Hi okapi, I'm mostly focused first on getting the UI nailed down, but I can give you at least the general ideas so far on how I think file transfer is going to be handled.


> - will the group be recognized as separate layers by Rhino?

Right now the way that I'm thinking of doing it is that "Styles" in MoI will map to layers in Rhino.

I want groups in MoI to be more flexible than layers - for example in MoI you'll be able to have one object belong to multiple different groups. It is not possible in Rhino to have a single object belong to more than one layer at the same time, so that kind of makes it a bad match up between MoI groups and Rhino layers.

However, styles in MoI are assigned as one style per object, this seems to make them a better thing to match up as layers.

Also you'll use styles in MoI to control the visual appearance of your object, and often in Rhino layers are used to control the visual appearance of your object as well, so again that is a good correlation.

So I think that if you want the organization to come across you'll want to use Styles in MoI to organize your objects and control visibility using the Styles section of the scene browser rather than the Groups section.



> - will the layers from a Rhino file be recognized as separate groups?

I'm thinking that probably layers from a Rhino file could open as Styles inside of MoI, to match up with the export mechanism as described above.


> -will it be possible to export OBJ models that preserve the grouping mode.

OBJ files have a few different methods that can be used to tag different parts of the model data.

I'm thinking that groups in MoI can translate into groups in the OBJ file (which at least in the file spec allows for one object to belong to multiple groups) and I think that Styles will go out as material assignments.

- Michael

Hey Michael, everybody,

Just thought I would throw some ideas out there.

As a long time user of Adobe Illustrator I`ve taken some features from there.
It has a lot of good organize functions that could be implemented in Moi although it is a 2D program.

I know a lot of the functions would make it more complex, but I think it gives great control over your scene.
I`ve tried to think flow and intuition although it`s more complicated than what`s been shown so far.
Personally I like having everything in one place, two "browser" makes me feel like having less control, but I may be wrong.

Michael, like always, I really dig the way you operate and let us users participate in the development.
You`ve figured out what other software developers should have figured out a long time ago.
When it comes to brainstorming/idea collecting, it is not the initial quality of the ideas that matters, but volume.
Then you have a huge idea base that you can tap into and play around with and combine etc.
In this case you can have ideas that are half good and combine them to make a great one :)
(used to do that a lot when I was doing projects as a graphic designer, long time ago)

Mind, I`ve made this in Excel with no intention of illustrating the design, just the functions that could be implemented.
Anyway, here it is (cluttered, but hopefully readable).

PS
For making a new group or style: they can be individual "objects in the browser without being connected to physical object.
Then you can drag/drop these on to a object in the organizer, and it will organize itself under the physical object definition.

Hi Danny, thanks for the feedback - yes it's fine to just brainstorm and throw out some ideas!

> I like the logic so far, styles and groups. I know you don't like
> the word 'Layers' but does 'Styles' equate to layers in the
> simplest form ?

Yeah, I think it has pretty much turned out that way, which I think will be good because then styles can be used to transfer into "Layers" when doing import/export to some different formats.

You'll be able to use Styles if you want to organize your object primarily based on visual appearance, like Red objects = one category, Blue objects = a different category, etc...


If you want to organize your objects in a separate way than its visual appearance, like make hierarchies and things like that, then you can use Groups to do that. That will then get into some kinds of arrangements that are not possible to do with regular traditional layers. (and will also therefore not map so easily to them during import/export though).


I'm trying to avoid using that term "Layers" because if I name something Layers it will make it look like that is the main thing that you should use for organizing objects.


> With groups, have you thought how you are going to
> define them, titles,numbers......?

Currently the idea is that groups will have a name assigned to them, like when you do a "New group" probably a dialog will pop up at that time to let you enter a name for it.


> Maybe a third option "Side" which would throw it to the
> opposite side of the the screen to the command palettes, I
> feel organisational work flow should be separate from the
> modelling work flow, my feeling anyway

I've generally tried pretty hard to keep the top and left sides clear of UI, it kind of helps to make for a kind of "open" feeling to the viewport with the spotlight kind of put more on your objects rather than on the program UI.

UI that surrounds your objects on all sides gives me a kind of "boxed in" feel that I'd like to avoid.

Anyway, that's kind of the philosophy for not doing that...

If it seems to come up a bunch more then I could certainly add in an option for it! It will be pretty easy to actually make your local copy behave like that by editing a UI file though (I'll give instructions after it is out there) so you'll be able to try it out like that.


> Here's one idea, maybe start using the second click option to
> open another palette, same action as you have for the Viewport
> configuration tabs.

This kind of works best when that second click would otherwise do nothing.

Like for example with the viewport tabs, once you have clicked on "Top" and made it active, it's not like you would expect for a second click there to do the opposite (since that one is a button that is part of a set). So for a while there that second click was not doing anything until I made it do the reversing function instead.

But with the Tree buttons that have a + / - on them, if one click opens that tree item, then a second click would be normally expected to already do the opposite, so it doesn't quite have a "do nothing" state that I can leverage for that case...

- Michael

Cool progress Michael...just some thoughts (no idea if that is possible)...also do not pay atencion to the material editors layout is a very quick draft...

Hi Grendel,

> Looking good so far Michael, when you say "selecting the
> whole group somewhere on that line" could that not be
> when you select the group header and it is collapsed
> or expanded?

You mean like clicking on the text of the name rather than on the +/- button?

Yes - I definitely want to assign something to that action but I also have another big thing that I already need to assign to an action which is to pop out a menu with more stuff on it.

I'm thinking of putting a "Select objects" button on that pop-out menu instead.

That would make for just a few actions directly on the "top level" UI of an item - clicking on the eye would handle hiding/showing it, clicking on a +/- of a parent group would open up its child items, and otherwise clicking on anywhere else on it (like on the text of its name or its swatch) would open up the menu with a bunch more actions on that menu.

I would like to have a select function on the "top level" item as well, but I have not yet figured out a good way to make the pop-out menu work easily at the same time as a select function.

Maybe I could make it so that if you go to the far right side of the item's line you could click in a zone there to select its objects rather than open up the popup menu.

- Michael

Hi Marco,

> when trying new feature ?

I'm not quite sure yet, hopefully not too much longer but there is still some work to do to finish it up so that it is functional.

- Michael

Hi Yannada, looks interesting!


A couple of issues - on a lower res screen the bottom toolbar is nearly full so there are situations where there is not enough room to put the "Browser" on the bottom command bar rather than at the bottom of the side pane, that's the main reason why I have located it to the right of the help button at the bottom of the side pane instead.

Also that is an interesting idea to have a small menu to switch between Adjacent and Inside modes, but do you really expect to be moving back and forth between these different modes often? Right now I am expecting for that to be something that is set once to set up your overall UI configuration and then will not need to be adjusted after that. Settings like this which are only set once I prefer to put inside of the Options dialog and keep them a bit more out of the way.

RE: Objects and styles in one panel - it looks like your version there though would be missing the function of doing a "Hide all red objects" for example.

I want to be able to have the function available for hiding/showing/selecting/etc... all objects of a certain style as well as different groups.

This is the reason why I want to have different sections in the browser for "Groups" and "Styles".

If you don't want to work by selecting styles, it won't really be a problem, just hit the - sign on the Styles part of the browser and it collapses to a single line to stay out of your way.

- Michael

Hi Burr,

> I start modeling and need access to basic organizational methods,
> a simpler styles and groups, but then when I pause for a bit,
> I want the full power to open up...It could even take over some
> of the modeling area for the moment. So possible a 2 step entry
> into the browser???

It's kind of tough to think about this kind of completely separate multi-stage thing, because that then makes for multiple kinds of "triggering" mechanisms required to open up each of these different modes.

Basically I'm really hoping to have one overall mechanism that sort of combines these things together, like with basic functions like "hide/show" easy to access in the most simple way but then a pop-up menu that you can trigger by clicking on an item that has some more advanced functions on it.

That pop-up menu part is actually a lot like you are describing above, since it will take up some additional space when it is open, sort of like the "take over some of the modeling area" that you were talking about above. So maybe the current direction is actually pretty aligned to what you are describing, we'll see when it comes together a bit more!

> PS: Dont forget "Position" popup as you have done with
> "Size" popup. That would be way cool!

Most objects don't really have a "position" - usually objects are made up of a variety of different x,y,z points in it, and a "position" would mean trying to elevate just one of those points as a kind of special one. You can use the Move command for that currently since you pick the point you are interested in as the first pick in that command.

Some previous discussion on this here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2127.45

- Michael

Just test :)
And what are really words under colors?
Word of the color or other things?
Are they necessary inside this panel? Because there is a very small place for other languages and for following colors' name after 7! ;)

Hi PaQ,

> So far it's simple, excepet that I'm not used so hide
> geometry throught the material editor ... So I don't
> completely get why separate this 2 things.

Well, basically the material is another kind of organizational method applied to objects, you would probably normally have some way to select all objects of a certain material... This provides for that and more by giving you the same tools to work on all the objects of a certain material by hiding/showing/locking/etc... same as you would for groups.

Basically "all objects that have this material" becomes another kind of group that you can work on if you want.

Maybe instead of it being its own top-level browser item I could put it as a special "Styles" sub-section underneath groups, that maybe would be clearer that you are treating "all objects of this style" as a kind of group operation... But I'm not really sure that would make much overall difference.

I do want to have some other special "built-in" groups like an "All objects" group that will let you apply the same kinds of operations (hide,select,etc...) to all objects using the same UI as for manipulating a group.


> - Is it possible to hide/unhide group ? Or do I have to assign a style ?

Yeah, the entries under Groups will have the same kind of controls as what I currently show there for Styles, with an eye icon, etc... So if you click on the eye icon for a group it will hide that group for instance.


> - As MoI slow down a little bit with the edges drawing, I was
> thinking that maybe we could create a 'no edges' style for
> exemple, but then, what is I want hide edges from a group ?

At least at first I don't think there will be a way to hide things by the visual properties that you set in a style, but that would probably be good to add in the future.

But a style is a property of an object, if you want to hide edges from a group, you would select all the objects of that group and then assign them the style you want, now all those objects have that style. (there may be a shortcut for this as well, maybe by clicking on a group swatch).

But a style does not belong to a group, it belongs to individual objects, basically the group UI (for hide/show and everything really) is a kind of helper to set different properties on a particular batch of objects.


> I do have to change the syle of the entire group and losing all
> the color assignation allready made ? Or is it possibel to assign
> a style to the container name, and keep the child style safe ?

Well for now at least you'll probably want to hide the edge sub-objects of all those items instead of using a style for hiding. That keeps the hidden and style stuff separate.

Also for the next v2 beta I've fixed up sub-objects so that hidden sub-objects stay hidden through editing operations.


> - Will the style be editable/showed in the group tree too ?

I'm not sure yet, but possibly - I'm thinking that a group tree item can have a swatch for the group and if all the objects in the group have the same style that style color will be shown there, and probably clicking on it could assign the style you pick to the objects inside of it.


> - Is it possible to assign a style to a surface that is joined ?
> (I mean coloring one face of a cube without having to split it)

Yes - you can apply different styles to sub-objects, like different ones to faces or edges.


> - Wil the colors (syles ?) be preserved and export as material in the .obj export ?

Yes, that's the idea, that styles will get exported as material definitions in .obj .


> - Can we ... group styles ? (I mean easily select every objects
> sharing the same style and group them) ... starting to be a little
> confused myself so I stop for now :o)

Sure, you can select all objects that belong to the same style (use some action in the scene browser in the Styles section to do this), then go to Groups and hit "New group" and that will make a new group with those selected objects in it.

But if you want to do operations on all objects of a certain style, that's what that Styles section is for, so you don't have to manually form groups for that, they are kind of like "built in" groups.


Hopefully that makes a bit more sense?


Basically the whole thing is just about shortcuts for applying properties to batches of objects at once.

The "batch" can be some set of objects that you have specified (a group), or other things like "all objects with Style:red" (a kind of built in batch you access under the Styles UI in the scene browser).


- Michael

Hi Marc,

> Maybe tiny lightbulbs icons to indicate visibility would be in context!

I thought about that. But there are some problems with that.

The biggest one is that I think it would be easy to confuse with "selected" - a yellow lit up bulb looks kind of similar to the selection color and I think could possibly be misinterpreted when just glancing on it to mean selected/unselected rather than hide/show.

I think the lightbulb comes from AutoCAD's layer browser?

It actually seems to be a lot more common in general for programs to use an Eye icon to show "show/hide", in 2D illustration that has been the case for a long time with layers in photoshop. I had checked through a few 2D illustration / photo apps and I didn't find any that used the lightbulb for that, most use an eye and a couple use a checkbox.

The other problem with a lightbulb is that MoI's program icon is also a lightbulb, possibly leading to some confusion there as well.

Another idea was to maybe show a shaded sphere to mean "show", but I'm actually pretty happy with how the eye has turned out.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

In the previous thread there, ash made a response that would mirror mine here:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2127.49

(I post this just so your clear on what I was leaning on)

I dont want you to get bogged down with this as I think we already discussed it and I know its something that you have already considered. It's just a workflow that a few others may be used to (My same reference to Corel and Carrara as ash) with the "Hotpoint" addition as a property, but you have pointed out that the Move command does this too.

I suppose I was hoping for an "OUTCRY" of the masses to get what I want and force you to do something that you decided not to do!!! :O Ha!


(On second thought, I'm sure I couldnt push you around!:))

Burr

Hi Schbeurd,

> I think I have a few questions very similar to the ones PaQ asked previousely.

I think I answered these with the previous reply to PaQ, but just a quick one here...


> Will it be possible to hide/unhide a group.

Yup, sorry I didn't explain this more, but the idea is that groups will look pretty much the same as what you see there with Styles, with an entry for each group with an eye icon to the left for hide/unhide.

The only difference will probably be that a group entry can have a +/- expand/contract thing to the left of its name.


> Will we be able to select objects by groups or by styles or both ?

Either one that you want, if you want to set up groups then you'll go to the groups section and click on those entries to do actions to them (hide, select, etc..) on the other hand if you want to use styles as the main way to organize things and then do something like "Select all things with Style:Red", then you can use the Styles section to work on objects that way.

Styles will basically amount to materials at export time.


> Can we assign a style (a color) to a part of a polysurface without
> separating the object ?

Yes - you just make a sub-object selection like select an edge or a face then you can apply a style to just those sub-objects.

Some data exports may not deal with that kind of sub-object assignment though, like Rhino can't have sub-objects of a single polysurface on different layers.

But for mesh exports it should work well for material assignments for different faces within a solid.

- Michael

Hi Burr - re: "hotpoint" - yeah that is kind of the problem, especially since the "hotpoint" would be one of a few set choices that probably don't have much meaning except when they are applied to a box...

The good part about the Move command is that it does not limit you to just something like the corners and midpoints of a bounding box, you can snap on to any point as the base point to move, that means you can pick one that is relevant to your particular object like the center point of a cylinder cap that is hanging off to one side that you want to align to a specific point.

The "hotpoint" type system with a limited number of choices would not help for that kind of situation.


What you would probably need to make this work more easily would be a kind of "local axis" reference point that was attached to every object. That would then give a kind of reference point that was bundled along with every object that could be more naturally labeled as its "position". But that bring along a log of baggage, additional UI to control placement of the "local origin" separate from the object, more clutter on the screen, etc... so it is something that I've resisted so far, particularly when the Move command already does that kind of a job.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> And what are really words under colors?
> Word of the color or other things?

It is the name of that style.


> Are they necessary inside this panel?

Yes, it's pretty much necessary to have those because of one way that styles can be used to organize material assignments.

Someone who is planning on rendering a model may wish to set up different styles that do not yet have different colors assigned to them, they will only get different colors when they bring it into their rendering program later on to edit the materials.

So for instance it may not be unusual for someone to want to have 3 styles: "Spaceship hull #1", "Spaceship hull #2", and "Spaceship hull #3", and assign different faces to belong to these different styles but while in MoI they are all set up to have a simple color of white, since they don't want to mess with the colors until they are in their rendering program and have all the texturing and other material editing tools available to them.

If there were no text labels in there, it would force people to have to use only colors to identify which style they are picking.


> Because there is a very small place for other languages
> and for following colors' name after 7! ;)

The name will wrap to several lines if necessary, for example:




The user can enter whatever names they want for the styles, but it is a good idea to keep it somewhat compact so that it doesn't make for a huge label in the picker, but that is up to them.

- Michael

OK so 10 letters(spaces) by lines :)

What make exactly the button "Match" ?

>>>A couple of issues - on a lower res screen the bottom toolbar is nearly full so there are situations where there is not enough room to put the "Browser" on the bottom command bar rather than at the bottom of the side pane, that's the main reason why I have located it to the right of the help button at the bottom of the side pane instead.

My bad, I was following current beta layout...

>>>Also that is an interesting idea to have a small menu to switch between Adjacent and Inside modes, but do you really expect to be moving back and forth between these different modes often? Right now I am expecting for that to be something that is set once to set up your overall UI configuration and then will not need to be adjusted after that. Settings like this which are only set once I prefer to put inside of the Options dialog and keep them a bit more out of the way.<<<

the browse bottom hidden in the options panel works best for me (Less Is More), I think I Know how big the project is gonna be from start but having the ability to switch between Adjacent and Inside modes will be a bonus. Or perhaps an extend/Pop Up panel?. if not possible it wound be nice to have the option to choose left or right side of the side pane.>>>RE: Objects and styles in one panel - it looks like your version there though would be missing the function of doing a "Hide all red objects" for example.

I want to be able to have the function available for hiding/showing/selecting/etc... all objects of a certain style as well as different groups.

This is the reason why I want to have different sections in the browser for "Groups" and "Styles".

If you don't want to work by selecting styles, it won't really be a problem, just hit the - sign on the Styles part of the browser and it collapses to a single line to stay out of your way.

That's a TOUGH ONE...

>>>>a log of baggage>>>>

Your right there. A small move from my "old ways" for a greater good.

I've joined the resistence!!! Viva la MoI!!!

Thanks again.

Hi Yannada, that looks interesting but I guess what you are showing there is that if you wanted to show or hide all Red objects you would first need to search through the groups to find a red one and then push those buttons?

But what if you have a lot of groups? It seems like it may take some extra time to need to search through them all to find one with the style that you want to select...

I'd also worry that people might not understand that the "show all/hide all" in that particular button was meant to apply to the styles, if I was just glancing at that UI I might think it was for showing or hiding all sub objects or something else like that.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> What make exactly the button "Match" ?

That will let you select another object, then apply that newly selected object's style as the one to assign.

That lets you change some objects to "match" the style of another one without needing to know exactly which style the other one is using.

- Michael