Member Kaos Posted January 20 Member Report Share Posted January 20 I think that speed and usability are important features in any 3D software. While hotkeys are very nice, a lot of us use a pen-tablet along with a mouse, and having access to a pie menu/markup menu would be a great addition, I think. Maya already does this. In Maya, you have access to a context-based menu depending on what mode you are in. I would take this a step further and allow each menu to be customized. There is a third-party application that allows you to do this, called AutoHotPie. The maker of this software first started it for Photoshop but is developing it actively to allow people to use it with any program they want. Because 3DCoat already uses contextual-based menus, so this wouldn't be too far off. I tried taking a screenshot of AUtoHotPie but for some reason, it doesn't capture the program, I'm not sure why. I will write out an example though. Assume you are you the Retopo Room. You have 4 base categories inside of this room. Add Geometry, Tweak, UV, and Entire Mesh. If I were using only a pen and tablet, one of the buttons on my pen or tablet would produce a radial/pie menu with these 4 buttons. When you hover over one of them, it will give you the other tools within that section. This ends up being very quick with a pen, allowing you to change tools rapidly. This also makes it so that you have more screen real estate, as you don't have to have the tools take up space. I would recommend taking a look at AutoHotPie, because all of the functionality already exists, and it's even very customizable. You can control spacing, how you want to interact with the buttons, if you want them nested, etc. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Member Umbra Posted February 6 New Member Report Share Posted February 6 I agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately, I think this would require some major refactoring of the UI code, but I too hope for integrated pie menus. Maybe something can be done with Python... I have used AutoHotPie with success. It sometimes doesn't always trigger the hotkey sent, but you can repeat the action quick enough that the time that is taken isn't an issue. Pie menus also do add some further familiarity for some users, especially those like you mentioned that favor Blender/Maya as their main DCC of choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Kaos Posted February 6 Author Member Report Share Posted February 6 I think a big part of any modeling software comes down to speed and efficiency, especially with 3DCoat, because one of the main reasons it's used is the ability to conceptualize something in it very quickly. The tools do take up a portion of the screen though, and to some degree remove you from the focus of what it is you're doing. Most of the people I work with only really use their mouse when poly-modeling (which generally isn't done in 3DCoat, but in a different app). You have two possible methods that I can think of to speed up your workflow. You can either use voice commands, or you can use a pie menu/markdown menu. For customization's sake, I think both are important as a goal because you're going to have people who just don't want to use voice commands. I use Voice Attack, and I like it, but it's not perfect, and ideally, you need to use a headset with it (my studio mic on a boom arm works all right, but it doesn't pick everything up. I might have to repeat a work 4 or 5 times. Not all the time, but it's still frustrating. The goal is to speed things up, not slow them down. The software that's being developed does work better than the stuff I'm testing out right now though, so I think it will be better when released. I don't think the pie menus would be all that difficult to implement. If I were designing them, I don't think I would develop anything on top of 3DCoat as is, such as making a Python-based application that uses the API(I'm not even sure if you could go this route, I haven't taken too much of a look at that yet). You could do this, AutoHotPie is a third-party app that sort of does this, it's just not quite as sophisticated as a direct application made for 3DCoat. I would take a lot of creative liberties from Maya, as most people I know who do modeling and have used Maya, really do enjoy it. I think in 3DCoat it could be even better, because of the different rooms. Not only the different rooms but the different tools being selected would change choices. I think the most time-consuming part about this would be getting it just right for each room, and each tool. I do think it's doable though and would add some customization to how the software is used. From what I've seen, it's been asked for before, so I'm not sure if it's actually on any type of roadmap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted February 6 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted February 6 Please send this request to support@pilgway.com or AndrewShpagin@gmail.com, because others have requested this before, and the more requests there are for a given feature, the more priority it gets. I sent Andrew a request to incorporate Auto HotPie Menus into 3DCoat (if possible). He hasn't answered back, but that is because he is working on the UI in other areas. The UI is the major focus, now, for the release of 3DCoat 2024, so now is as good a time as any to send such a request. GitHub - dumbeau/AutoHotPie: Radial menus in Windows, aka PIE MENYOOS! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tiburbage Posted February 7 Member Report Share Posted February 7 9 hours ago, AbnRanger said: Please send this request to support@pilgway.com or AndrewShpagin@gmail.com, because others have requested this before, and the more requests there are for a given feature, the more priority it gets. I sent Andrew a request to incorporate Auto HotPie Menus into 3DCoat (if possible). He hasn't answered back, but that is because he is working on the UI in other areas. The UI is the major focus, now, for the release of 3DCoat 2024, so now is as good a time as any to send such a request. GitHub - dumbeau/AutoHotPie: Radial menus in Windows, aka PIE MENYOOS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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