hi there,

terrible interesting topic in general,..representing and managing data and structures. One might have a look at some of edward tuftes books an essays on this topic.

May be it would be a helpful thing, if people could describe the way they would use such a layer/tag-structure in their everyday work with MOI.

I would feel comfortable, if this system could imitate the rather traditional MATERIAL-ASSIGN-behaviour..so i would assign for instance aluminium to some unrelated parts..and to communicate certain functional details of a construction/object, i would use it mainly for/as ASSEMBLING GROUP..one problem might be, that there would be a need for an additional export-feature(dialog)..*export according to MATERIALS* or *export according to ASSEMBLY*, so that other 3d-applications could use the actual output, especially the rendering applications (hypershot, maxwell, fryrender..).

The visual representation might be a totally different matter. Maybe shifting from lets say DESIGNVIEW to ASSEMBLY-/TAGVIEW would be a solution..or just an on/off-switch-behaviour in the visual-appearance like thicker and coloured outlines(according to some scheme) of the TAG-ged objects..

I'm sure michael will make the right decision(s)..

best wishes,
marco

ps: maybe there is a way to incorporate some kind of a DESIGNREVIEW-feature with a reduced tool kit of pointers and speech bubbles for revision and presentation.

I prefer not a limit but it's not easy to distinguish 2 yellows ;) so 256 is yet a big difficulty for a first level!
For example here from a true red : 88 colors gradations can be drawn : but between 2 side colors it's difficult to make difference ;)
And of course user can choose all what he wants :)
Some people are colour-blind or other things

Hello everyone,

@Grendel, really cool ui work, your tree match really the MoI interface, nice job !

As a personal input, even of this tree is really cool, I'm also looking for a less intrusive layer system that allow quickly manage a scene without any extra input from the user. Most of the time I don't care about the part names, color etc ... all I need is to easy way to hide/show part of my model ... or work on a part and show an other as a wireframe background etc ...



Here's the horrible lw interface :P ... on the upper right corner you have the layer system ... it's really small, but it allows all what I'm talking about.

-Complete colored square = active layer
- Half colored square = inactive layer, were objets can't be edited, but are still visible (in wireframe by default, but other shade mode might be usefull)
- A little dot mean there is an objet inside de layer.

With a traditionnal combo of shift/crtl key, is quite easy to manage larger scene allready, even if there is no name for the layers ... the benefit is a really tiny layer bar.

Of course I can understand that a more elaborate tree is also needed ;)

For the grouping material properties it could go like this.

A single object has the color box enabled. If you group two objects then the color box has an X on the color box as default and keeps the childrens color boxes upon grouping. If you want to color all objects in the group then you must select the X'd out group material box, assign material, then the material is carried over to the children as well. If you then want to have one child different then go to it's material box and change it.

I'm really glad we're thwoing ideas around about about the interface, hopefully it can sprout some new ideas about what everyone like from other apps.

I would vote for something similar to the very first post (and similar to the scene tree in C4d).
I also like the idea of a "scene tree" button to collapse the panel if you don't need it.

This would be quite clear to use for anyone coming from many Cad or 3d soft. backgrounds, but also for novices.


Please don't do cryptic buttons à la Lightwave, one of Moi's strengths so far has been its clarity.


One thing related to the scene management: it would be important to be able to export each group as a seperate group or object,
and to be able to read imported 3dm objects correctly grouped, per material or per layers.


Also it would be good to have a command to lock a layer, to make it visible but not selectable,
and an option to turn on\off snapping to locked layers.

C4d would be interesting to look at in my opinion.
To me it has by far the best scene management concept.

It has a scene tree and a distinct layer manager. It may be worth looking into.

Also, a nice feature it has in the scene tree, is that it allows you to 'paint' layer information from one object to any other object near it in the scene tree.
Very quick way to change attributes (hard to describe).

Hi Okapi,

I don't really understand what you mean by 'cryptic', that's said I never said to replace MoI interface by an lightwave one ...

>> Also it would be good to have a command to lock a layer, to make it visible but not selectable,
and an option to turn on\off snapping to locked layers

Well that's the point I'm talking about, but I would love to be able to lock/unlock/hide layers without having to scroll into a tree that takes half part of my screen. That's why I showed the tiny lightwave layer system.

Hi PaQ,

> Here's the horrible lw interface :P ... on the upper right corner you have the layer system ... it's really small, but it allows all what I'm talking about.

Just wondering in that layer system how do you know what part is under what little square ?

.

Here is a little more to throw on the fire. I see both sides of the lightwave layer scheme. It's very accessible but it's also not obvious what is in their just by looking at it.



I use C4D and tags can quickly add up and C4D has a ton of them. If you limit you're scope of tags maybe this would be good otherwise you can end up with ten tags for and object quickly.

Hi Danny,

As Grendel said, you don't really know what's behind a layer until you click on it.
In practice it's not a huge problem, as you remind the structure automatically in fact, as far as you don't play with more than 10 layers of course.

Now the more I think about it, the more this system looks probably a little bit 'old school'. As I'm so used to it, I probably don't have a good overview of the weakness ... the main one is that you limit yourself to a couple of layers.

The simon example is quite cool, the tree looks good and you have a good overview of the structure because every part are correctly named.
The problem, for unorganized people like me, is that most of the time I finish with a tree like the cinema 4D image, where only one or 2 objects are correctly renamed, and all the other layers are 'untitled'. So if I still have to pick layers one by one until I find the one I want to lock, hide, or show :(

I did not that that you implied it should be replaced.

By cryptic, I mean that you have no clue what those small buttons do intuitively.
Also, a classic shader tree has the advantage that you can nest objects in one another to create hierarchies.
True the LW layer system has the advantage of being very compact.
Modo's is nice in that it offers both systems, depending on how small you make the shader tree, it transforms automatically into a system that is close to the LW one, or something in between.

Yeah, I like the system Grendel mentions it's close to most CAD packages assembly tree layout, but then I like PaQ's idea about the quick access on/off/hide system.

So that last graphic you have there Grendel is the best of both worlds, which is cool, but, the size of that tree is a bit big, I thought anyway.

So I stared at MoI for a while and had this in mind, so I thought I'd throw it out here for discussion.
It was quick so I might of missed something.

It functions like the OSnap except it has 3 clicks for the tick, which are ✓ for normal operation X for Non Selectable and blank for hide and the rest is self explanatory.



~Danny~

Here a couple of screenshots of the C4d system.
What is nice are the amount of options, since you can switch between the normal,
hierarchical tree, to a tree organized by layer, or an alphabetical list, to name a few.

The search option is also really good, as it filters out automatically as you are typing.

Dantas I like the look of yours as well, but I think it looks good now because you have a small amount of objects where you may not need a tree anyway. If you have an scene with 80 different components it is then the same size as what I had. I do like that it looks simple and in keeping with tht UI overall but when it pops up it will be in the middle of the workspace I think instead of off to the side so it may obstruct viewing.

Hi Danny...

I like you idea that keep moi in simple ui. But for the position of this new stuff I prefer the idea by Grendel, so put on the right, not bottom. Just my opinion. Lets wait also for Michael idea and wish he can post some image someday.

Edit : As I know, Michael also want to put "object editing" inside the object organization. So when pick a circle, we can resize by type new value for the radius or diameter. Michael, please tell us if my explanation not correct.


-Cheers

Dany's idea to have a System Object (orange button bottom)can be cool
Only visible objects in the view will be display

But why not make the same for all views? So put here the tree icon ;)

But manage all that is not a task of programming? (only visible objects)

I did'nt know if he was intending on placing object history in the tree or leaving it under the little clock icon.

Hi Anis, you wrote:

> Edit : As I know, Michael also want to put "object editing" inside
> the object organization. So when pick a circle, we can resize by
> type new value for the radius or diameter.


And Grendel wrote:
> I did'nt know if he was intending on placing object history in the
> tree or leaving it under the little clock icon.

Actually, I would like to remove that little clock icon from the Edit palette and instead have history options for an object be part of the object properties panel.

The object properties panel would be something that would show up in this area:



It would be active when you are in selection mode - I mean in the mode before you have starting to run any command.

The idea is that the properties for the currently selected object or objects would be displayed there, probably by default it will show only a small amount of info like the type of object, its name, and color, and then have some way to expand it into different sections, like shape properties (endpoints of a line, center and radius of a circle), bounding box size (see and/or edit an object's size by its bounding box dimensions), and probably a bunch of "advanced" properties...

This panel would be something that was always available even when the browser tree thing was closed, it would show up in that currently empty area.

- Michael

I like that Michael, it would keep the tree functions to a minimum and that space is empty during selection anyway so two birds with one stone.

Hi Grendel,

> that space is empty during selection anyway so two birds with one stone.

Yeah, it will be good way to reuse that space I think. The main problem is that there is not a whole lot of room there, so it has to be kind of sparse by default but have ways to optionally expand to get at more stuff...

- Michael