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if anyone have any suggestions how should look like icons for "Sculpt", "Retop", "UV" and "Voxels" tools, post it in this topic :yes::paint2:
I don't see why there is a need for icons when they are arrayed as "rooms." You have buttons with text on them and I don't see how you can improve on that.

The old addage, "Don't try to fix what isn't broken" applies here (regarding the rooms buttons..they are fine just the way they are)

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I don't see why there is a need for icons when they are arrayed as "rooms." You have buttons with text on them and I don't see how you can improve on that.

The old addage, "Don't try to fix what isn't broken" applies here (regarding the rooms buttons..they are fine just the way they are)

If I understood you correctly, you are talking about "buttons #2", and I mean "buttons #1"... correct me if I'm wrong :)

PS sorry for my English :pardon:

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If I understood you correctly, you are talking about "buttons #2", and I mean "buttons #1"... correct me if I'm wrong :)

PS sorry for my English :pardon:

Yes, the 2nd button group...someone suggested they needed icons, and I beg to differ.

Did some work, making a mockup of the current UI (build 83) using the slider's like you find in Combustion, Flame, and Houdini. What do you guys think (the 2nd is before my changes, and the 3rd is with colored level indicators on the sliders)? Again, on these sliders, you can place you cursor anywhere in the windows/box and drag the levels left and right...instead of having to focus your cursor on just the tiny little knob

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Can we make the voxel tool pallet dockable so we can use that space for docking other windows such as shaders or pens, etc.With the space bar option I think we could utilize that space more effectively.Maybe it's been said before,don't remember.

Also I really like the icons for the paint options, it would be nice to have some of those cool icons for the vox tools as well.I seem to have a hard time intuitively choosing a tool on the fly.I think well designed icons would help in this matter.Thank you.

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Could you add colour to the new slider < > arrows in the '3D Coat Green' -- I find they're a bit hard to pick out sometimes, especially as they are very close to word itself. Or can I ? :unsure: which texture is this in??

These arrows only icon ... to change the value enough to put the cursor on the word, hold LMB and move mouse the left\right :)

texture BothSideArrows.tga

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Interface suggestion: Make "Shaders" panel open by default when switch to voxel page. This will make new users' life more easier.

I think that would be hard to do because it depends on where the user has put the shader panel. For example mine is in the same group as the Pens, I would rather have my pens open than the shaders. Now what would be really nice is if it just remembered the last shader you used., then I would almost never need to look at the shader panel.

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I must say, the UI is coming along nicely. I like how Andrew replaced the knobs on the sliders with the ability to just scrub back and forth across the text.

Folks new to the program will love that.

Now what this program needs more than anything...is some comprehensive training available for it, the way ZBrush and Mudbox have

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Here's a simple suggestion. The autosave file is always in the same place with the same name, so why not just make a button that just opens the last autosave? To go the extra mile there could be some way of showing the time and date of when the autosave file was last modified. That way if you have a crash it's easy to compare which version is more recent, your save or the autosave.

So nice,your advice is so useful,thank you!

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@Andrew Shpagin thanks for that info about the seams splitting in PPP with displacement is only a visual preview (I hope can improve)

but I was wondering if you can add hybridizing the paint room with a few "basic" sculpt tools like add, subtract and smooth to influence the original topology. Reason: Sometimes when painting the heightmap style displacement you can't get proper even texture displacement because the topology is unexpectedly too dense in one area and causes the displacement to bunch up.. or is expanded not being dense enough so by expanding the topology we would be able to see the texture expand to more of the texture's correct aspect ratio.  Not only that it can help create ideal dimensions overall. 

Perhaps the tweak room and paint room combined.  The tweak tools by default could be locked and if unlocked a different color and text overlay "changing original mesh" could float with the brush or be a message at the top of the room.  I'd like to be able to quickly make changes and see improvements for the displacement painting. 

Edited by Ascensi
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5 hours ago, Ascensi said:

@Andrew Shpagin thanks for that info about the seams splitting in PPP with displacement is only a visual preview (I hope can improve)

but I was wondering if you can add hybridizing the paint room with a few "basic" sculpt tools like add, subtract and smooth to influence the original topology. Reason: Sometimes when painting the heightmap style displacement you can't get proper even texture displacement because the topology is unexpectedly too dense in one area and causes the displacement to bunch up.. or is expanded not being dense enough so by expanding the topology we would be able to see the texture expand to more of the texture's correct aspect ratio.  Not only that it can help create ideal dimensions overall. 

Perhaps the tweak room and paint room combined.  The tweak tools by default could be locked and if unlocked a different color and text overlay "changing original mesh" could float with the brush or be a message at the top of the room.  I'd like to be able to quickly make changes and see improvements for the displacement painting. 

I think the best solution is to now move the Paint tools to the Sculpt Room, with a Toggle for the Paint tools directly to the right of the Button Display Toggle at the very top of the Tool Panel. Merge the Retopo and Paint Meshes,  so they are one and the same.

This might take a lot of coding work, but it will prove to be incredibly beneficial, as it consolidates the "Rooms." No more Paint or Tweak room. Just Sculpt/Paint, Topo and UV  

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1 hour ago, AbnRanger said:

I think the best solution is to now move the Paint tools to the Sculpt Room, with a Toggle for the Paint tools directly to the right of the Button Display Toggle at the very top of the Tool Panel. Merge the Retopo and Paint Meshes,  so they are one and the same.

This might take a lot of coding work, but it will prove to be incredibly beneficial, as it consolidates the "Rooms." No more Paint or Tweak room. Just Sculpt/Paint, Topo and UV  

I hope sculpt-retopo-paint meshes remain separate !

 

Edited by Silas Merlin
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44 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

I think the best solution is to now move the Paint tools to the Sculpt Room, with a Toggle for the Paint tools directly to the right of the Button Display Toggle at the very top of the Tool Panel. Merge the Retopo and Paint Meshes,  so they are one and the same.

This might take a lot of coding work, but it will prove to be incredibly beneficial, as it consolidates the "Rooms." No more Paint or Tweak room. Just Sculpt/Paint, Topo and UV  

I'd partially agree although not all sculpt brushes/tools will be beneficial/safe... it might be  intuitive to ether keep rooms apart with sculpting tools that are  compatible or merge the rooms together with color coded panels/tools that are compatible/safe with specific workflows like PPP but can be unlocked if the individual knows what they're doing.  So for example all the tools in the paint room are a particular color and then some of the tools normally found in the sculpt room that are compatible have the same color.

 

@Silas Merlin If Combined it should have  sculpt layers and paint layers separate also color coded. Working in Zbrush I do all the same kind of work within one room and is not difficult to manage & make copies.. color coding and duplication (offline/non visible) would be good almost like saving an entire project. 

Edited by Ascensi
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53 minutes ago, Ascensi said:

 If Combined it should have  sculpt layers and paint layers separate also color coded. Working in Zbrush I do all the same kind of work within one room and is not difficult to manage & make copies.. color coding and duplication (offline/non visible) would be good almost like saving an entire project. 

Can't please everyone I guess...
What is logical to you would be extremely confusing to me.
The only thing that is currently hidden like this in 3dCoat I think is when you bake with subdivisions and get both a mid-poly and low-poly which are both paint mesh and only one visible at a time. That confuses me very much.
if it were the same throughout all the rooms my head would explode and I would go back to Sculptris where I came from I think.

I mean, it is good that there are different software with totally different way of doing things.
That way, everyone has a chance to find a software that suits them.

Change the fundamental principles behind a software... and you get a different software.... for different kind of people

Edited by Silas Merlin
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4 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I think the best solution is to now move the Paint tools to the Sculpt Room, with a Toggle for the Paint tools directly to the right of the Button Display Toggle at the very top of the Tool Panel. Merge the Retopo and Paint Meshes,  so they are one and the same.

This might take a lot of coding work, but it will prove to be incredibly beneficial, as it consolidates the "Rooms." No more Paint or Tweak room. Just Sculpt/Paint, Topo and UV

I completely agree with you and I would very much like that to happen. Even though I'm not a programmer, I think this could be very positive in terms of improving the performance of the program as a whole.

The most important thing is that with a possible merger of the Rooms, simplifying the program (this does not mean that the program would no longer be powerful), the artists could easily understand what exactly is happening with Geometry (mesh) and perhaps make it even easier to the Developers future implementations of tools, commands, features and other things precisely for the reason of this fusion of Rooms.

For new users there would be no more doubts in the program's workflow (it would be much more intuitive) and thus there would be no more questions of "why does the mesh appear in a certain Room and in the other Room there is nothing?".

I respect the opinions of all the artists and users of the program, but I need to say that, of course, for users who already have knowledge about 3D-Coat and perhaps have mastered it, this does not seem to be a problem of how 3D-Coat works today.
In my own experience, when I tried to learn 3D-Coat many, many years ago, I sincerely almost gave up on 3D-Coat.
Thank God I didn't give up, but I went through a lot of difficulties to understand the program.
And if I went through it, I wonder how many artists who went through the same problems as me and who unfortunately ended up choosing to give up 3D-Coat and chose to use other competing programs because of all these difficulties.

The unification of Rooms, in my opinion, would be very important, as it would make the program much more intuitive, simplified, objective and would allow artists to use different techniques and workflows using most of the time the same geometry.
This would be essential for more artists to migrate to 3D-Coat and use it with great success.

For example, if users love that 3D-Coat is separated into "Rooms", the solution would be simple for that. The developers would allow users to create customized interfaces according to the task (use) and thus create their own customized Rooms (Custom Rooms). However, the main Rooms would still be separated, for example:
- Possibility 1:
Sculpt / Paint/ Tweak Room + Retopo Room + UVs Room + Render Room.
or
- Possibility 2:
Sculpt / Paint / Tweak / Retopo (Modeling) Room + UVs Room + Render Room.

I know it wouldn't be an easy process to do (program codes), but it would be possible and very important.

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Honestly, I didn't understand what ZBrush has to do with possible mergers of Rooms within 3D-Coat.

Don't get me wrong, but I think you are using your private opinion regarding ZBrush.
I'm not here to defend Pixologic, but not everyone would agree with what you said.
If Zbrush became the "standard", it was no accident that this happened. Pixologic has its own merits for this.
If there is anything that bothers people at ZBrush I don't know.
Perhaps this is the least of the problems for these people, as these people have not stopped using Zbrush and still continue to use ZBrush.... And what matters in the end, and most importantly, is that the program delivers the results that these people want.

I believe I was able to explain the reasons for my opinion in my previous message.
I have been using 3D-Coat for many years, which is my main program, but it is not for that reason that I will not comment on the points that are not so positive about the program.

If changes happen, 3D-Coat will not stop being 3D-Coat, especially if such changes serve to improve and make 3D-Coat become even more unique.

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On 7/31/2020 at 1:17 PM, AbnRanger said:

I think the best solution is to now move the Paint tools to the Sculpt Room, with a Toggle for the Paint tools directly to the right of the Button Display Toggle at the very top of the Tool Panel. Merge the Retopo and Paint Meshes,  so they are one and the same.

This might take a lot of coding work, but it will prove to be incredibly beneficial, as it consolidates the "Rooms." No more Paint or Tweak room. Just Sculpt/Paint, Topo and UV  

Please be careful with changing the fundamental rooms - especially the Paint Room -  a lot of us don't sculpt at all, and just paint, UV, & Retopo. (and by a lot of us I mean me).

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20 hours ago, 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.

I agree with this.  Too many people offering interface suggestions for the rooms are only thinking of their own sculpting preference.  Workflow for game content that doesn't START in 3DC or doesn't START from a sculpt suffers in these situations.

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I haven't' read all the suggestions here.  But I have a suggestion for the Panel docking and HIDING.    Sometimes when I'm on my laptop 3DCoat panels are a bit of a pain to fit everything on a 2560x1440 13" screen. 

Tear Away panels from 3DC are nice - but only help if you have a lot of monitor space or a second monitor. 

The tabbed interface for the panels is fine but they are hard to manage. Affinity Photo has similar panels to photoshop and 3DC - but it handles the ton of panels and docking of them slightly better. 

You can DOUBLE CLICK on the tab name to hide it and click it once to show it.  It makes it very awesome for quickly focusing on what tools you need.  For example in 3DC I sometimes want to just see my huge layer list but because of 3DC font size and default layout with brushes and Smart Materials etc taking over the height, I can only see a few rows of my layers.  THIS IS QUICK WIN to add this.  See this video of  Affinity Photo panels being hidden and shown via double click and click:

 

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