Seems there is another easy possibility for "help line" Cline etc... ;)
Seems if you take a color said "red" for "normal lines" + Browser you can use it as a sort of "help lines" for snap on them!
And you can you can use any sort of curves! (so more powerful that clines or normal "help lines" :)
And see / hidden easy with Browser
Am I wrong?

>> UI design is one of the most difficult and time consuming things that I work on, really.

Absolutely, and you are one of the few software engineers I have come across that understands this. In my time as an Interaction/Interface designer I found that a willingness to spend the time on the interaction (tends to be called workflow these days for some reason) and then on the interface to control that interaction, is very rare. It was the great interaction that first sold me on MoI.


>> Well, quite a lot to a good job designing the UI and various mechanisms to try and keep
>> the overall program UI simple and not get bogged down with feature bloat...

>>...but there is not really any hope to be able to actually finish this for v2 at all though


Actually I was thinking of a non UI based command that I could assign to a shortcut. No icon stuff at this time. Just a persistent version of the on the fly cline complete with mini menu (okay that's ui too but it already exists in some form). But perhaps that is too much to ask though :-(


Ever hopeful.

>> Seems there is another easy possibility for "help line" Cline etc... ;)
>> Seems if you take a color said "red" for "normal lines" + Brower you can use it as a sort of "help lines" for snap on them!
>> And you can you can use any sort of curves! (so more powerful that clines or normal "help lines" :)
>> And see / hidden easy with Browser
>>Am I wrong?

Hey Frenchy, good idea and I though of this too. But would prefer a real cline if possible :-)


However...

Michael,

Any chance of a dotted line style before the final V2?

@Pilou
Your are totally right :)
The only small problem is that when locked, everything is the same grey! And sometimes I have so much guides that I need to makes 2 or 3 groups of guides. And sometimes I even duplicate the whole model in the x axis from a straight line and details parts only on the duplicated model (im doing a sort of procedural modelling, I can then get back to the original state without using the history, kinda like a non-linear history of my model)
The watch im doing right now (well its paused the client need to send some more data) is a mess if I turn everything on.
The answer would be differents colors for locked lines (another color box, by default light grey)

@-ash-
You are right too, Pilou tech is good but its not for all the cases. My workflow currently is orange color style for construction lines, I also have multi-styles (still the same orange) because the model is too complex to only have 1 style for all the construction lines.

@Michael

> For an example, see here:
> http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1521.1

Well I think the current MoI UI is better than -ash- example, at least for beginners. For advanced users -ash- example is better than the current UI.

The perfect UI would have a slider from dark to light just like After Effects, for people that like Dark on white background or White on dark background.
The Blender exemple is good in the overall feeling of the UI but bad in details I agree with you the black on dark grey is not very good.

> Thanks very much for the feedback!

Thanks you for your feedback too :)

Seems the appearance of the forum don't stop the discussions :)

About colors of UI: seems it's not also a problem ;)
When you begin to modelize the first time with Moi you are hooked by the prog and don't think any more about the UI colors :)

First is efficacy, aesthetic is some secondary minor (Moi is yet aesthetic) :)
The actual blue seems very clear and sufficient :)
I am not sure now to want to change it :D

And there are not "Blue Prints" in world of drawings? ;)

About color lines by Browser for false "help line color " "Group" is not yet active, so when it's will be effective seems you can have more power of selection ;)

@Pilou
> First is efficacy, aesthetic is some secondary minor (Moi is yet aesthetic) :)

I agree but ive already get far enough in efficacy working with MoI :D
And im 300% hooked so im just speaking about details.

> About color lines by Browser for false "help line color " "Group" is not yet active, so when it's will be effective seems you can have more power of selection > ;)

Well I say "group" but I mean "styles", my bad. But if groups have colors too that would be okay!

> Seems the appearance of the forum don't stop the discussions :)

I use IRC a lot, that's even worse than this forum. No UI can stop me speaking hehehe :D

Maybe I've skipped over a similar request - why not just at ONE extra menu item added to the construction line popup menu thingie Persist - this would take the current line you've dragged out, positioned, rotated etc., and make it persistent.

No moving over to the side to click a button, it uses the same UI available to the existing CLine AND by being able to simply persist them lets you create them on the fly and keep them around when needed - or not...


At that point the only issue I see is removing them individually OR all in a single swath...

That can either be 2 additional CLine popup menu items "Remove and "Remove All" - or perhaps a left click / right click kinda thing on a "Remove" menu.


I tend to like the 1st but if Michael feels that's too many items for that little menu then the left/right click suggestion would only add 2 additional menus (Persist and Remove).



As far as a cline command that's similar to existing illustration programs, I need more than the traditional horizontal / vertical rulers - I need diagonals for my perspective work - very important for me to be able to lay down my cline an ANY ANGLE and lock them for reference.

I was going to purchase Autodesk SketchBook Pro because I love how they have their ruler setup but I found that ArtRage could do similar with its flexible stencils so that's what I've been using.


I could see using MoI for all my 2D sketching and concept drawing with just a few more tool additions in the future - colored lines are already there, - having persistent CLines would prolly be all I need actually - hmmm...

-Will

PS - Thinking of a book I was reading recently on drawing, the author's drawings shows he uses a lot of construction lines - think of a drawing of a car and seeing short lines all over the place - say one for each axle of the visible wheels etc.

It would be nice if the persisted clines could be shortened or trimmed and not extend all the way across the viewport - this would help reduce clutter.

Being able to >group< clines and show/hide individual cline groups would also be helpful.

Just an additional thought - I'd rather HAVE the persistent clines then to not have them due to trimming and grouping adding complexity to their implementation!

Hi Pilou,

> And you can you can use any sort of curves! (so more powerful that
> clines or normal "help lines" :)
> And see / hidden easy with Browser
> Am I wrong?

The new "Lock" feature added in the last beta can help out a lot with using regular curves in this way as a snapping framework that does not interfere with selection tasks.

But that is not necessarily "more powerful" than clines in all cases, because clines have the property of an infinite extension which can be helpful for certain things.

It can definitely be useful though, and that's basically why the Lock function was added.

- Michael

Hi Tony,

> Actually I was thinking of a non UI based command that
> I could assign to a shortcut. No icon stuff at this time.

The basic functions of that are fulfilled already with that custom cline command...

If you need to get the menu to pop up on an already existing cline, it is not too difficult to just draw a new cline snapped on to it, use the menu on the new one, and then delete the old one.


> Just a persistent version of the on the fly cline complete with
> mini menu (okay that's ui too but it already exists in some form).
> But perhaps that is too much to ask though :-(

Yes, normally doing a "non icon" command tends to be something that I put in that does not require a whole lot of UI design work for it.

Things that require more UI design (in general, whether with icon or not) I will tend to wait and try to handle those more carefully rather than putting them in as a quick shortcut launched only command.

- Michael

Hi Tony,

> Any chance of a dotted line style before the final V2?

No, pretty much 0% chance of that.... Again that will take a fair amount of planning and UI to control it.

The final V2 is coming up very soon - remember that V1 was released in January 2008.

V2 has been in development now for more than 1.5 years - it's really time to wrap it up!

But don't worry - I'm not sure why you are so concerned about this because v2 is not the end of the road, once it is completed I will then move on to add more things into v3.


It would be cool if v2 could have every single function added in to it, but I'm sorry that is just not possible.


- Michael

Hi DesuDeus,

> The only small problem is that when locked, everything is the same grey!

You can change that if you wish - go to Options / View, and uncheck the option for "Locked objects use alternate color".

With that option off, then locked objects will remain their normal color instead of displaying in gray.


> The perfect UI would have a slider from dark to light just
> like After Effects, for people that like Dark on white
> background or White on dark background.

Yes, something like that in the future would be good.

Maybe instead of a slider just some different packaged choices in a "UI theme" dropdown or something like that.

But unfortunately it can take quite a bit of additional development time to maintain multiple themes, that would increase the amount of time it would take me to introduce new UI elements since I would need to now fill in things for multiple themes instead of only one.

Since I am only a single person working on MoI, I tend to have to be careful to avoid undertaking areas that will add a lot of time to my work.

For After Effects, there was probably a developer who was able to spend 100% of their time working on that UI color adjustment that you were talking about, while other developers worked on separate things.

If I were to spend 100% of my time working on that, there are no other developers to work on the other features, so I would end up with a color-tweakable UI and no modeling features which is not the best result.

- Michael

Hi Will,

> why not just at ONE extra menu item added to the construction
> line popup menu thingie Persist - this would take the current
> line you've dragged out, positioned, rotated etc., and make it
> persistent.

That's a good idea for the mechanism for a "keep the temporary ones", of course once the other issues with persisted lines are handled like selection highlighting, etc...


> That can either be 2 additional CLine popup menu items
> "Remove and "Remove All" - or perhaps a left click / right
> click kinda thing on a "Remove" menu.

This part is not so good though - not because of too many menu items though, but because it means that in order to remove all clines you would first need to create a cline to get that menu, at least with how things work currently. That's kind of bad to need to create a new thing in order to destroy a bunch of other things.


> It would be nice if the persisted clines could be shortened
> or trimmed and not extend all the way across the viewport -
> this would help reduce clutter.

This one is not really feasible - it is pretty much baked in to clines that they are infinite lines.

To get non-infinite lines you just draw regular lines, you can draw one snapped on top of a cline if you want to get a portion of that line that is not infinite...

- Michael

>> I'm not sure why you are so concerned about this because v2 is not the end of the road
>> , once it is completed I will then move on to add more things into v3.

Not really concerned but there are two reasons, first, I would like to do a new interface again for V2, customized for my working methods. But, as soon as you start on V3, you will add something cool with clines and then I will want to use that, so I will always be using the beta again :-)

Second, just trying to squeeze an extra feature out of you ;-)

Anyway no worries - the new feature list for V2 is chock full of good things. I think we can easily forget just how much has been added since V1.

Keep up the good work.

Small input on locking/Styles. Dont forget that Styles have a "Name" also that doesnt have to be "Orange...Slightly Orange". So you could set a simple color like orange as a set to use, then create styles that are very small increments away from this orange, possibly even indistinguishable by the eye, but name them, Lock level 1, Lock level 2 etc.... And manage them that way. Then groups for other stuff later. Keep the use alternate color setting so at a glance everything locked is obvious, but unlocking is done by name values.

FWIW

"This part is not so good though - not because of too many menu items though, but because it means that in order to remove all clines you would first need to create a cline to get that menu, at least with how things work currently."


Hi Michael, thanks for the consideration since it would be great to have this feature especially if it's not that hard to implement using existing infrastructure.

I don't understand what you stated however?

I envisioned that you would click on an >existing< cline to specify remove / remove all?

If there aren't any clines available, then there's no popup menu to get to!


I'll say that my idea for all this hinges on assuming that clines will be special entities within MoI that you can (right) click on to bring up their special menu.

The only costs I envisioned for you would be to create a CLine class object and manage the multiples; keeping track of them etc., for downstream operations.


Are you saying once they're laid done, they're no longer "special" (construction lines) but simply line objects?

I was thinking ultimately you'd have "cline" objects in the browser which as the icing I mentioned earlier could named or grouped for easy hide and show...


-Will

Hi Will,

> I'll say that my idea for all this hinges on assuming that clines
> will be special entities within MoI that you can (right) click on
> to bring up their special menu.

Hmm, well that is a pretty big change, it would need quite a bit of special consideration...

That could possibly be kind of strange to have only clines have a special right-click menu and nothing else.


> The only costs I envisioned for you would be to create a CLine
> class object and manage the multiples; keeping track of them
> etc., for downstream operations.

There can tend to be some long range UI design costs associated with having one thing behave differently than another...

A lot of times with UI decisions I need to take a longer view of trying to get things working harmoniously together in the long run rather than just sticking things together the quickest way possible right now, that can tend to be hard to reverse course on.

I wish it was actually as easy as you make it sound!! ;)


> Are you saying once they're laid done, they're no longer
> "special" (construction lines) but simply line objects?

No, I meant for making a "trimmed construction line", you can do that by just drawing a regular line segment (with Draw curve / Lines) over top of a construction line.


- Michael

Hi Tony,

> But, as soon as you start on V3, you will add something cool
> with clines and then I will want to use that, so I will always
> be using the beta again :-)

Well, the overall goal of having a v3 will be to add numerous useful things in many different areas...

So I'd generally think that would happen to you anyway even if I did somehow manage to find more than 24 hours in a day and add in a bunch of cline stuff for v2.

- Michael

> I'll say that my idea for all this hinges on assuming that clines
> will be special entities within MoI that you can (right) click on
> to bring up their special menu.

Hmm, well that is a pretty big change, it would need quite a bit of special consideration...

That could possibly be kind of strange to have only clines have a special right-click menu and nothing else.





Wow Michael, I guess I just don't understand what's going on within MoI then cause I thought my suggestion was a path with the least amount of pain considering what's already available??


When I said "right click" menu, I meant the diamond popup that the dynamic cline currently has. Right now, the dynamic construction line is the only thing that HAS that little right-click menu after you create them? Unless I'm missing out on a bunch of other stuff??!!



I like the cline creation just the way it is now - I don't see a need for extra icons, buttons etc., after they've been drawn out and adjusted, persist (instanciate) them.


My suggestion to add a menu item "Persist" would ultimately take that dynamic cline and make it a "cline object".

So I thought all the functionality was there sans the logic to keep the cline around and manage multiples.



I guess what you're saying is currently, the cline is "simply" on the fly, GUI draw calls; it doesn't exist as an object or class - which my suggestions involved promoting them to so they could be persisted, and deleted (,grouped shown and hidden) etc.


That means you'd have to refactor the current GUI draw call(s) into a Draw() api for the cline object and other cline APIs to handle how you can specify "snap divisions" when the cursor moves over them along, orientation and other house keeping details...

As cline objects, I guess you should also be able to pick them up again and readjust etc.


Boohoo, whine, cry - I guess it's not as simple for you to implement as I thought... :-((


I guess I should go back and read though the rest of the thread - and look at the cline function that was mentioned and what it does cause I'm not sure now how you were planning on implementing this within MoI...


-Will

Hi Will, the problem is that there are also a variety of other
things that don't work currently for "persisted" clines.

For example when you move your mouse over them, they
don't get a selection preview highlight. They can't be selected
by window select, etc...

So to make it into a fully proper feature involves a variety of
work, not just adding in a single menu item.

If you want to have a basic persisted cline despite the various
unfinished things, then you can actually get that right now, just
hook this up to a keyboard shortcut:

script:moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getConstructionLines().setProperty( "isTemporary", false );

When you push that after having created some clines, they will
persist, it should give you exactly the same effect as if I added
in a "persist" menu item to that existing menu right now.


I probably won't be adding it into the menu until the whole overall
thing works a bit better including cleanup of stuff like selection,
etc.... That's why I was mentioning that it is not as as simple as
just adding in a single menu item to do a proper fully finished
job of it.


> I guess what you're saying is currently, the cline is "simply"
> on the fly, GUI draw calls; it doesn't exist as an object or class

No, it is an actual official object type and class of its own. But
some selection related stuff is not finished with it currently.


- Michael

Using the keep Clines as is now, you can select them and apply styles to them and rotate them and move them and hide them with browser and name them. You just dont see the selection or colors in the viewport. Seems the only thing missing!