Hi Mr. Gibson,

First of all: Great app! Sort of the ZBrush of NURBS? If such a comparison can be made?

The 2.0 beta is looking good too, but am I allowed to make a wish?

Moi is all about fluidity of workflow, right? Less UI, more model, so to speak? Well, how about an option for maximizing and minimizing the viewports by clicking an icon *within* them, either in the top left corner or next to the navigation buttons?

Those extra seconds used for rerouting brainpower to the bottom left of the UI and fiddling around for the correct icon to press really interrupts my... moment of inspiration.

Sorry if this has been brought up before.

D.


Edit: Typo, but can't edit title of post. Oops...

Why don't use a keyboard shortcut with this script ?

script:if ( moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.mode != 'split' ) { moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.mode = 'split' } else { var viewport = moi.ui.getViewportUnderMouse(); if ( viewport ) viewport.viewpanel.mode = viewport.name; }

Nothing can beat shorcut speed for navigation stuff ;)

Hotkeys are good for mouse and keyboard but not the best when working with pen and tablet. But thanks a lot, it's better than nothing. :-)

Hi D,

> Moi is all about fluidity of workflow, right? Less UI,
> more model, so to speak?

Yup, this is definitely a big focus!


> Well, how about an option for maximizing and minimizing
> the viewports by clicking an icon *within* them, either in
> the top left corner or next to the navigation buttons?

That sounds like adding UI, which is actually the opposite of less UI right? :)

Actually the main reason I did not go with this method is that it has one really big problem, which is that it takes multiple steps and clicks to switch from one maximized view directly to another maximized view.

Like for instance say you are working in the maximized Top view currently and now you want to switch to the maximized Front view.

With MoI's current UI for doing this, you go and do one click on "Front" and you're done.

With an individual min/max control on each viewport, you instead would have to go to the Top view's min button and push it to return to Split view, then go to the Front view's max button and click it to switch from Split view to maximized Front view. So that is 2 clicks and not only that 2 clicks in different areas of the screen and probably on what would be much smaller buttons.

So that's a big problem with that method.

With MoI's method the buttons to switch are quite large and always located in the same area of the window, and you can always get to your desired max or split view configuration with just a single click...


Yet another problem with a max/min button is that it would add to the general level of clutter of things inside the viewport, I really try to keep the viewport area dedicated mostly to the purpose of displaying your model and not have so many UI widgets get in the way.


> Those extra seconds used for rerouting brainpower to the
> bottom left of the UI and fiddling around for the correct
> icon to press really interrupts my... moment of inspiration.

Well, the thing is a min/max button does not automatically solve that - when you have a maximized viewport you still would need to travel your mouse to the far corner of the UI to reach its little button.


At any rate, these are the reasons and advantages for the current design.

There are several advantages to it that should help to keep your moment of inspiration humming right along! :)

Possibly if you have spent a long long time with the min/max method with other software this new method will seem strange until you use it a bit more though.


I think that eventually I can add a method for clicking on the viewport name to do this, but I want to think a bit about that before jumping into it, maybe with some other functions there should be a menu that pops out from there or something like that, which could be at odds with a max/min function, so it may be a while yet before I'm able to get into that.


- Michael

Thanks for the substantial explanation.


> That sounds like adding UI, which is actually the opposite of less UI right? :)


That's why I said "top left corner" since the viewport name is already located there.


> Like for instance say you are working in the maximized Top view currently and now you want to switch to the maximized Front view.


I almost never feel the need to switch from one ortographic view directly to another, I always have the perspective view as an inbetween stop, so I see it becomes a little backwards in that case, yes.


> Well, the thing is a min/max button does not automatically solve that -
> when you have a maximized viewport you still would need to travel your mouse
> to the far corner of the UI to reach its little button.


But at least it would be just the ONE button, not a HUGE cluster of buttons to pick from... :-p

He, he. Ok. Enough with the quibbling...

Thanks for a great app!

Hi D, no problem - it is definitely more common for other apps to have that kind of min/max control like you are talking about, so I have gotten a few comments about it before, and it was something that I had considered initially for MoI as well.


> That's why I said "top left corner" since the viewport name is already located there.

Yeah, but currently the name is intentionaly pretty "low profile", it is nothing but text with a transparent background and does not look like a clickable element.

In order to actually switch to a min/max button as the main way to control this, that text would need to change, or it would need to have an additional button along side of it, either of which involves more UI inside the viewport, basically more pixels of the viewport covered up I mean.

It would not really work well to make the name both "low profile" with a transparent background and also at the same time make clicking on it the only way to min/max viewports, because it would not be obvious to beginning users that it was supposed to be used for that. It's kind of too important of a function to hide away too much I think.


One of the things that has turned out pretty nice with MoI's UI layout overall is that the top and left areas of the window are just devoid of UI controls and are instead dedicated to just displaying your scene. It kind of gives a nice open feeling to the workspace.


> I almost never feel the need to switch from one ortographic view
> directly to another, I always have the perspective view as an
> inbetween stop, so I see it becomes a little backwards
> in that case, yes.

Yeah the same thing applies from going from a maximized ortho view to a maximized 3D view as well - the min/max button would require 2 clicks (in different areas of the screen, so you need to focus attention on 2 areas to complete your action) while MoI currently requires one click in that case.


> But at least it would be just the ONE button, not a HUGE cluster
> of buttons to pick from... :-p

:) Probably if you use MoI for a bit longer you'll get used to it pretty quickly...

Most of the time people who are interested in minimizing their mouse movements like to set up that keyboard shortcut that PaQ mentioned.

And if you have a TabletPC with no keyboard available, it can generally be a problem to try and pick a little tiny button with the stylus, it tends to be a little less steady than a mouse since you can kind of take your hand off a mouse and nudge it by a micro amount which doesn't really happen with a pen. So larger buttons like MoI currently has rather than a small button can actually be helpful for the stylus case...


Anyway, as you can see it isn't something that was set up just for the heck of being different! ;)

- Michael