I have a question: Why the objects section inside the browser pane doesn't behave like the styles one? I love the way styles work, its almost perfect!

Hi ed,

> I have a question: Why the objects section inside the
> browser pane doesn't behave like the styles one? I love
> the way styles work, its almost perfect!

Mostly it does work the same - clicking on the eye works the same, you can turn locking on or off by ctrl+click in the same way, and clicking on the selection indicator area works the same way.

The controls used for those things are identical...

The only thing that's different between them is that styles have a color swatch as well, is that what you're referring to?

Objects don't have a color swatch because objects do not have a color definition all by themselves, objects contain a style reference and it's the actual style that controls the color.

This allows styles to work like a list of materials, and when you export to a rendering format like OBJ or LWO that styles list actually becomes the list of render materials.

- Michael

That color swatch is the key!! It works a little bit different:

1. Everything you create has a style assigned in the browser pane. If you create something new it will be "unnamed" in the properties panel but will not have a name assigned in the objects pane, that makes difficult to select just the unnamed objects. It will be fine if you have an unnamed group inside the objects pane.

2. If you want to draw in the red style you clic on that swatch and every new draw will be red, you can't do that with objects. You can't have an "active name" like an "active style".

3. If you want to group things on a style you simply select those things and clic on the color swatch, if you want to do that with objects you will have to type the same name every single time you want an object to be grouped with others and sometimes it will not be grouped cause you misspell something.

It will be cool if you can have something like a dot next to the eyeball instead of the styles color swatch.

Hi ed, so some of those things are going to be improved at some point in v3.

For example I'm planning on having a menu that will pop out when you click on an object name in the Objects section, and it will have some other actions available on it, one of which will be "Assign to this name" which will make it easier to assign selected objects to have that particular name.

In the meantime there is a plug-in that you can set up which will help with that, you can get it from this message here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3830.4

Unzip the attachment there and copy the files into your \commands sub-folder inside of MoI's main installation folder. That will then make a new command called AssignName which you can set up on a shortcut key.

The command pops up a dialog that lists all existing object names and then you can double click on to assign that picked name to the current selection.


I don't know about making an "active name" - one big difference between styles and names is that having a name is optional, it is totally normal for an object to have no name assigned to it. That's not the case with Styles - every object always has a style assigned to it.


- Michael

Thanks I already use that plug in. In my day to day use of MoI i work in one of two ways:

1. When i don't plan to render something like when I'm just working in 2d, i don't name objects cause its easier to use styles. In this way i don't even open the objects panel.

2. When I do plan to render something. In that case I name all of the objects I'm using for keeping things in order and I manage my styles separately.

I guess when someone plans to use object names, they want to name all of them, in that case, yes, you want to assign a name to every single object and then the unnamed object slot become useful.

I love styles cause changing something from one to another is one clic away. The color swatch is on the screen all the time and is just one, meaning that you don't have to select from a list of options. That being a frequent task makes your use of the program a joy. Thats what i wish for Objects.

Hi ed,

> I guess when someone plans to use object names, they
> want to name all of them, in that case, yes

Not necessarily - you can use object names just to label some particular objects in the model that you want to get back to frequently.

Just because someone wants to name one object does not necessarily mean that they want to name every single object in the entire model...

- Michael

Michael,

this is just a suggestion, say I have an object named "test" that's selected or not and say I wanted to name a couple more objects this same name, the easiest way I can think of would be to just click on the name in the browser, in this case "test" and magically all of then would have the same name.

Thanks,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> this is just a suggestion, say I have an object named "test"
> that's selected or not and say I wanted to name a couple
> more objects this same name, the easiest way I can think
> of would be to just click on the name in the browser, in this
> case "test" and magically all of then would have the same name.

The problem is that I will eventually want to have some more additional functions available to act on a scene browser item, so I'm probably going to make a menu pop up when you click on the name.

That menu will have an item on it that will let you assign that name to the current selection, and then it can also have all sorts of other functions like "rename" , "remove name", etc...

It could be possible to then add in some kind of shortcut method for the assignment, like maybe right-click or ctrl+click on the name could do that.

But being able to access a variety of additional actions would give a lot of functionality and that's why I want to reserve the regular click for giving access to a pop up menu.

- Michael

That is good but I insist, grouping objects with others that already have a name assigned to them is a very frequent task and i think it should have a on-clic-away button that groups them like the color swatch in the styles section. I suggest a simple dot.

Hi Ed - the difficulty is that the dot does not particularly suggest any particular function and little bits of UI that don't suggest any purpose to them can lead to some confusion.

A + sign would be more like "add to this group", but unfortunately that will lead to a lot of other confusion when hierarchical group structures are displayed in there which will use a + symbol as the place to click on to expand the group to see the child items.

- Michael

I think that like the color swatch, first you don't imagine that it is used to put objects inside that style, but then you read or somebody tells you that it function is that if you have something selected and you clic on it the selected objects became that style. The same will occur with the Dot next to the eyeball, you easily make the analogy between the color swatch and the dot, better yet it can be a square like the color swatch, the analogy will be easier to recognize.

Hi ed, the problem is that styles have a color, so a color swatch is a natural part of the style UI.

Object names do not naturally have a "dot" associated with them, so having a dot next to the object name is not really a natural part of it's UI.

That's why it would look kind of weird to have that.

I'm very conservative about putting in weird-seeming UI into MoI, I really like to try other approaches first and only do a weird thing if it's the last resort.

- Michael

I see.