Hi DesuDeus,

> I agree, but behind changing colors and icons there's also
> the borders/shapes and overall layout of the UI.

Actually, all of that stuff is available to change, things like borders are also images that are inside of the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder.

But that can be a pretty big job to maintain a tweaked UI, especially when I also make changes during a beta release cycle. However if you want to it is certainly possible.

For an example, see here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1521.1


> I dont find dark depressing,

I do!

It's not really an uncommon association.


> its been in all the pro applications for one thing, contrast for the eye.

Yes, it certainly has been the trend for awhile.

But it is a pretty unnatural presentation to have a dark background and white text. The vast majority of "natural" text that you see is with black text on a light background, for example in nearly any book that you might pick up. Or another example is Google's page, or if you draw with a pencil on a sheet of paper you will normally have a light background for that.

It's nice to have that more familiar kind of contrast, it just keeps things having more of a natural feeling.

It's also easy to run into serious readability problems when going away from the natural kind of presentation.

For example several areas in that Blender screenshot that you posted are quite difficult to read, especially the text that is mostly black on the dark background, like "SCULPT TOOLS" for example - that's lacking so much in contrast that it can't easily be seen anymore at a quick glance.

That kind of sacrifice of usability/legibility for style purposes is something that I try to stay away from.


> But sadly some people judge first by the UI.

Yes, that's true! But luckily it is very rare for me to receive complaints about the UI, most often people have a very favorable impression of it in general.

I've even had people remark that they changed the UI in some of their other programs to match MoI's color scheme after they saw it.


Of course, it is impossible to please 100% of people, and I actually gave up trying to do that a while ago.... ;)



> Just like if by the first sight it look non-pro, just like when sketchup
> started, some people sayed it was just a toy.

A lot of times people will say this not because of the graphic design, but rather if they see that it looks like it has a smaller set of tools and is not covered with a zillion buttons like a normal "pro" app.

But that's a problem that is not going to really go away with MoI because having an easy to use and approachable UI is one of the main goals of the program.

I think that there is a growing trend though where good workflow and ease of use is becoming more valued by professionals, so there is gradually less of an association with "easy to use" automatically is the same as "toy".


re: web site stuff -

I definitely do intend to tune up the web site, like I mentioned I hope to give it at least a little bit of attention when MoI v2 is released.

But at the moment, the focus is much more on the software and not on the web site, which I think is the right priority.

Thanks very much for the feedback!

- Michael