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On 8/1/2020 at 1:03 PM, Carlosan said:

-_- Don't think about the interface, think about the workflow.

The interface is the path that leads us to use the tools for different tasks in the fastest and easiest way possible.

This is the ideal user scenario, but the wrong method while discussing the tool. Think about a hammer. When you want to put some nails into something you don't want to think about the hammer. But if you are creating or working on a hammer, you should carefully consider its balance and weight, the curves in the handle, the hardness of the steel, the curvature of the edge of the striking face, and so on. And that is what this discussion is. 3dcoat is a great program, but Pilgway are not great interface or tool designers.

As a small example, when doing Retopo, it would be useful to hide parts of the sculpt for better access. But the voxhide tool is only available in the sculpt room. So there's an annoying few extra clicks just to change the visibility of what I'm working on. This hammer has a weird shaped handle and I feel like there's a lot of community pressure into not talking about it.

Edited by Innovine
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Exactly, i agree with you.

 

There are 3 design areas.

- Rooms or workspaces, which contain the tools to perform the tasks.

- The tools themselves, which are created according to the tasks to be carried out and,

- how those workspaces are interconnected to allow the fluidity of work in the different comings and goings of the final product.


Above all, the design must respect future expansions and developments of the software, since as we know, the process of digital creation is always changing when new solutions appear.

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On 7/31/2020 at 10:53 PM, Silas Merlin said:

Everyone seems to agree that Zbrush has a peculiar, outlandish way of doing things. yet... the software has become some sort of standard.
 

Knowing this, why do you feel that 3d-Coat has to be stripped of its own peculiarities ?

I originally started off with the concept of adding sculpt brush to the paint room to fix displacement issues on the spot where areas of topology resolution  is either too dense or not dense enough and will cause the texture/displacement to either shrink or expand drastically.. from there my responses suggested just to move the painting tools into the sculpt room.. and I said if that were to happen that tools should ideally be color coded to be intuitive showing compatibility with other compatible tools to prevent corrupting/damaging the project to keep consistent solid workflow. My original suggestion was just about a small change...lol  -Just a sculpt brush to add volume or subtract it and add smoothing brush in the paint room.  I need the ability to see on the spot the changes rather than sending the model over to the sculpt room and back.. My project is slow enough with subdivisions and painting with 8k, i'd like to avoid crashes.  I'm not suggesting that 3DCoat start looking or behaving like Zbrush.. I think all developers find their own way but often either come to the same conclusions or build ideas/tools of each other's successes.

Edited by Ascensi
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On 7/31/2020 at 6:53 PM, Silas Merlin said:

Everyone seems to agree that Zbrush has a peculiar, outlandish way of doing things. yet... the software has become some sort of standard.
 

Knowing this, why do you feel that 3d-Coat has to be stripped of its own peculiarities ?

Zbrush is peculiar indeed and it breaks some interface standards that we come to expect however its also quite efficient in its design. When you mix efficiency with the fact that it really has no equal competition, naturally they can get away it.

Unfortunately 3D Coat is not in the same position. It has direct competition. When you mix that competition with some inefficient design components, it really does not have the luxury to be too comfortable with its "peculiarities".

I think what this comes down to for 3D Coat is improving efficiency by reducing convoluted design components and remove unnecessary fragmentation, all while positioning itself to compete strongly for one more areas (sculpting, painting, retopology and UV editing).

Take a look what Marmoset Toolbag did. At first it carved out its place in the pipeline by offering a good means to preview and present game assets, however as viewports in DCC apps improved, and accessibility to game engines rose, they had to in turn find a way to still remain unique and relevant. Now instead of just being a preview application, it sells itself as being the ultimate tool for baking via an intuitive easy to use interface. Just for that alone users are shelling out close to $200.

As the competition changes, 3D dcc applications get better, with more functionality that overlaps with 3D Coat's niche, 3DC has to find a way to react to those changes. Interface simplification and consolidation would help quite a bit, along with some strong features that really set it apart in an easy to use manner.

 

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I have no problem with the concept of "rooms" - I just wish my imported object would stop disappearing depending upon which room I'm in.

Why I'm in here today though is to make a suggestion. And that is for the list of "brushes" to be scroll-able thank you. Spent the better part of my available time today installing a number of new brushes, etc. Only to find that I then had to uninstall them in order to use the program. They would not scroll so could not see all the options available, let alone the brushes to select.

And yes, I even tried undocking the Brushes panel ... put it up top ... where upon I discovered that if one opened a folder "full" of brushes, that overlapped the [getting rather small] workspace. I could neither select a brush nor work on the object. And no I could not resize either panel on the horizontal ... the overlap invalidated many such options.

Also: For installing new images that are supposed to be good for making brushes, I am curious as to why some .psd files will load/install and work, and other .psd files not only don't load/install into the program - they cause the program to crash. It crashed several times today over .psd files.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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On 8/3/2020 at 1:10 PM, Carlosan said:

... to allow the fluidity of work in the different comings and goings of the final product.


Above all, the design must respect future expansions and developments of the software, since as we know, the process of digital creation is always changing when new solutions appear.

 

Fluidity is not a word I'd use in connection with the UI for the new curves tool.

Please redesign it, cos its horrible.

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Maybe merge the UV room and Retopo room and call it something else ?

People go to the uv room to do uv work and they don't have all the tools they need there....

This merged room should have somewhere big and visible a toggle for working either on retopo mesh or paint mesh.
When you toggle, the irrelevant tools are greyed out. (greyed out, not vanished, because that contributes to confusion imho).

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I'm using  2 x 4k monitors and the current interface on a 4k screen seems antiquated and crude compared to other DCCs out there right now.

I'm not going to say what should be done to improve that; I'll leave that to the ergonomics experts. 3d Coat workflow is already better than ZBrush despite the obvious advantages in many areas of Zbrush. I'd like to see the workflow clarified, made more obvious and straightforward an direct. 

 

 

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Actually I want to say that what is really needed is better documentation on everything leading to a clarification of potential workflows. Creating workflows is very individualistic and creative in itself in any complex software and I'd really like to have SideFX Houdini quality documentation on all functions and workflows.

 

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/

 

The comparative weakness of 3d Coat's manual/documentation is my biggest criticism of a program I'm very attached to.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...
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Greeting! Is it possible to make the panel in the top right corner viewport stay like in the old versions (4.8), not only when you move cursor towards this corner?  And second question - how to make the rotation angle and the ortho view be used by default? Sorry if this question has already been asked, i did not find the answer. Thank you.

Coat panel hid.jpg

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Hi 

It is not possible to make the panel in the top right corner viewport stay like in the old versions (its hard codec).

To use always the rotation angle and ortho view create a new empty scene from that view and use as default to make your creations.

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7 hours ago, Carlosan said:

Hi 

It is not possible to make the panel in the top right corner viewport stay like in the old versions (its hard codec).

To use always the rotation angle and ortho view create a new empty scene from that view and use as default to make your creations.

Thank you for answer! btw i find it a silly idea to make this part of vieport dissapear - because you cannot use this part anyway (like to rotate the object) This part is still occupied by this panel nomatter if you see it or not.

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3 hours ago, Elemeno said:

would love to see a new ui though ... something where everything can extend like how zbrush does it,

everything alone the left side and you click and everything expands to give you choice.

Ohhh nonononono )))))))

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  • 8 months later...
3DCoat-2023-07 
Fri Mar 17 00:16:24 2023 +0200
- Fixed a lot of problems related to the activity bar. Now it is much more convenient. In details:
(1) switching folders refreshes content immediately,
(2) Correct icon in Alphas tab,
(3) Correct show/hide of the items panel, there was problem that panel hides unexpectedly if the right panel width is a bit bigger than default.
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