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

Oh yeah i agree of course - im only messing!

Hi Michael,

So far it sounds and looks good, but until we have a play I can't comment, especially when you've been using the 256 layer system for years, it will be very interesting.
The system looks and sounds very straight forward, À la cad\graphics 'layer' system.

I was just going through in my mind on how I would use the system, maybe assign all curves used for construction as one style, construction surfaces as another and the rest for assembled solid bodies, I guess that will be it's most simplistic use.
In saying that, I'm trying visualise MoI with curves, surfaces and solids in colour, could you give us an actual screen shot of some of these objects together in colour, just to see the intensity you have planned for the colours, or haven't you got to that stage yet ? Like a trailer for an up and coming epic Movie :)

Cheers

Hi Michael,

It's evoluting really well.
Like Danny I was wondering about the colours of objects and have two questions:

- Will it be possible to temporarily turn style colours off to have a more uniform preview of the shapes ?
- And I like the active style square and the right click attribution process but, apart from looking at the shapes colours, is there a way to see what is the selected shape style while (still) seeing the "active" style that will be applied to the next shape ?

- Michel

+1 for the temporary disable colours.

I forgot to say im really impressed that we can apply styles to faces that is going to be a real time saver! On a related note will it be possible to apply a style to a profile that will be used for sweeping so that the profiles style will be used for the sweep object? Also will we be able to sweep several grouped profiles at once along a path? Say in the example here I have a profile for a wall which will be swept along a path. I have one style for brick material (yellow in this case) and another for plaster (black line/grey solid) can i group these and then do a sweep and the sweep object retains the colours/styles of the original profiles?












Cheers
Rob

Hi Danny,

> I was just going through in my mind on how I would use
> the system, maybe assign all curves used for construction
> as one style, construction surfaces as another and the rest
> for assembled solid bodies, I guess that will be it's most
> simplistic use.

Actually for such a basic thing you should be able to use the "Types" section of the browser for that, without needing to set up any styles.

When you expand out "Types", it has slots in there for things like "Curves", "Solids", etc... , which will let you do things like "hide all curves" by clicking on the eye on the Curves line.


> In saying that, I'm trying visualise MoI with curves, surfaces and
> solids in colour, could you give us an actual screen shot of some
> of these objects together in colour, just to see the intensity you
> have planned for the colours, or haven't you got to that stage yet ?

I haven't quite got that part finished yet, I've just done some experiments. It looks like I am going to need to adjust the lighting to handle colored objects better since they tend to be too dark with the regular matte type display that MoI currently uses.

- Michael