*CONTEST* How do you want your A:M Interface?

#1

With all the “complaining” and “constructive critizisim” we all generate about A:M, I’m proposing something productive. (or not)

I propose a contest.

If you could re-design anything about how to access, view, control, or manipulate anything about the A:M INTERFACE
Post it in this thread. Heck, if you are adept at a paint program i’d suggest moching it up for us all to see.

Now this is not a toolset request, it is mainly to see what interface additions or changes should be made to make A:M more intuitive to use.

Then when we all vote on the best suggestions, compile them into one “uber-interface” and I’ll walk that over to Randy and see about starting to get it implimented. At the very least he’ll know where the “problem areas” are and will be aware of what we’d like.

Good luck, and we’ll see how this goes.:smiley:
jdates

So far:

*Hot Key to “reveal selected” in the PWS (by: My Fault)
*Working Screw and Thumbtack implimentation (by: My Fault)
*Camera/Light View will actually reposition the Camera/Light in the scene when Zoomed, Panned, Dollied, or Orbit. (by: Graham Clark)
*The above Camera View movement should be a toggle. on/off.
*a “Tabbed” System (by: Hellborn)
*Totally customizable UI parameters (by: SqueakyPics)
*More accessable UI controls for Lathe (by: Filip Louwet)
*A more Maya_like “Properties Panal”. (by: ragtag)
*The option to toggle “triangles” or “tabs” in the property Panal.
*A connection/dependency graph (by: ragtag)
*Color Coding in the PWS ( John Keates )
*A better Shift+Select in the interface… it seems buggy now
*Copy Paste with Attributes… in the interface would be great.
*Interactive weight manipulators in the interface for Bone influences.
*More ways to view The Material Tree. (drag-n-drop)

#2

I’m posting this before someone else does.
This is a request for any version really. I did a moch up in 8.5 because it’s the only version I have here at home.

I’d like to see this feature added with the hotkey:

(Ctrl + Shift + Tab + Alt + S + F4 + Num 5)

I’m hoping the other entries will be serious.:scream:

jdates

#3

Originally posted by jdates
[B]I’m posting this before someone else does.
This is a request for any version really. I did a moch up in 8.5 because it’s the only version I have here at home.

I’d like to see this feature added with the hotkey:

(Ctrl + Shift + Tab + Alt + S + F4 + Num 5)

I’m hoping the other entries will be serious.:scream:

jdates [/B]

Haha, that’s just evil! :stuck_out_tongue:

Great idea though.

First off I would shoot the new “triangle motif” Who tought having to constantly open up triangles to get to everything was a good idea? Randy, I’m looking at you :rolleyes: I know, I will try to come up with what I think is a better idea, but those damn triangles just piss me off so much! :wink:

#4

Originally posted by My Fault
First off I would shoot the new “triangle motif” Who tought having to constantly open up triangles to get to everything was a good idea? Randy, I’m looking at you :rolleyes: I know, I will try to come up with what I think is a better idea, but those damn triangles just piss me off so much! :wink:

Well XSI handles it this way, as does Maya. However, in both packages you can select an object and hit a hotkey (in XSI it’s “f” for frame) and it automatically opens up the workspace to reveal it. Some hotkey to open up selected attributes would indeed be cool.

XSI and Maya both allow for “workspace” filters too. If you ONLY want to see the translations of objects you turn on the “Translations only” filter and bam! when you open that arrow on an object you ONLY see it’s translations. You could have lots of filters for Poses, Materials, relationships…etc etc

jdates

#5

If they get this down, they’ll sell millions…

#6

Originally posted by jdates
[B]Well XSI handles it this way, as does Maya. However, in both packages you can select an object and hit a hotkey (in XSI it’s “f” for frame) and it automatically opens up the workspace to reveal it. Some hotkey to open up selected attributes would indeed be cool.

XSI and Maya both allow for “workspace” filters too. If you ONLY want to see the translations of objects you turn on the “Translations only” filter and bam! when you open that arrow on an object you ONLY see it’s translations. You could have lots of filters for Poses, Materials, relationships…etc etc

jdates [/B]

You know AM does have filters, I think they need to document them more and make them a bit more powerful. For instance you can have a filter on bones. I’d like to see them add names and or wildcard to the filter as well. So say my character may have 200 bones and nulls, but only 20 of them are used to animate. I’d like to only have the 20 I animate show and never see the others. Right now if some of the other bones get keyframed along the way, by say keying the pelvis and then all the descendents get keyed, those other bones will show up wether you want to or not… The screw, pushpin motif doesn’t seem to wqork in all instances.

I like the hotkey idea. Joe W mentioned this as well and I think it’s solid.

#7

I don’t see Make–>Dinosaur!?
What about Make–>Gollum?

man, they aren’t reaching thier potential.

:smiley:
jdates

#8

Originally posted by My Fault
The screw, pushpin motif doesn’t seem to wqork in all instances.

Absolutly! If they could get that screw pushpin working, that’d be perfect. You could select only the things you wanted to see, and the rest would just go away!

Again, that was Randy. He was implimenting that better, and got pulled off. :rolleyes:

jdates

#9

Originally posted by My Fault
You know AM does have filters, I think they need to document them more and make them a bit more powerful. For instance you can have a filter on bones.

Right. I’m talking about better filters. Imagine you only wanted to deal with the relationships on your bones? You could filter the bones, then say “ok show me just the relationships on the bones”. Or “just show me rotation on bones”…

Perhaps two filters… and object filter (type of object) and an “input filter” (rotations, translations, both…etc) Just so you could only look at what you wanted to… and not have to have it all there in your face.

#10

Before A:M I used Strata Studio Pro. It ha a lot of shortcomings, but I really like the way the did the camera and spotlight controls.I’d love to see something like this in A:M. I sent this to Steve a while ago. The cam and spot light widows are similar. With the spot, you see in the window what the spot sees.

Cheers, Graham

#11

This is thespot window.

Cheers, Graham

#12

You can do this already. Right click in the Choreography and pick “View”. That will let you view through the camera, the lights and the normal left , front, etc.

#13

Another advantage of open discusion, you learn things. Thanks for the tip. In the Strata windows you can zoom, pan, dolly, crane, roll, etc for both cam and spot. All the controlls are in one easy to use area.

Cheers, Graham

#14

Man I couldn’t agree more.

Looking through a light is an important feature. However, being able to “fly” the camera view or light view should be a big feature.
That should be added to that “wish-list” thread.

Having to open two windows to position the camera is annoying.
XSI and MAYA both have the flying camra view thing, so that when you orbit, dolly, zoom, or pan, you are actually moving the actual camera.

Perhaps a toggle on the view’s window? Somethin’

#15

Just going back to the v8.5 interface would be greate.
The tab system is much faster and uses less space than those drop downs of today.

The new property dialog is a disaster.

#16

I find that the pop up info panel thing always seems to get in the way when I am modelling. It would be very handy to be able to specify how far from the curser it appears.

#17

Originally posted by Squeakypics
I find that the pop up info panel thing always seems to get in the way when I am modelling. It would be very handy to be able to specify how far from the curser it appears.

Yeah, I’ve always wanted the ability to customize any feature they give us. UI is just as important as toolset IMHO.:wink:
This would easily fall under that catagory.

:scream:

#18

Hi there,

I always found it setting the number of cross sections for a lathe involved too many steps. I think a lot of users always keep this setting at the default value (8 or something like that…) just because of this.

Wouldn’t this be an easier way:

cheers,
Filip

#19

Originally posted by Filip Louwet
[B]Hi there,

I always found it setting the number of cross sections for a lathe involved too many steps. I think a lot of users always keep this setting at the default value (8 or something like that…) just because of this.

Wouldn’t this be an easier way:

cheers,
Filip [/B]

What if when you hit “Lathe” a small window popped up asking you how many cross sections? Many users (myself included) would much rather input a value.

Perhaps the ability to toggle the windows? Having a default Lathe value is nice. Dunno… what would be a good way to have a default AND a quick override??:shrug:

jdates

#20

Steal Maya’s channel box. It’s very small, gives you access to translate,rotate,scale,visibility and whatever else you like. You can middle click and drag in the viewport to “slide” numbers up and down, you can multi select attributes and edit all at once…and so on and so on. Get Maya PLE, study it and implement it.

Connection graph. It’s basically a graph where you see all connections between things. This can be used for setup, you can see what sliders are controlling what bones, what’s constrained to what, skinned to what, where the smart skin comes in and so on. It could also include materials, where you could see and link together all kind of different attributes for materials (isn’t Darktree like this?).

A small timeline with little ticks that show keys on the selected object (these ticks can be moved around, copied etc). Sort of like you would show only one line of the current “dope sheet”. Showing only selected channels (in the channel box above) as an option would be cool too.

That’s all I can think of now. :slight_smile:

Ragnar