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

#21

I really wish I would wake up one morning and this whole "new’ interface would have just been a bad dream.
Simple, logical, effective, ergonomic. that was 8.5.
They had a proven interface… they should have just worked on the new features instead of redoing the layout.
Anyone else miss 8.5?

#22

Originally posted by 3DArtZ
Anyone else miss 8.5?

Is it wrong to sleep with 8.5 under my pillow? :stuck_out_tongue:

I liked the simplicity of 8.5’s ui. I do like some of the suggestion in this thread on how v10 can be brought back on track. Right now it screams, built by a programmer. Now we just need to needle Randy to make it more artist friendly.

#23

Amen. I too liked the 8.5 interface much better. Apart from v9’s other problems, the interface changes (and the accompanying project-workspace window redraw bug) really irritated me. A lot.

#24

Didn’t they have to change the interface a lot to accommodate the relationship editor? That thing sounded pretty cool to me. . .

#25

I don’t see why they needed to take such a drastic tack as the one they did though, even with relationships (which are really cool). The new “triangle motif” makes it so everything is nested within something else so that you must click down further and further in the hiearchy to do anything now. I know they wanted to try something new, but I don’t think they are there just yet. From what I’ve heard this whole triangle idea was supposed to be temporary but Randy never had the time to go back and change it.

#26

You can turn-off the triangles in V10, and just access everything through the properties panel as in 8.5

…That change in the program going back towards 8.5 in version 10 was announced by Martin at last years Siggraph.

I would like to be able to customize the interface more–like you can do with your workspace in Rhino, custom icons, scriptable custom buttons for commands, that would be kewl!

#27

Originally posted by zandoria
You can turn-off the triangles in V10, and just access everything through the properties panel as in 8.5

And you can do this how?

#28

Tools>Options>General

There is a checkbox for the triangles. :slight_smile:

…where oh where is that manual (sigh).

#29

I think it would be important to have an option that allowed you to have Tabs or Triangles. User preference and all that.

Didn’t they have to change the interface a lot to accommodate the relationship editor? That thing sounded pretty cool to me. . .

How so? I think having a dependincy/hypgraph graph thing is going to be hard to convince Hash to impliment personally. Not to mention it’ll be intimidating to new users.

However, if they did, how would we want it to act and look?
I’m sure we can get Randy excited about it, if we can show him the usefullness.

jdates

#30

There are little things that could be done with the project workspace. I would like each section (models, coriographies etc) to have a different colour. Most of the icons seem to be yellow and it is not as easy to scan about as it could be. There could also be some kind of marker for the top and bottom of an object. I know that everything is nested but the more it is nested, the less space you get and things don’t jump out as much as they could. Colour-coding is basically what I am talking about.

Also, I sometimes use a filter to get easy access to an object that I want to make lots of instances of, but I can’t find a way to do this without those instances appearing in the filter (they are also objects and have the same name), I have to scroll back up to the top to find my model. Maybe we need exclusion as part of the filter thing (eg exclude instances).

Oh, by the way, (in reference to above), If you hold shoft as you turn or move, you move the camera (don’t have to open new window).

#31

I meant shift. A shoft is a shop in a loft.

#32

Originally posted by John Keates
[B]There are little things that could be done with the project workspace. I would like each section (models, coriographies etc) to have a different colour. Most of the icons seem to be yellow and it is not as easy to scan about as it could be. There could also be some kind of marker for the top and bottom of an object. I know that everything is nested but the more it is nested, the less space you get and things don’t jump out as much as they could. Colour-coding is basically what I am talking about.

Also, I sometimes use a filter to get easy access to an object that I want to make lots of instances of, but I can’t find a way to do this without those instances appearing in the filter (they are also objects and have the same name), I have to scroll back up to the top to find my model. Maybe we need exclusion as part of the filter thing (eg exclude instances).

Oh, by the way, (in reference to above), If you hold shoft as you turn or move, you move the camera (don’t have to open new window). [/B]

Yeah, I agree about the icons not helping with easily finding your objects… More color, and color-coding would be helpful. A default, and an override would be nice.

The more powerful filters are indeed needed. The options to “show selected Only” would help.

The Shift+turn and Shift+move is not implimented well IMHO.
I want to toggle into that mode, and be able to orbit around a selected object. (like in the model view). Shift+M doesn’t give you dolly movement right and left… only in z? I think this could be implimented better.

A couple of others I noticed,

It would be nice to have “interactive” handles in the interface for the Bone "Fall-Off for the point influence.

Shift+Select in the interface is a must. It’s sort of there but doesn’t seem to be implimented well. I want to shift+select and be able to rotate or translate both objects.

Also copy+paste objects in the Chor with the same settings PLEASE!

Compute bone wieghts seems kind of broken right now? It’d be a neat feature…

Thoughts?

#33

I’m not 100% sure what is meant by “filters” (maybe more than one thing?). My 3D experience is limited:

Imagine (PC and Ami), LW5, AM.

:slight_smile:

In AM v10 you can select several Choreography objects in the PWS, and toggle one of their Draw Mode/Render Mode/Pickable-Non-Pickable icons, and all the other objects’ icons will also change. A quick way to make several objects go away or be not pickable at once.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Not sure about v9.51e, couldn’t be bothered to load it up as I am using v10 right now. :slight_smile:

#34

At the top right hand side of your Project Workspace in 9.5 and 10 there is an arrow. When you click on that you can choose a filter. It lets you creat a workspace that is defined by what you choose in the filter. Say you want to only see a camera that is animated, you can do that with a filter.

What we were talking about adding, was a wildcard feature so you can only see bones that have “arm” in the name, or objects that start with “bob”, etc. Just another way to give you more control in what you have to go through to do your work.

#35

Ah. I get it.

I had forgotten about that feature until your post (I think I stumbled across it a while ago). Thanks!

And I see that there is no “bone” type to filter by. So yes, this feature could do with a bit of tweaking.

:slight_smile:

Thanks for the reminder though!

#36

The problem I’ve run into with their “filters” and such is that when you get a heavy project in there, it slows to a crawl while it decides what you’re doing. Features that slow down interaction, are not a good idea. I’ve also been having a lot of problems with the PWS and the old “shifting icons” problem. Nice.

And while I’m on the slowing down thing, I’d have to say that the “lock” on the raytrace render is the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen - that needs to have the option of turning it OFF. I used to use the quick scanline to check colors and such really quickly, hit escape - then press on with what I’m doing. NOW, if you forget that the render zone is still active, you can lose minutes at a time because it doesn’t free up memory when you hit Esc, and you end up having to wait while it get’s it’s shee-it straight. I think I’ve lost 2 or 3 hours over the past week to that “good idea”…

I don’t know if anyone else mentioned this (probably did) but you can move, dolly, pan and zoom the camera while looking through it…

JoeW

#37

Ive always liked the electric Image interface. Very friendly and easy to understand

#38

You can disable the render lock feature.

Use the Customise Tools option to add the original quick render button back to your toolbar. And I guess you can even delete the Quick Render Lock feature while you’re at it if you like, though it does have its uses.

#39

What?! Yeah, the renderlock can be disabled, but personally I lobbied to have that feature installed!

It’s a quick IPR (interactive preview renderer). If you’re tweaking lights, or textures, the Render Lock provides a cool way to do that. Interactive fog, etc… It’s a neat tool, but as with any UI feature, should have an override for the user.

So it can be turned off! :smiley:

jeff

#40

Originally posted by jdates
[B]What?! Yeah, the renderlock can be disabled, but personally I lobbied to have that feature installed!

It’s a quick IPR (interactive preview renderer). If you’re tweaking lights, or textures, the Render Lock provides a cool way to do that. Interactive fog, etc… It’s a neat tool, but as with any UI feature, should have an override for the user.

So it can be turned off! :smiley:

jeff [/B]

Skevos - thanks for the tip… I could swear I looked for that, but couldn’t find it (is that any suprise in V10?)…

Jeff, it’s an OK feature if you’ve got a simple scene and are working on simple textures, but my latest “creation” is using some of Yves Poissant’s light arrays, and my object has a patch count over 40K… so it makes for a slowwww time

But, if I can disable it, I’m happy…well, happiER…

JoeW