Hi Tony,

> So you need:
>
> Hidden but not locked - blank
> Shown but not locked - eye
> Hidden and locked - blank with small lock symbol in corner
> Shown and locked - eye with small lock symbol in corner

That sounds like it would work well.

The only thing is that I'm not so sure yet if you really will care that much about knowing when something is "hidden but locked".

That's why I was thinking of making both "hidden and locked" as well as "hidden and unlocked" just be blank. That lets me have just a big lock icon for the "locked and visible" state which may stand out a bit more as compared to a lock in the corner type thing.

I think I'm going to give this "3 visual state" thing a try at first and just see how it works in practice. If that does not work out then I can switch to a 4 visual state type thing like you are describing.

- Michael

Ok, some concepts are starting to come together a lot more.

So the overall idea for the browser is to let you do some common actions like hide, show, select, ... on a set of objects.

This will include groups that you have specifically defined, but also some other kinds of "built in" sets so you can have one place to go (with a common UI) for doing things like:

Select all curves
Hide everything except solids
Hide objects that have style = Red
Etc...

The browser has a few different categories for some of these different kinds of sets:




Groups will be containers that you can define that can hold a list of objects or other sub-groups.

Objects shows named objects - if you assign a name to an object or multiple objects, that name will show up under this section to allow you to hide/show/select it.

Types allows you to target all objects of a specific type, like all curve objects, or all solid objects, again with all the same kind of controls like hide/show/select/whatever:




Styles allows you to target all objects that have been assigned a particular visual style. Like for example if you want to hide all objects that have been assigned the style "Red", you can do that in this section. Again with the exact same controls as the other sections for hide/show/etc...




So the idea overall is that this is a "one stop shopping" place for dealing with management operations on sets of objects, with various different kinds of sets.


There is flexibility so you can work in different ways if you want to, like if you want to primarily base your organization off of the object's visual color, you can work with the Styles section (this will then be fairly similar to traditional CAD layers). If you want to just be able to get back to one particular object easily later on, then give that object a name and use the Objects section. If you want to do some more complex hierarchies, then you can set up groups. You can use any of these strategies by themselves or mix them together.

Then additionally being able to target specific object types like "hide all curves" will also use the same UI for hiding other sets... I think you'll even be able to do things like "hide all the curves that are not currently selected" in a natural way with this.


So anyway, that's where I am at currently with the overall strategy. It seems to be coming together in a coherent way now.


- Michael

Seems pertinent...so...
Wait and see :)

Looking good so far Michael.

Hi Michael,

Do you have an idea how resolve things like:

Drawing a curve when 'hide curves' in active ? In max for example you don't see what you are drawing in that case, and well, it's a bit disturbing ^^

Lookin good Billy Ray!

Hi PaQ,

> Drawing a curve when 'hide curves' in active ? In
> max for example you don't see what you are drawing
> in that case, and well, it's a bit disturbing ^^

The way that I'm currently planning for these things to work is that they are actions that you perform, rather than a persistent mode.

So for instance if you go to hide curves, it will be the same as if you had selected all the curves in your model and then hit Hide (using the current Hide tool from MoI v1 I mean). It won't be a permanent "sticky" mode.

That would be the same behavior for all those kinds of things - groups, named objects, types, and styles.

Otherwise if these were persistent modes, there would be all sorts of conflicts that would arise (aside from having some strange effects like you mention), like what if you had set curves to be off, but then you have a named object that is a curve and then you turn it on using the "named object" UI? One thing would be saying "turn it off" and another thing would be saying "turn it on"... I would have to have some kind of hierarchy of one of those states "winning" out over the other.

By doing things as an immediate action instead it avoids these kinds of conflicts.

There will probably be some kinds of situations where a "sticky mode" could be useful, but it is just so much more complicated to have that. The "immediate action" method I think will work out to be more simple overall and it makes it easier to have many different categories to work with, that kind of flexibility should hopefully be useful. We'll have to see how it works out though.

- Michael

Seems to be a good solution indeed :)

Been away for a while and just trawled through this lengthly thread! Too much text and not enough pictures!!;-) It's looking great can't wait to have a spin. I think the eye logo is a good choice and looks good. i think most of my thoughts/questions have already been covered and it all looks nice and flexible, this one might have slipped through though... will there be an option to isolate a group that can be worked on in isolation? What would be even better would be the greying out of the rest of the model which would become inactive but still there as a reference for guide lines etc. But maybe that might be a bridge too far just now.

Will instances still be a V3 feature or are you on a roll?..............

Cheers

EDIT: Also can I make a cheeky request for the exportation of groups/styles for poly models be put at the top of the priority list for the next beta - and can that beta just consist of that feature!!! For me at least this is a major stumbling block for large production work.

Hi Rob, thanks for your feedback!


> will there be an option to isolate a group that can be worked
> on in isolation?

Yup, the idea is to do that with a right-click on the eye icon.

A left-click on an eye will just turn on or off that particular item, but a right click will hide everything else except that item, and a second right-click on it again later will turn all things back on again.


> What would be even better would be the greying out of the rest
> of the model which would become inactive but still there as a
> reference for guide lines etc. But maybe that might be a bridge
> too far just now.

That will be called "locking", and I do want to have that but it probably won't be in this next beta with the first round of this stuff in it.


> Will instances still be a V3 feature or are you on a roll?..............

Not on quite that much of a roll! ;) That's going to take quite a bit of work to make instances function well, so I don't think it will be possible to get that in for v2.


> EDIT: Also can I make a cheeky request for the exportation of
> groups/styles for poly models be put at the top of the priority
> list for the next beta - and can that beta just consist of that feature!!!

I sort of need to the UI nailed down first so that I know how things should behave in MoI. Once that behavior is worked out then after that I can figure out how to map the mechanisms in MoI to what is supported in a particular file format.

So probably the next beta won't have this part working yet, but it will be happening before v2 is finished for sure.

- Michael

Looking great!

Maybe small icons before 'curves', 'surfaces' could be intuitive.
It could be the same icons than in the construct tabs but smaller, like the color swatches.

Marc

Hi Marc,

> Maybe small icons before 'curves', 'surfaces' could be intuitive.
> It could be the same icons than in the construct tabs but
> smaller, like the color swatches.

It would be cool, but there is only a very small space available there for the icons, they need to fit within about 16 pixels of height...

I'm not very optimistic about being able to shrink those images down to that small of a level and still have them look good.

- Michael

Some more progress on the scene browser styles section:



When some objects of a given category are mixed with some hidden and some shown, you'll get a "mixed status" half-eye which you can see there for Red in this case.

If there are no objects that belong in a particular category, the text for that category will be grayed out. This indicates that you can't click to hide/show objects on that one since there are no objects associated with that slot.

The ring around the outside of the Magenta swatch indicates that is the "active style" - that is the style that is assigned to brand new objects that you draw.

If you have objects selected, you can click on the swatch to assign those objects to have that style. If nothing is selected and you click on a swatch it will make that swatch the active style, and if you right-click on a swatch it will become the active style regardless of whether objects are selected or not.


I've got right-click on the eye working for "isolate" mode (hide everything else except that slot) and it is feeling great!


Next up is selection (and isolate selection, and deselection), which right now I think will happen by clicking on the text label.

Then after that maybe some more stuff on a drop-down menu, I think the way the dropdown menu can work is that when you move your mouse over the line, a drop-down arrow will appear on the far right side and you'll be able to click there to pop open a menu.

Anyway, it seems to be coming along quite well with a lot of functionality embedded in a streamlined UI.

- Michael

And maybe you can have an another option if the "half eye" is left or right

Hi Pilou, is the half being on the left or right an important thing for you?

I don't think there will be a checkbox option for that, but the "half eye" comes from an image named VisibleMixed.png, which like all the other icons in MoI is in the \ui subfolder.

So if you want to have the other half instead, you can edit that PNG file in an image processing program however you would like...

- Michael

No, no it's just for have the possibility for you of a practical new sub section of selection of something, not for me :)

Hi Pilou - I see what you mean now, another possible state to use... But I think I would try to avoid that since they would look so similar.

I was thinking maybe half an eye on the left meant something bad in France so you wanted to change it! :)

- Michael

No politic don't go in such little point :) Only egyptian eye :D
So make 4 divisions then no jealous :)

Ooooooooooooo right clicking, thought that was a no no for moi for easy tablet use!!;-) Sounds good though. I've got a cintiq 12wx at home which i need to dust off and start using with moi. Think i had a quick go when i first got it but that was before i really got into MOI so don't think i gave it a fair crack, might have another go tonight if i've time. It's a bit of a hassle setting it all up they market it as though it's the easiest think in the world but for me there are too many wires and boxes if your not using it at a propper desk. Anyway that's a bit OT.

I take it the styles pane will scroll when it reaches its screen limit?

All sounding great so far

Hi Rob, well the main way I figure is that adding in some extra functions with right-click does not suddenly make all the other functions in MoI that work well with a tablet stop working...

Basically those will be shortcut methods, there will still be several other ways of getting similar results like just selecting objects and then using the regular "Hide" command.

I do generally try to avoid relying on right-clicks for the most basic functions, but for shortcuts and generally more advanced functions it is not something that I worry about as much.

As time goes on and more advanced functions are added, it won't be that unusual for there to be some more stuff on right clicks.

Pretty much the main other choice would be to not have those particular functions in there at all, and it is hard to see how that is a better situation.


> I take it the styles pane will scroll when it reaches its screen limit?

Yup!

- Michael