common tools" in a menu every time
    - Active a menu on hotkey, it contains your favorited commands
    - I suggest, any one thing that can be keybound, can also be quickly added to this menu
    - Can be context sensitive pr room so only one for sculpt room, one for painting, etc

Example Blender Sculpt Room. Hotkey press 'Q' brings up Quick menu, in which I've added some common operations so I don't need to locate them in UI each time or assign hotkey to each.

 

Something like this, reproducible panels in which one can add one's most common used features and tools; this will leave it up to the user to identify what options, tools, actions, et cetera it is they use the most frequently, instead of being presented with "all options" each time, and I firmly believe can seriously alleviate a big part of the issue of UI / UX logistics problem which is, "OK, I need to use tool/option X... where is it" and then looking through many RMB menus; title bar menus; hotkey panels etc to find it.

A balance must be struck, having everything available to you vs most things you intend to use

After extensive use, this problem does not pain me so much anymore because I 80% remember where everything I need, is, but it still can steal a lot of energy, and I understand why it can put off many new users of the software

only meant to present a possible solution! lots of love

[jammer42777]

yes I know this is a blender addon, but it would be awesome if the space bar would be replaced by something like this  with big easy to read text for my almost blind eye

 

 

[Melik]

On 3/26/2023 at 8:25 PM, jammer42777 said:

yes I know this is a blender addon, but it would be awesome if the space bar would be replaced by something like this  with big easy to read text for my almost blind eye

 

 

 

This is a great idea for a different "Quick Access" shiftbar panel.  The important thing is being able to create a CUSTOM quick access panel featuring only the brushes we use regularly so we don't have a giant panel with all the brushes.

The option to drag your favorite brushes to the top of the quick access panel is a good idea, but the distance the cursor has to travel from your sculpting area up to the top of the big quick access panel defeats the purpose of having favorites for easy access.

[3Dsmash]

On 3/26/2023 at 2:33 PM, Gorbatovsky said:

It would be great if you could be more specific.

Alexandr,

I'm very happy to see this forum thread where developers are accepting suggestions for 3DC 2023.  Thank you for listening to users.

I have many specific UI and UX suggestions to make using 3DCoat a cleaner, faster, easier and more pleasant experience (especially for new users). 

Would a detailed video for each proposed change be helpful?  I can separate the video into chapters for easy reference, or I can make separate videos.  Or are written posts here more useful?  I'm trying to save you guys long posts with lots of words that try to explain visual ideas.

Please advise how best to share the suggestions, as I am eager to do what I can to make 3DCoat more accessible to more users out there who constantly complain about the interface etc.

Is this forum thread the best place to share ideas?  If not, where and which developer should the suggestions be addressed?

There are forum threads from many years ago regarding User Interface changes that were never considered or addressed.  Maybe they were never seen or read by developers.

Thanks

[3Dsmash]

On 3/26/2023 at 5:04 PM, poeboi said:

I personally maintain, UI layout itself is fine,

UX is challenging because the problem area lies more in the idiosyncrasies of 3DCoat opposed to other DCC apps, in that you have very many occurrences of tools that perform very particular actions, and so there is an enormous saturation of options in every menu. That makes it difficult to reduce the UI. Quick thought exercise: how would you lay out the RMB menu options for layers, or Curve options menus, or Tools panel options, for example in Blender's UI or 3DS Max UI or ZBrush UI? One quickly finds it's a disproportionate effort, you would just end up with a very bloated side panel or at best a few shelves with options underneath, e.g. the exact same problem again, this is because the tools' actions are so distinct

I'd like to quote my own thread, in which I proposed "favorites menu"

 

Something like this, reproducible panels in which one can add one's most common used features and tools; this will leave it up to the user to identify what options, tools, actions, et cetera it is they use the most frequently, instead of being presented with "all options" each time, and I firmly believe can seriously alleviate a big part of the issue of UI / UX logistics problem which is, "OK, I need to use tool/option X... where is it" and then looking through many RMB menus; title bar menus; hotkey panels etc to find it.

A balance must be struck, having everything available to you vs most things you intend to use

After extensive use, this problem does not pain me so much anymore because I 80% remember where everything I need, is, but it still can steal a lot of energy, and I understand why it can put off many new users of the software

only meant to present a possible solution! lots of love

You make good points and I like your suggestion of a favorites menu.  Quick, easy access to most used functions is an essential part of a smooth, efficient User Experience.  Otherwise, as you accurately pointed out, getting around the interface "steals a lot of energy".  Well said.

Related to your point, the biggest pain point with the 3DCoat UI is that it's incredibly TEXT heavy.  Every other interface in the 3D space is ICON-centric, and DROP-DOWN-centric which makes for cleaner, more comfortable UX.

[Elemeno]

would be nice to see a painter type layer system ....
something where you can visualize each layer .. isolate what each layer is contributing ..

i know this is achievable already but its not the best workflow .. also being able to render each channel separately would benefit greatly , at the moment i believe flat and roughness is viewable but no emission only or alpha only , or metalness ...  being able to see you displacements or normal maps on the mesh would be amazing , you could smooth out any imperfections etc...

i know you can import a normal map as base colour and edit etc then but i dont think its able to do it while being a normal map

[Gorbatovsky]

2 hours ago, 3Dsmash said:

Would a detailed video for each proposed change be helpful? 

Of course a video would be very helpful.
Thank you.

[MJonathan]

On 3/29/2023 at 1:45 PM, Elemeno said:

would be nice to see a painter type layer system

Yes!! It can be awesome, painter has very similar layers to photoshop, and RMB to get options like levels, color correct, anchor points, etc. And blend modes per channel, actually 3dcoat has blend modes only for diffuse channel, we need blend modes for all the channels. These are suggestion to improve de User Experience.

Other suggestion for the UI is to have a proper Outliner like maya or blender. Actually, we have a lot of tabs for objects. Sculpt Tree, paint objects, curves tree, poly groups. That is very confuse! A simple way to manage that, is to have an outliner, then in the outliner you have different types of objects (curves, lights, geometry, particles, etc). So when you select an item in outliner, you have other attribute panel with the actions for that object. In maya is called attribute editor. Maya works with nodes, similar to houdini (it's in other level), every item has its own node with its attributes, that's very powerful for artist and developers.

Other good implementation for UI can be, pie menus, and improve the creation of objects. In maya, 3ds max, blender we have very intuitive menu of creation. For example, in blender you can press Shift + A in the viewport, and automatically it creates a menu with submenus with type of objects.

Edited April 2, 2023 by MJonathan

[Elemeno]

just wondering if when we are performing a subtraction from a mesh if it could be highlighted ... just for visual help, might be helpful not sure

something like this??

[Elemeno]

im not sure if this is currently already available ...

but can you warp a mesh to fit another meshes surface...  for example ... you have a cylinder shape and you want a square shape to fit on the cylinders surface but fit to its curve?

[rubeos]

When you use the ''isolate'' command, the object that is isolated is not always the active one. Taking me to the active object forces me and make several more clicks or act on the sculpt tree.

This would be very useful because not all tools and curves have autopick.
If all tools had autopick there would be no need for the focus on the active object.

The request is that when you isolate an object in the sculpting tree the active object automatically becomes that, or at least that there be a very quick command to switch to that.

Edited April 11, 2023 by rubeos

[Elemeno]

can you add some more simplicity please... first time ive ever exported a baked normal map (as i dont normally use 3dcoat for this )

and i was greeted with the most confusing exporter EVER!

[rubeos]

I am trying to learn well and understand the fundamental brush, voxel hide, in relation also to commands that I think are often used in conjunction with voxel hide, such as ''trought all volumes,'' ''auto pick,'' and ''isolate.''

In the workflow of these tools, the problem I'm experiencing is the difficulty in accurately selecting only the volume or volumes I want to cut.
Often you have to cut a volume that is hidden behind another but as you continue to create the cut the auto pick intersects unwanted volumes forcing pernicious undoes or a considerable number of clicks to get around the problem.

I thought that, to improve in one shot ''autopick'' ''trought all volumes'' in combination with cutting brushes (vox hide, cut off and others) would suffice a shortcut like ctrl+shift + left click to select ''visually'' only the volumes you want to cut, which can be one or many.

The key point is that the first click with ctrl shift locks the selection on that object. Once the object is locked you can begin cutting either in the empty space of the viewport or even directly on an unselected object...without worrying about cutting off objects you don't want or activating/deactivating other tools.
The mesh of the selected volumes changes color slightly to make it visually recognized.
Ctrl shift may disable itself automatically when not using curves and cuts.
Ctrl shift is a free shortcut when cutting with vox hide.
Even nicer would be to make commands available that turn functions on and off in the blank space....don't know if they already exist.

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2023 by rubeos
error

[rubeos]

I forgot, ctrl +shift+ double click on any object, could select/deselect all objects in the sculpt tree (with toggle option)

[rubeos]

Hello. A few things, all interrelated.
Of secondary importance, but useful.

The common element to these is that I'd like to see more prominently the icon, or the name, or both, of the tool that I'm using.

There are a lot of brushes and tools in 3Dcoat and often I literally don't know what I'm using, which one is active (also because sticky keys bounce commands and I end up getting lost)

It would be great if both in the tool sidebar and the tools palette the current tool was highlighted more

Edit: I solved the problem of highlighting the tools in the side tool bar, just change the Ui color scheme, sorry.

Also it would be nice if there was the ability to customize the size of the icons and names in the tools palette as well, or to be able to choose just the names, without an icon. (Will be a layout similar to Lightwave)

EDIT: In particular I would like the tool palette to show the names of the tools in full and not broken up, like now....no matter if the tools palette gets as big as the whole screen. And with a brighter color that highlights better the current brush.

For now I partially solve the problem by putting only the tool names in the sidebar, I have a better glance and I can see almost all the ones I need without scrolling the bar.

However I repeat, the most important thing is to somehow make the tool you are using brighter and more obvious.

Last thing: I created a new room, but in the top left corner of the interface I only see the icon of the tool I'm using but not the full name, as I do in all the other rooms...i dont know if it is a small bug or not.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by rubeos
edit

[Elemeno]

just wondering... could this be implemented to 3dcoat?

https://github.com/nicopietroni/quadwild

looks like a good remesher

[Kryslin]

Feature requests:

1) Be able to change the low poly wireframe color.  When up against a similarly colored surface, one has to turn the lighting brightness down nearly to all the way in order to work on the mesh in the paint room.

2) Wireframe line thickness.  I'm working on a pair of 2560 x 1440 monitors, the wires can be awfully hard to see.

Thanks.

[AbnRanger]

6 hours ago, Kryslin said:

Feature requests:

1) Be able to change the low poly wireframe color.  When up against a similarly colored surface, one has to turn the lighting brightness down nearly to all the way in order to work on the mesh in the paint room.

2) Wireframe line thickness.  I'm working on a pair of 2560 x 1440 monitors, the wires can be awfully hard to see.

Thanks.

You can change the wireframe color in the Preferences panel > Theme tab. Thickness, I don't think there is a parameter for that.

[Kryslin]

You can change the normal wireframe color, yes.  And I have done so.

But not the low poly wireframe.  It's always a pale yellow.  Which is a pain to work with when the base color is anywhere near that, like gold, brass, lemon, etc.

[Elemeno]

might be an unpopular opinion but the modelling room isn't needed, i would love to see new sculpting tools (modifiers) , one tool could be a lattice tool , so you could either have a shell thats very low poly that you can manipulate and that will manipulate the high poly mesh and have an option of how strong the effect is on the given edge or face etc ...

just 3dcoats sculpt tools are such good modelling tools that traditional poly modelling just doesn't excite me anymore

[Sal_GC]

I am new to 3DC and I have just started in the Modelling Room. I haven't tried the Sculpt Room as I am getting familiar with 3DC modelling tools and poly models-> paint room workflow. I have enjoyed it pretty much; the ability to do all this in the same software is quite enjoyable for me, however, judging from most of 3DC's online material, the Sculpting Room is where the real power lies. The voxel workflow is unique and unmatched, and surface mode can handle lots of detail and polycount. I can see why very experienced users would prefer dev efforts to go to Sculpt Room improvements and refinements, rather than building a new room from the ground up, even more so if there is very mature software in that area elsewhere. 

However, as an freelancer, 3DC having both approaches to creating geometry is such a blessing. I get to mix and match the tools to produce the geometry I want depending on their intended use. Real-time or offline rendering are all very approachable through these avenues. This complimentary approach to geometry, once both rooms reach certain level of maturity and interop, paired with the UV and retopo tools and perhaps some procedural geometry generation, will make of 3DC an absolute DCC powerhouse.

I just hope the improvements for both rooms keep coming. We all win.  

[jammer42777]

I agree  the sculpt room is very powerful, I made this in a few minutes with the primitives tool.

[Elemeno]

13 hours ago, Sal_GC said:

I am new to 3DC and I have just started in the Modelling Room. I haven't tried the Sculpt Room as I am getting familiar with 3DC modelling tools and poly models-> paint room workflow. I have enjoyed it pretty much; the ability to do all this in the same software is quite enjoyable for me, however, judging from most of 3DC's online material, the Sculpting Room is where the real power lies. The voxel workflow is unique and unmatched, and surface mode can handle lots of detail and polycount. I can see why very experienced users would prefer dev efforts to go to Sculpt Room improvements and refinements, rather than building a new room from the ground up, even more so if there is very mature software in that area elsewhere. 

However, as an freelancer, 3DC having both approaches to creating geometry is such a blessing. I get to mix and match the tools to produce the geometry I want depending on their intended use. Real-time or offline rendering are all very approachable through these avenues. This complimentary approach to geometry, once both rooms reach certain level of maturity and interop, paired with the UV and retopo tools and perhaps some procedural geometry generation, will make of 3DC an absolute DCC powerhouse.

I just hope the improvements for both rooms keep coming. We all win.  

once you use the sculpting tools you'll realise that traditional modelling isnt need as much, now the software is alot more stable , most of my work is done in 3dcoat now 

[Gorbatovsky]

18 hours ago, Sal_GC said:

I just hope the improvements for both rooms keep coming

Yes, we will develop parametric modeling. Including solid state.
We will give designers different technologies, including hybrid techniques.

[Gorbatovsky]

18 hours ago, jammer42777 said:

I made this in a few minutes

But, it often takes a lot of time to create a low poly mesh based on a sculpted mesh.

Creative designers love sculpt room.
 

[jammer42777]

3 hours ago, Gorbatovsky said:

Yes, we will develop parametric modeling. Including solid state.
We will give designers different technologies, including hybrid techniques.

I absolutely LOVE the lathe tool and the freeform cube.

However I would like to request that the freeform objects have a fillet option.

Thank you

[Metin Seven]

8 hours ago, jammer42777 said:

I absolutely LOVE the lathe tool and the freeform cube.

However I would like to request that the freeform objects have a fillet option.

Thank you

I'd like that too, nice suggestion!