You're on the right track Michael, keep it up. MoI can't be all things to everybody. C4D has an terrible interface in so many ways so to comparing it to that, I'd choose MoI every time. Maya's interface, although it's complex has a lot of drawbacks too.

I agree with keeping the interface simple and fast. I think at some point (low priority) it would be nice to have a graphic keyboard representation in preferences where you could drag commands onto keys graphically and interactively to quickly set up keyboard shortcuts.

But I think real functionality takes priority over this. Now maybe the thread can go back to cool tricks people have used in their workflows?

Cheers! - Thanks for the great work Michael

I had a reply, accidentally hit my mouse and lost it and then it gave me time to contemplate my reply and if it was worth it.

So instead, no I decided instead to say that I apologize I've offended you. It appears my comments and suggestions regarding the UI have really ruffled the feathers and reading your words you have a very definitive focus and intent on how you've set your course with the MoI UI and its customization thereof.

Because you find my suggestions silly and ridiculous (even though I have years of experience testing and using a variety of UI) I'll defer let things be as they may. For the record, I just finished using MoI for a complete reverse design from photos, sure it doesn't make me a MoI power user but I feel I do know the software.

I don't like using forums to relay comments due to the brevity nature in writing on forums (who can afford to write and read essays). My fault, for cutting to the chase and allowing some assumptions regarding existing workflow to not be recognized fully. So I will make this my last post.

MoI is a nice cute app and suffers few technical problems, a measure of quality for sure. My congratulations on making a solid working app that doesn't leave a user frustrated with instability. May you have continued success with it.

A good day to all.

Hi Len,

> But I think real functionality takes priority over this.

Yeah, that's the main thing - it was hard for me to justify sinking a bunch of time into some of these areas such as key assignment by drag/drop or stuff like that, when compared to sinking time into stuff like modeling improvements.

That stuff is just more like eye candy and just weighs less in core value than things like program stability, export mesh quality, etc...

I do expect to get some time in v3 to improve some of those things though.

- Michael

Seems like a "every once in awhile" repeat post.. Someone claims to be a UI designer with years of experience while criticizing MoI for not being like "Maya"!!! Hahahaha... Then parts with the "Its a cute app" post...

Kindof feels like the guy that slaps you in the face, then tells you "You'll never be anything in life!" syndrome. The life coach that has to prove his point at the expense of your overall well being by trying to break down any self confidence and pride!!

Hi Jason - thank you for that and I also apologize for what I said as well.

For the record, I actually agree with your suggestions and it would not have really bothered me very much if you would have maybe phrased them a little differently. The part that I found objectionable was not really the suggestion itself but rather the comparison to Windows 3.1.

I do want to include the kind of stuff that you were asking about in the future.

One thing that tends to be frustrating for me is when someone basically says - "hey, some other company that happens to have 10 to 30 developers working on their software (along with marketing and sales people, webmasters, people in support, etc...) has feature X so that means you should have it too and also by the way if you don't have it then your software is completely useless and I will just totally overlook all of the areas where there was a lot of time and attention spent in your software."

When you're developing software with limited resources (and they don't get any more limited than a one-man operation) it's vitally important to prioritize things. So for example when you're setting up a keyboard shortcut in MoI for the Extrude command you have to actually type in the command name "Extrude" in the command box. It would definitely be nicer to pick or drag/drop the name from some list of commands that you could browse, there is no doubt about that. But it has been hard for me to prioritize making that particular area really slick in the earlier MoI versions because it's a one-shot one time setup thing and the inconvenience of it will be over really quickly. It just does not have enough impact for it to have gotten time devoted to it in the early MoI versions. If I delayed shipping MoI until it had a super slick shortcut key editor (among other things), it just simply would not exist, it would have died in development by taking too long.

As time goes on I fully expect for these flawed areas of MoI to get attention and to get polished up.

Thanks,
- Michael

Instead of the 6 legged pod tutorial, maybe this could be part of MoI's reference?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjXTOlsE8k0

Hi Burr, I do love that video, maybe I need to make a Turbo-Entabulator command in MoI...

- Michael

Hi Burr, What language was that guy speaking? :-)

""""What language was that guy speaking?""""""""

Thats "insider" stuff!!!!! Those that have years and years of experience, know exacly what he is describing, and form their own modals from this structure!!!!! :o

""""""maybe I need to make a Turbo-Entabulator command in MoI..."""""""""""

I am imagining that command would be a continuous popup of various MessageBox descriptions of how you are launching it incorrectly or in a non-intended manner? :o

Maybe one day when I get a bit more experience, I'll be allowed 'in'. :-)

< It would definitely be nicer to pick or drag/drop the name from some list of commands that you could browse, there is no doubt about that.

But now we can make a simple personal list with the Note Pad Text and make a little copy past

It's not a big deal :)

Seems it's better to have more modeling functions than a very specialized UI