3DCoat 2024 UI suggestions

[Elemeno]

 

i means these make no sense what so ever... the bottom two are the exact same....

[Elemeno]

 

red box shouldn't be in this menu , it should be in some sort of texturing or baking option,

yellow box should be in paint room , texturing menu or even a tool selection with multiple options inside the tool options 

 

green box ... i dont even know its the same as modelling just less tools ... no idea why its here

[Elemeno]

 

this baking menu should be a tool inside the paint room ,

it should be one button which brings up all baking options along with maybe a ghosted version of the high poly mesh  to look at before baking in case of discrepancy's 

all baking options on menus above and sides etc should be locked into this one menu so all baking is done inside this option to remove confusion 

all baked items should be placed into layers panel under a separate group that is default locked so you can disturb the baked meshes by accident , they can however be edited like normal but allow painting to be done in a separate group , each uv will have a drop down to change while painting 

[Oleg Shapov]

On 1/18/2024 at 6:31 PM, Rygaard said:

But....I hope @Oleg_Shapo doesn't mind me sharing with everyone what I told him about the UI suggestions

I'm just a tester and don't make any decisions in the company. But I like minimalist design throughout. However, the user should be able to easily customize the interface to their liking.

[digman]

4 hours ago, Elemeno said:

 

i means these make no sense what so ever... the bottom two are the exact same....

The bottom two are not the same.

Take subdivided painting mesh to into the sculpt room gives you the option of how many vertices you want for the object. The more vertices the higher quality of your vertex textures applied in surface mode plus you get 3 choices of subdivision. In this mode your paint layers from the paint room are applied as vertex colors.

Paint Mesh (Subdivided) copy to sculpt mesh gives you the option of subdividing the mesh before importing, like a normal import. You will get an exact copy of the mesh if you do not subdivide except if will be triangulated. So, it is a user's choice. 

The word subdivided is there to let you know, you will have that option, I think.  I could see dropping the word subdivided as you are given that choice when are switched to the sculpt room.

"Paint Mesh Copy to the Sculpt Room" would be a choice to change to as there is no confusion in the wording.

 

 

[digman]

3 hours ago, Elemeno said:

 

red box shouldn't be in this menu , it should be in some sort of texturing or baking option,

yellow box should be in paint room , texturing menu or even a tool selection with multiple options inside the tool options 

 

green box ... i dont even know its the same as modelling just less tools ... no idea why its here

You need "Edit Projections in Ext Editor" and the last separate yellow box in the sculpt room for vertex surface mode Projection painting using your external editor.

[Elemeno]

it just needs cleaning slightly .. a scrollable menu would work so much better ,
 

[digman]

Subject: Creating New rooms for non-scripters.  

Is it possible to add when creating a room that from the Left Tool bar section, we can choose from a list what we want to appear in the new room.

Example: I want a room created for just sculpting and I only want the Voxel brushes and Surface mode brushes from the left tool panel to appear in that room, I would be able to just select them from a list. 

This would be similar to how we create extensions. There we can select from a list of items to be in that extension so in the same way be able to select left tool bar sections and individual brushes to appear under those sections in the new room.

At this time if I select a new room for sculpting, I get the entire left tool bar sections. 

I know I can hide tools / brushes but having a user control selection upon creating the room would be good.

Thanks for your consideration. 

 

[Rygaard]

6 hours ago, Elemeno said:

 

red box shouldn't be in this menu , it should be in some sort of texturing or baking option,

yellow box should be in paint room , texturing menu or even a tool selection with multiple options inside the tool options 

Hi everyone! All the menus at the top of the 3DCoat interface can be changed however you want and imagine.
Customization of the menus at the top of the interface can be done by the users themselves in an advanced and even complex way depending on their objectives through the scripts (Edit the current room settings button).

 

Below are some examples of what can be done in relation to customizing the menus at the top of the interface.

Currently, there are 2 sides to using scripts for customization in 3DCoat.
Using scripts will give you great powers in customization, but on the other hand...
here is a responsibility that the user will always have to update on their own any changes or new features that are added in the future by the developers.

--- Summarizing the use of scripts:
1- Positive side:
Many advanced and complex customizations can be made.

2- Not so good side:
Users on their own will always have to manually update custom menus if they enable the use of scripts because the program will not update the menus if there are additions or changes to functionality.
-->  And perhaps a "small detail", users will have to deal with programming to make customizations, so they must have knowledge of what they are doing to not explode 3DCoat (joking).

 

By the way...
If people are interested in doing these advanced (complex) customizations, but don't want to blow up 3DCoat (joking again), then... I'll help with that!
Because I created an incredible free course that is available on YouTube,
in which I explain everything in detail from the basics to the more complex things
(and more secrets that I discovered and share with everyone).

If the free course I created helps you...
I would like to ask you to subscribe to the channel and also Like the videos so that the course can reach other people (and also help them) because of the YouTube algorithm.

YouTube channel and course link: 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9OKFOOes9bNZrwMgQb62Qg

Thank you very much.

 

[Elemeno]

gave you a sub rygaard ill watch a few later 

 

[Rygaard]

Thank you very much for subscribing to the channel. This will actually help strengthen the channel.
At the same time, other people who would like to learn will have the opportunity to discover the channel.

[gbball]

I think there needs to be an outliner that has filters for sculpts, retopo models, paint models and curves.

This should replace all the separate little menu lists that need to be managed.  This would open the door for useful drag drop operations and helpful mesh status visualizations such as having paint data on a sculpt mesh or being able to see sculpt layer relationships at a glance.

[tiburbage]

Per the new Viewport Navigation gizmo, which I really applaud!, it would be useful to include PERSP/ORTHO toggle in the behaviors. I few thoughts on how that could be implemented:

- You could consider overloading the click on the gizmo with a modifier, say Ctrl? to trigger the toggle along with the view transform;

- could consider a click on the view label ("left", "front", etc.) there to toggle between them

Edited February 2 by tiburbage

[tiburbage]

I think it would be useful to have some faster access to the "Rotate Around..." options than having to dig down into the "Camera" dropdown menu.

Not sure what to suggest, but it could be a popup window, a gizmo, pie menu ( ). Something to allow quick switching.

[tiburbage]

I recently logged this to support, but there are two buttons on the right side of layers in the Layers panel and in the Sculpt Tree (other?), one for drag/dropping the layer in the stack, the other with a different function depending on the context. Those buttons are almost on invisible [this could depend on a custom Theme color, but I couldn't pin it down]. My suggestion was that you couldn't go too far wrong just connecting the FG color of those button to that of the layer's text (default is black), at least for the "hover over" color. [the original design intent may be to not have them visible for the active layer, only when the user hovers over them]

 

Edited February 2 by tiburbage

[tiburbage]

Didn't the color picker at the top of the toolbar in the Paint room once have a pair of buttons for same options as Photoshop: switch FG<->BG, the other to set colors the their defaults (FG=white/BG=black)? (hotkeys in PS, X, and D).

Well, regardless, rather than having two buttons doing the same thing as is there now (switch FG<->BG), it would be nice to have one of them do the "reset to white/black" action?

[Not exactly a UI suggestion per se -- feel free to move to Paint Room suggestions...]

Edited February 11 by tiburbage

[paulrus]

One thing I've run across over the years (and perhaps I'm just doing something wrong) is... If a window pops up and you need to hit, "Yes" or "Ok" or "Apply", etc., and that window is sitting over your model, frequently the mouse click for the "Yes" etc. button manages to also quickly do something to the model underneath the window.  It's like 3DC needs to make it impossible to modify a model when a dialogue box is waiting for a click - then when the click is made, do not register any clicks for perhaps .5 seconds.

[paulrus]

I think that anything that can use an object as a brush, as a voxel import, as a surface import, as an object import should all be consolidated.  There's no need to have folders that store objects for a menu called Poly Models, but then an entirely different folder for Sculpt Models and an entirely different section for Primitives and so on.   It seems weird to have to put OBJs into different directories - or if you want to use them with different functions, you have to have duplicates. 

There should just be 1 folder for all of them and then all of them should be available for any function that can use an OBJ, FBX, STL, etc., in 3DC.  

[digman]

2 hours ago, paulrus said:

One thing I've run across over the years (and perhaps I'm just doing something wrong) is... If a window pops up and you need to hit, "Yes" or "Ok" or "Apply", etc., and that window is sitting over your model, frequently the mouse click for the "Yes" etc. button manages to also quickly do something to the model underneath the window.  It's like 3DC needs to make it impossible to modify a model when a dialogue box is waiting for a click - then when the click is made, do not register any clicks for perhaps .5 seconds.

I tested a few panels, but it is not clicking through the panel to model below. I would keep a track of the panels that "do click through" and send in a bug report.  "andrewshpagin at gmail.com" replace "at" of course.

I have sent in one bug report where if you click re-do under the edit menu, it clicks through and selects the Tweak room. 

[AbnRanger]

On 1/21/2024 at 1:34 PM, Elemeno said:

 

red box shouldn't be in this menu , it should be in some sort of texturing or baking option,

yellow box should be in paint room , texturing menu or even a tool selection with multiple options inside the tool options 

 

green box ... i dont even know its the same as modelling just less tools ... no idea why its here

One reason why the options for Painting /Textures are there is because you can now paint directly in the Sculpt Workspace, thus options for Baking AO and Curvature definitely need to be available there. 

[AbnRanger]

3 hours ago, paulrus said:

I think that anything that can use an object as a brush, as a voxel import, as a surface import, as an object import should all be consolidated.  There's no need to have folders that store objects for a menu called Poly Models, but then an entirely different folder for Sculpt Models and an entirely different section for Primitives and so on.   It seems weird to have to put OBJs into different directories - or if you want to use them with different functions, you have to have duplicates. 

There should just be 1 folder for all of them and then all of them should be available for any function that can use an OBJ, FBX, STL, etc., in 3DC.  

There is a very good reason why they are in separate folders. The POLY MODELS pallet is dedicated for use in the RETOPO or MODELING workspaces, and thus they are generally LOW POLYGON, QUAD Meshes. The SCULPT models on the contrary, are dedicated for SCULPT (Very High Polygon and Triangulated meshes) Objects. It makes no logical sense, then, to mix them together). I prefer they stay the way they are because there was some good, logical thought behind it. 

[Carlosan]

I think that it is not a bad idea to consolidate the current Panel fragmentation.

To much panels, to much rooms... retopo+modeling... paint+uv+tweak... polypaint+factures... 

Consolidating is a necessary step to gain agility in the daily workflow.

 

[Carlosan]

25 minutes ago, AbnRanger said:

One reason why the options for Painting /Textures are there is because you can now paint directly in the Sculpt Workspace, thus options for Baking AO and Curvature definitely need to be available there. 

It's true, but we dont only to sculpt OR to paint in the sculpt workspace.

We need to paint AND sculpt (using all current sculpt tools) at same time. (currently we only can paint and sculpt using brush or airbrush paint tool sets... is very limited)

[digman]

48 minutes ago, Carlosan said:

It's true, but we dont only to sculpt OR to paint in the sculpt workspace.

We need to paint AND sculpt (using all current sculpt tools) at same time. (currently we only can paint and sculpt using brush or airbrush paint tool sets... is very limited)

If I am reading your post right.

Many Voxel Sculpt brushes can paint and sculpt at the same time if Voxel Paint is selected in each brush'sTool Options panel.

EDT: it only works on extrusion sculpting, adding color. If you hold down the Ctrl key to invert the brush to carve into your model, paint is not applied. Ctrl key is normally used for erase as it is the invert action of painting when used in the paint room.

[Carlosan]

Yes you can on voxel, but the industry still didnt switched to voxels. Is ok to work internally.
Vertex paint (polypaint and bake) is the common way this days. Dont forget that multi-resolution only works on Surface mode.

[jene]

the active tab moves When i move the window.

It is inconvenient because it overlaps with other tabs. Is this an expected event?

v2024.05

 

Edited February 5 by jene

[paulrus]

6 hours ago, Carlosan said:

I think that it is not a bad idea to consolidate the current Panel fragmentation.

To much panels, to much rooms... retopo+modeling... paint+uv+tweak... polypaint+factures... 

Consolidating is a necessary step to gain agility in the daily workflow.

 

Thank you - yes those windows are exactly what I'm talking about.  If we were back in the days when the app was called 3D Brush and having 8 gigs of ram in your computer was incredibly expensive and Matrox was still making video cards, then yes it made sense.  We live in a totally different world now.  I'd rather have everything in one location and then you could separate them by the tabs/buttons if you really needed super low poly stuff.  

For me, I'm using Unreal for outputting things these days, and with Nanite and Lumen, I'm not terribly concerned with working in low poly mode.  

[tiburbage]

Expand/Collapse Hierarchies

I'll use the main left side vertical tool panels as an example, where the fully expanded list of tools can far exceed the vertical screen space available to show them all.

I think a good idea is to implement Collapse All/Expand All. Collapse All would close all of the groups/sections, and then the user would selectively open just the ones they are focusing on using. A popup menu displayed when one Right Clicks on a Group/section header could contain these commands, but ideally they would also be mapped to a modifier hotkey so for example if you <modifier key>+LCLICK on the disclosure triangle on the group header, it would execute the expand all/collapse all action.

Some apps implement "collapse all but this group", and/or "invert collapsed/expanded", but just having the base Collapse All/Expand All. Collapse All would go a long way.

 

Sculpt Tree: being able to fully expand all children, or fully collapse all children in the Sculpt Object hierarchy from any specific point would also be useful. The -/+ object button functions get part way there, but not quite.

 

[tiburbage]

Better Zoom/Auto-Focus Method

Being able to quickly frame the viewport camera in the most common usage ways is a big workflow plus for a 3D app. I'd like to suggest an improvement to how this is done in 3DCoat based on the ZBrush implementation.

Auto-Framing: In ZBrush, the F key is mapped to functionality similar to 3DCoat's A key, but with a great twist. In ZBrush, the F key will simply toggle between "frame visible" and "frame active Subtool" (Sculpt Object in 3DCoat Sculpt room terms). Only one hotkey is needed. Being able to quickly jump between framing your whole (visible) model and then focusing in on the active object is a very useful workflow.

This should work in a logically analogous way in all Rooms.

Edited February 11 by tiburbage

[Mihu83]

Don't know if that should go in here, but I would like to see some brush presets added by default, something like in V4 and all the older releases. It would be great for new users to have something decent to start with, but also for seasoned users that are trying to migrate from older 3dcoat builds.