Member tiburbage Posted October 23, 2022 Member Report Share Posted October 23, 2022 I thought the topic of fast access UI/UX, and user-extensible UI might be worth discussion. 3DCoat is really powerful, but also quite complex. Entry points for functions are spread across: Tools toolbar, top toolbar, main menus, panel toobars, panel inputs, RCLICK popup menus, viewport overlay toolbar incl Camera icon with it's own dropdown menu. We tend to map the most high frequency usage functions to keyboard shortcuts, but there are practical limits to the number of those most people can absorb. One of the features I've most liked in my other apps experience are faster access, focused UI elements like pie menus, popup panels (which themselves can be hotkey-mapped). Pie menus I don't know offhand whether you can define your own in Blender, but I really like the ones they define, and those implemented by Addon dev MACHIN3. One hotkey assigned and you then have fast mouse/pen access right at the cursor (where you are working) to a set of related functions. For example in a 3DCoat context. Custom menus Back when I was using LightWave Modeler, it let you define 3 custom popup menus. I refined those to the point that I did almost everything either via hotkey or from my own focused popup menus. No more poking around the UI trying to find a function entry point. Custom panels ZBrush calls them "menus" but visually they are effectively popup/dockable panels. They can be built from any UI element defined in ZBrush. They provide a great user-extensible way to create your own fast access to related functions. I use them to define my own little "mini workspaces" to group functions most used for particular phases of asset creation, and now rarely poke around in the main panels for entry points. I don't know if 3DCoat is structured internally to make one or more of these either possible or practical. But thought it worth discussing.. PS: Some devices provide some form of extensibility (like pie menus), I use a Wacom Intuos Pro, and Don Nash has demonstrated in more recent videos that the 3DConnexion SpaceMouse Pro has similar capability. So lacking such facilities in the software, these provide an external solution. But that doesn't help the user just using keyboard and mouse. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted November 1, 2022 Report Share Posted November 1, 2022 Check this video series I hope it will be useful 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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