Hi Michael,

Yeah, I know that my example was starting to get complex.
It was not ment to illustrate UI, just to give you som ideas to use if you can fit it in.
Maybe it`s just me wanting to cram as much as possible in one place.

> One of the biggest constraints that I have though is to try and pack the UI into the narrow confines of the side pane.

I see that one, I just bought a netbook (Asus 1000H, which by the way work great with Moi) and there is
not much room left for additional UI. It took a little while to get used to coming from 1900x1200 times two workspace, but
it`s a joy lay down on the couch and model with this litte thing.

In my current and previous job I make and manage a lot of huge and complex speadheets and
need total control, maybe thats why. So I could be more accustomed to read and navigate what other
people may consider cluttered and complex.

After reading all the feedback from you and the other users I now understand more how it works,
and think you are on the right track.

> One function that I'm not quite sure about in the UI that you show there is how to hide/show objects? Would that be another image like an eye next to the select button?

Yes, just forgot to put in there.


One tip though, if you are familiar with Excel`s Pivot table function then I suggest that you look at some of the functions there
for organizing a lot of data (think architectural scenes). The interaction with the tables are really good, from selections too reorganizing, filtering etc.
This may be a odd place to get ideas for a 3d program, but one thing that I`ve learned is that you have to keep an open mind.
Maybe I could demonstrate it in a screencapture video if I lear how to use one :)

In general though, I feel that flyouts and popups are more distracting and a slowdown than a bigger UI.
(my personal opinion).

This is a tough on (object browser)....
I`ve used quite a few and all have their strength and weaknesses.
Modo and Silo has some good elements but lack in other areas.

Can`t wait to try out this for the next beta, really looking forward to it!


- Eric

Hi Eric,

> I see that one, I just bought a netbook (Asus 1000H, which by the
> way work great with Moi) and there is
> not much room left for additional UI.

I also just recently got a netbook as well (Asus N10), it is cool how MoI can work well on a small screen!


I'm not really familiar with Excel's Pivot tables, but I'll try to take a look. Do you maybe know of any existing tutorials or overviews of it online that I could check out? I'm not sure how far I will get just with directly messing around with it.


> In general though, I feel that flyouts and popups are more
> distracting and a slowdown than a bigger UI.
> (my personal opinion).

They're definitely a compromise, and certainly tastes are always going to vary.

The thing that they do tend to do well with is to provide a smaller initial surface of stuff to a beginning user. It is really a common problem for beginning users to get easily lost when presented with too dense of a UI initially.

Also prioritizing things can help a lot - if something is not needed too often then it doesn't do much actual harm if it takes you an extra second to do it. For example something that takes an extra second to do but only happens once every hour just does not add up to very much wasted time overall.

But it can be tricky to get the priorities right, and sometimes it may even be impossible because they can vary between different kinds of projects.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Asus N10, cool, I looked at that one, more powerful graphics, but went for the cheaper one 1000H :)

In regards to the pivot table idea, I did a quick search on the net which explains how to make one.
There are a lot of videos on youtube as well, but don`t know if these pages/videos explains the interaction that well.
That`s why I was thinking of making a screen capture to demonstrate thing that you could possbly use.

Basically pivot tables are table that queries a raw data sheet to generate a table which is interactiv and dynamic as
opposed to regular spreadsheets. It`s non destructive to your data, so you can mess around as much as you want
without damaging your data.
You can alter the layout all you want by drag/drop, reordering hedings etc.

I don`t know what you can pull out of this, but general mindset of alternative ways of organizing data/info.

I agree with you regarding new users and complex UI, remember that myself when I started learning 3d software.
Maya and Blender was the first one, and the first week I was really intimidated, and could not even make a box, that put me off.


- Eric

Hi Michael,

it all looks good so far, I find it hard to tell until I get to try it.

I find your options on the visibility confusing,

>If you left click on that eye, it will switch all the objects associated with that to be hidden and the eye will disappear.

>If you click on that area where the eye is not showing, it will show all the objects for that thing and the eye will then appear.

You now have an invisible, or a column of invisible buttons. Could we not have a closed eye, or a different colour say red ? I feel 'something' to click on is better than a space, I don't really mind what,

regards Tim.

Hi Michael,
good to hear about the import and export compatibility.

I am not sure if this has been mentioned somewhere else in the thread, but for visibilitiy,
it would be good to have three modes (instead of the Visible / Non-visible option):

Force-on (green or yellow)
Neutral (gray)
Force-off. (red)

This is how cinema4d does it, and I find it really good.
Basically, if neutral, then the object inherits the parent's properties (so it is visible if the parent group is visible etc...).
If the object is turned ON, it will alway be visible, regardless of the parent's properties,
if it is turned OFF, it will be invisible.

I find this system quite usefull for organizing large scenes.

Also, how will this interact with the current Hide and Isolate options?
I use these all the time when modelling, so it would be good to have maximum compatibility between this and the upcoming options.
(Maybe the hide options override the Goup attributes, this would maybe be the most logical way of doing it?)

About curves generators
Have they a special section?

Hi Tim,

> You now have an invisible, or a column of invisible buttons.
> Could we not have a closed eye, or a different colour say red ?
> I feel 'something' to click on is better than a space, I don't
> really mind what,

I thought about that a bit... But I noticed it seemed to be most common for other programs that used an eye icon to have the eye just be missing to indicate hidden, for example that is how Photoshop works.

There's also kind of an advantage to it being blank, that it will probably stick out in contrast in a line of differing states the most. A closed eye is probably going to be too similar in shape and make it a bit harder to differentiate at a glance.

I guess I could try to make a really faint eye, but that may have a kind of look of being something that was disabled.

I think there will be some kind of highlight when you mouse over that area which may help.... I guess we'll see when it is actually going how this works out.

- Michael

Hi Okapi, the way that I am planning on doing it is that there actually won't be a state that the group itself owns directly.

Instead the group will act as a way to operate on a batch of object properties all in one go.

Like for example if you hide a group what that will actually do is hide all the objects that are part of that group but the hidden state is actually a property of the objects.

This basically avoids the kind of special modes that you're talking about.

It also should make it possible to have objects belong to more than one group, which otherwise tends to create a problem of possibly having conflicting states.


> Also, how will this interact with the current Hide and Isolate options?

Well, that's the other thing that is good about having the state actually belong to objects, it is fully compatible with the regular Hide mechanism, it just becomes a way to operate on a particular batch of objects in one click.

It also lets me use other things like Styles and Object types as other ways to control visibility in addition to groups.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> About curves generators
> Have they a special section?

I think that they will be a kind of sub-entry underneath something like:

Objects
    All objects
        Curves

But I'm not completely sure about that part yet.

- Michael

Hi Michael

Re: lightbulbs

Actually , I though of lightbulbs because it would remind your logo!
I did not check on others initially but you're right, eye icons are the commonplace by far.
And yes, autocad and rhino has lightbulbs...

Been a long time since I've touch autocad, I'm very glad not having to use it anymore!
Moi workflow is far better, even in 2d.

Thanks

Marc

Hi Michael, what about a tab system, I think I've mentioned this before.
For me it's uncluttered, clean and the same space is used as many times as you want, IMHO flyouts seem bit obstructive.

The gif was quick and rough and I don't know if it's possible coding wise, is it ?
Just another thought I had, to throw into the thread.



-

Hi DannyT,

I support this suggestion all the way.
Then you could add a lot of new features without changing the overall UI.

This is how it works i Modo, and I love it, clean and fast with no overlapping windows.

- Eric

Hi Danny,

Looks like a good idea :)
Those likes "command manager" in another cad system.

Hi guys,

I think this is my first post here, I have been a long time lurker and a daily follower of the forum.

I think Michael you have to be careful of not trying to hard to be different just for the sake of being different. for an example the layer system, you always talk about the layer system in other system that objects can't be in different layers at the same time, why is that a bad thing? I know its not as flexible, but its a system that people know from Illustrator, Photoshop, Autocad and yes Rhino (which sometimes I feel you try too hard to be a little different).

My vote also goes with Danny, I think his idea is the best implementation of the ones I have seen in this thread.

And for the eye icon, from a designers perspective it bothers me a lot, I like the light bulb that you see in rhino and autocad, maybe the eye needs some fine tuning, its a bit too harsh on the eyes.)

Used to modo too, so I love this tab idea !
(and thanks Michael for all the replies ;))

@Danny Inclined text is perturbating, no easy readable, and you lost width screen surface :)

>> re: separate window - that's something that would be good to include but it may have to wait for a while, it is just hard for me to
>> manage too many options for this all in the initial go around. It's kind of a general problem that it would be nice to be able to tear
>> off chunks of UI and dock them into other montiors (on the same monitor you'll just be having a floating window that obscures
>> the modeling viewports as well) but it's a lot of work to make a whole system for that.

Thanks Michael - if I know it is coming then I can wait. Though just the browser would be enough, perhaps setup the same way the options is, with tabs down the side for groups, styles etc.



I kinda like Danny's idea of a tabbed area for the right hand panel too. I'm very used to this idea from modo and CorelDraw. Not sure how it would work out in practice but has the potential to reduce clutter in the side bar

@Pilou
Well you lost 20pix, and win lot of surface with every tab.
Vertical text is readable, only Modeling give some trouble, because the word contains many letters that work in both side I guess ... (M=W ?).

A bit off topic, but I think it would be nice to have some constancy in colors code, between what is selected, or not.
Like having the same color for selected suface/curve in the viewport, and selected/active tab (I still have the filling the actual desaturated blue is not eye catching enough ... I often miss click the tab I want to switch to ...)



(that's having said, I'm not sure about the object surface color :S)

Surer Super Cool Dunny...I love it, it's great for future expansion. I really hope it can make into MoI.

Indeed, tabs could solve a lot of screen estate concerns.

Would be nice to have the possibility to open 2 at once.

Marc