Interface discussion

[PoopaScoop]

Brushes need to have a universal toolbar. No matter what mode your in (Normal,Sculpt Or Voxels) they are all located in the same place.

Std Brush

Smooth

Flattern

Move

So on...

They really need to be icon based and have universal parameters.

I truly believe that all non artistic/brush operations should be text based. Which will give an intimidated understanding of every tool, Instead of the wealth of icons on the left I believe it'd be more intuitive to have the tool text based. Which will make it immediately obvious what each tool does. Silo 3D does this, and has a fantastic interface.

[David Walters]

I truly believe that all non artistic/brush operations should be text based. Which will give an intimidated understanding of every tool, Instead of the wealth of icons on the left I believe it'd be more intuitive to have the tool text based. Which will make it immediately obvious what each tool does. Silo 3D does this, and has a fantastic interface.

When people ask for text only interfaces it always makes me think: what's wrong with icons + tooltips? aren't they the best of both worlds?

The ones in 3d-Coat are actually quite verbose and add even more information and clarity than the text that would fit in the compact size of a toolbar. When you don't have space then you have to abbreviate and you just end up have UI that's a cloud of jargon -- see Blender for more details. (Seriously, it looks to me like that app abbreviates stuff for the sake of it!)

Personally I think 3d-Coat has a pretty good mix of icons and text, with supporting popup hints for complex features. The reason Silo's interface is good because it has *nothing* on the screen - it's all keyboard shortcuts. The v2.1 button pages really put me off and they went very quickly -- the small vert/edge/face/object, etc. icons stayed -- they're compact and obvious, and serve a valuable purpose to reinforce the current state of the edit mode.

I think XSI has an option to toggle between text and icons? I hope for something like this as a compromise, as there are clearly a load of people who like reading abbreviated buttons - I'll never understand that mentality, but that's cool, because ideally it's not forced upon me if there's an option

Also, think about this: after a long time using an app do you even look at the icon or text or whatever when you click on it? you click where the icon "lives", right, that's a fundamental part of human interface interaction. A main goal of the UI is to be friendly and welcoming while you learn how it works -- you do this by being consistent with similar apps and by using colour and pictures to convey complex concepts in a compact memorable form - 3d Coat does this well, which is why I bought it.

Maybe it's because I'm a programmer by day - I like a break from all the 'nerd text' while I'm painting :lol:

Hope I've conveyed a good reasoning for keeping the icons, I don't want to argue for the sake of it, and like I said already - it's obviously a fundamental divide between people that you'll never please everyone with ...

[Arkanis]

@PoopaScoop :

If you read my post carefully you will realize that we are going that way, but not for Volumetric Sculpting. I wanted to spread it across the hole board but discussing with Andrew there are some things that make this difficult.

1) There are some tools that are only available under the volumetric sculpting tab and nowhere else.

2) Using greyed buttons on different modes is just confusing and ugly.

3) If Vol. Sculpting was a sub-mode of Sculpt, that would be trivial, but it's not. And tools even behave differently.

We are defining (related to brush tools) three big areas : Paint/Texture, Sculpt/Detail, Vol. Sculpt. And each of them has unique tools you can subselect. There will be a unique brush editor to define all the brush aspects all across the board. You will be able to save presets (brush vector shapes, etc.).

I can't comment more on this at this point.

@Juan Carlos

Stay tunned my friend, soon some more stuff will be posted. I'm just hell busy with work, UI redesign, moving to my new home.

@Philnolan

You will be able to change colors, and save different presets.

@David

There will be icons. If you look carefully to current 3D-Coat, the only thing that uses icons is the left toolbar with the tools. And if you read my statements, we will be implementing a über quick tool access made with icons and text (or tooltips). And it's gonna be even better than that. There will be icons also for brush shapes (that show the shape itself), icons for different modes (pinck, smudge, etc.) if people wants of course.

[David Walters]

There will be icons. If you look carefully to current 3D-Coat, the only thing that uses icons is the left toolbar with the tools. And if you read my statements, we will be implementing a über quick tool access made with icons and text (or tooltips). And it's gonna be even better than that. There will be icons also for brush shapes (that show the shape itself), icons for different modes (pinck, smudge, etc.) if people wants of course.

Cool. You've been making all the right noises so far with the changes you've revealed, I don't envy your position but I see you're apparently steering 3DC in the right direction of unification, accessibility and configuration.

Waiting patiently

[3dioot]

This is just something i want to throw up. You mention that you will approach 3dcoat as having three main modules being texturing, retopo and sculpting. This is great and makes alot of sense.

What i was wondering is will it be possible to define module bound shortcuts? Simple example; if i want to assing number keys to sculpting brushes "inside" the sculpting module can i do that without messing up their function "inside" the texturing module where they could be used to toggle viewing modes (spec, normal, wireframe etc)?

It would be great if you could define "global" shortcuts that work throughout all modules and "local" shortcuts that only work within a certain module. In fact i'd consider that functionality a necessity for a package that has so much widely varying functionality inside as 3dcoat.

3dioot

[Scott]

There will be icons. If you look carefully to current 3D-Coat, the only thing that uses icons is the left toolbar with the tools. And if you read my statements, we will be implementing a über quick tool access made with icons and text (or tooltips). And it's gonna be even better than that. There will be icons also for brush shapes (that show the shape itself), icons for different modes (pinck, smudge, etc.) if people wants of course.

I do hope that customization will suit all users.

For example the Left Toolbar with Icons, is the single ugliest feature of 3DC at the moment, and it's the one feature that still makes me think I'm using a toy program rather than a consistently clean and professional application, for which I'm used to.

Anyway i look forward to some screenshots and some upcoming discussions on the implementation. Keep up the good work Arkanis

[Doug B]

I see that Mudbox 2 can now use Photoshop brushes. Any chance of implementing that? It would be a nice feature, what with the thousands of PS brushes around.

[ldzywsj]

I see that Mudbox 2 can now use Photoshop brushes. Any chance of implementing that? It would be a nice feature, what with the thousands of PS brushes around.

3dc can use photoshop brushes since when it's name was 3d-brush 1.0 !

[philnolan3d]

Yup I imported all of my fave Photoshop brushes like 6 months ago.

[Doug B]

3dc can use photoshop brushes since when it's name was 3d-brush 1.0 !

Time to read the manual again! :lol:

Thanks.

Cheers

Doug

[philnolan3d]

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.

[ldzywsj]

Arkanis,when can we touch the new GUI? at least some screenshoots?

[Arkanis]

Hello all,

I've been very busy lately... but keep working on the GUI, I have to submit a bunch of screenshots to Andrew tomorrow. And if he agrees, we will be submiting some screenshots very very soon.

Sorry to be off lately, but here at work we have three spots for MTV Europe down the pipe and it has been VERY VERY busy around.

Talk to you in the next couple days.

A.

[philnolan3d]

Talk to you in the next couple days.

Any word on those screenshots? Just curious. Hope the MTV work went well, I may be working on a project with Dee Snider of Twister Sister soon.

[Arkanis]

Hello everyone,

MTV spots where how to say ? a LOT of stress... but everything went fine.

Now on the UI, I will be posting screenshots tonight so you people can get a glimpse of what is comming, and can also make suggestions. I will be posting tonight dockable panels (how they look like, functions), Fast launch icon menu (how it look like, functions), General empty layout.

Stay tuned tonight for it.

A.

[philnolan3d]

Awesome, can't wait. BTW here's a thought I had on the current interface. Not sure how much you've changed this of course. In the current VS object browser there's no way of telling which object is currently selected, aside from actually sculpting something with it.

[lc8b105]

Hello everyone,

MTV spots where how to say ? a LOT of stress... but everything went fine.

Now on the UI, I will be posting screenshots tonight so you people can get a glimpse of what is comming, and can also make suggestions. I will be posting tonight dockable panels (how they look like, functions), Fast launch icon menu (how it look like, functions), General empty layout.

Stay tuned tonight for it.

A.

Hi Arkanis,

Which time zone are you in?

[BluEgo]

Hello everyone,

MTV spots where how to say ? a LOT of stress... but everything went fine.

Now on the UI, I will be posting screenshots tonight so you people can get a glimpse of what is comming, and can also make suggestions. I will be posting tonight dockable panels (how they look like, functions), Fast launch icon menu (how it look like, functions), General empty layout.

Stay tuned tonight for it.

A.

Hi Arkanis, we are still waiting !

[rimasson]

Does the new interface will look like this ?

[Arkanis]

Rimasson, I bet you would love it... but no... sorry, I went for a more adult theme, I promise I will make a skin with it so you can feel like home

Enough talking, lets get to the pictures :

Explanations on it, feel free to ask questions. Will post later today screenshots of the overal space and how things get docked and stacked.

Look and feel is subject to change, but I posted this so you people get the grip on functionality.

A.

[ldzywsj]

oh,why i can't see any pictures?please move this pics to 3dc server.

[rimasson]

Most of the time, when i'sm sculpting, i left the Pen palette open, because i often change the pen 'alpha' to change the brush profile.

will you include in the brush palette a small selection of preset curves ? (rounded, flat, straight, spike ?)

[Arkanis]

Rimasson :

There will be a multi panel panel (if that makes sense) where you will be able to select everything related to the brush (shape presets, Alphas, Texture, Color presets, Sculpt modes, etc). And you will be able to add your own presets of course.

I will be posting a screenshot soon.

A.

[BluEgo]

Cute, expecially the pie menu, but I think this mockup is in a way too similar to zbrush.

[Arkanis]

Are you kidding me ? Similar to Zbrush ? Where ? When ?

Zbrush don't have dockable panels as we are planning to implement, I don't thinkg the look and feel is like Zbrush neither. Dark themes are best for artistic work, neutral gray doesn't interfere with colors of the creative thinking, it's the reason every pro app has a dark grey or neutral grey theme.

You only saw a panel, whait for the rest, then you can tell me if it looks like it or not

I will like to add that Zbrush uses collapsible panels CONCEPT, but they didn't invented it, maya and max have this since a long time ago. We don't need to reinvent the wheel for everything, we have to be smart and take the good concepts that are out there. Otherwise you will end with something painfull to use for the common user because of some Alien minded GUI.

P.S : Forgot to tell you, we want to make the pie menu custom, so you can drop in the tools you want from a pre-made list. That way it doesn't get clutered if you never work with some tools.

A.

[philnolan3d]

Don't mean to offend but is the English in it going to be correct? I don't know what "draw by spots" is supposed to mean. I already see a few issues with your text just here in the forum like "but they didn't invented it," (should be just "invent"). Again, I don't mean to offend, just looking out for 3DC.

[lc8b105]

Hi Arkanis,

I couldn't see the picture, would you like to upload it to 3DC's sever? Thank you!

[Arkanis]

1) We haven't started yet to change the tools and parameters names. So actualy I'm using the ones that you can find inside 3DC.

2) I'm working at the same time I'm answering to posts in here, so I type fast and sometimes mistakes get in.

3) Final UI text will be reviewed by someone whos native language is English and who is a language teacher at university.

4) I'm not offended, this forum is open to get users suggestions. On the other hand it would be wise to say things differently, because things like "Don't mean to offend but is the English in it going to be correct?" can sound a little harsh. But no worries Phil I'm cool...

A.

[Andrew Shpagin]

btw, to make pictures visible to all maybe it is better to attach them to post?

[Arkanis]

Here are the pictures attached for those who can't see them in the previous post.