[UI / UX] Some Proposal to the interface and some workflows.

[RafaelRiva]

The new version of 3D Coat, changed a lot of it's interface and comes with very welcome changes. However I think it still need some tweaks for a better on boarding, usability and readability. Here I will propose some tweaks to the interface that could be welcome. please let me know what do you think.

I'm not a very hardcore 3D Coat user myself, and this issues rely on new user experiences and  expectations. 

In general we could agree that 3D Coat has many features and this represent itself on the interface. However, this can generate a lot of clusters of information, I have separate by room’s and also include some workflow changes too.
 

Welcome box:

Removing some of the clutter of the welcome screen, Icons should be organized by function, like Sculpt, Modelling, Painting, Retopology and System. 
I've removed the social media because I believe they could be icons below.


UI/UX:

• Ability to switch rooms with shortcuts, ex., jump between retopo, paint and sculpt with Crtl + 1, 2 and 3.
• Unify the names of the Sculpt Tree and Curve tree. (SculptTree and Curve tree are spelled differently, with space and different lower cases.) 

Modeling Room:

• Easy shortcut to "Unlink the mesh and send to sculpt room", ex., A button or a drop-down menu under the poly group to "Send to sculpt room". 

Sculpt Room:

• Separate the default MATCAPS to another category, since the program tell it's not accurate to bake them, you can remove some confusion separate them from Matcap and PBR. 
• Easy access for the cavity and bulge settings after you choose a material, you can ask if you want to change right now or not. 
• Easy access to "Use current Alpha", instead of opening the brush menu it would be nice to have it in the upper bar, so you can easily click them.

Retopo Room:

• Ability to hide Polygroup and SculptTree that are linked. Ex. When you create a mesh from AUTOPO, it link that poly group to that sculpt, so you can click on the icon holding control to hide both poly group and sculpt room.
• The same goes to Paint Objects.
• Easy access for the cavity and bulge settings to better visualize the model.
• Make the curve visibility lower or darken when it's behind the model, to better visualize in 3D space the UV line.
• Be able to preview which path the algorithm will take when adding UV-Lines.

Paint Room:

• Ability to quick hide all sculpt layer to just focus on the Paint Objects.

This is all I can contribute right now, I know many other users may have other complain's, so feel free to add and discuss.

Thank you!

Edited April 4, 2022 by RafaelRiva
Adding new features

[blackant Master]

since many years i'm complaining about the shader in retopo room that is not really efficient to seen the model.

I suggest to get something similar to Blender viewport rendering "cavity" wich make all the diference.

 

[RafaelRiva]

2 hours ago, blackant Master said:

since many years i'm complaining about the shader in retopo room that is not really efficient to seen the model.

I suggest to get something similar to Blender viewport rendering "cavity" wich make all the diference.

 

This would be nice too! 
I gotta admit I feel sometimes the viewport get's confusing, another thing I may add is to lower the color of lines that are behind the model, so we can visually see in 3D space our curves.

And another addition is to preview the curve path when drawing in retopo: