v5 Idea: Toolbar

podperson

podperson

0
v5 Idea: Toolbar

A lot of questions seem to come down to folks not really finding long menus very intuitive.

It would be nice if Cheetah 3d offered a second toolbar (full of Frank's beautiful icons) showing available tools, with a selector allowing you to pick between polygon, uv, character, etc. tools and perhaps providing custom sets for users. This would be a nice alternative to custom keymaps, especially since many artists are by nature visual rather than verbal.
 
That would be very nice, but The interface really needs to stay uncluttered. Cheetah's interface is extremely easy to learn, and it's very clean, whereas Blender's interface is very cluttered. So I'll second it as long as the interface stays good.:smile: Although it would be a lot of work for Frank… ;)
 
Blender's interface is very cluttered
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Blender has a terrible UI, but it's not terrible because it's cluttered. (It isn't actually all that cluttered.)

Blender's UI is terrible because it's inconsistent, disorganized, and items are labeled with either meaningless icons or terms (such as "Phong" or "Catmull Clarke" that only make sense to folks who know the underlying comp sci history of a function). Even I, who know all this crap, find Blender a serious chore.

Cheetah's interface is extremely easy to learn, and it's very clean
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Even if Cheetah had a visible button bar with text labels (no icons) for tools, that was spacially stable, that dimmed tools that weren't relevant to the current selection, and hilited the currently selected tool, it would be a significant improvement on having to search menus, pulling menus and having nothing happen, and needing to read the tool's name on a panel that may not be open.

The fact that C3D has the best UI of any 3d program I've used doesn't mean it can't be improved ;-)

Bottom line: I'd rather clutter the screen, a little, with tool icons, than clutter my brain with keyboard shortcuts.
 
I'm not saying cheetah's interface can't be used, simply saying don't-in an attempt to make it better- make it unusable, and try to cram buttons into every nook and cranny. I think at least a lot of the reason Blender's UI is so unusable is because it's all gray and a greeish blue, with (Like you said) words crammed into them that don't make any sense unless you're an extremely experienced modeller.

Bottom Line: Do whatever you want with the interface, just keep it usable(And colorful;)).
 
hairball600 said:
Oh, and by the way, what do "Phong" and "Catmull clarke" mean?:redface:
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The Catmull-Clark algorithm is used in subdivision surface modeling to create smooth surfaces. It was devised by Edwin Catmull (of Pixar) and Jim Clark, and won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 2006.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catmull-Clark_subdivision_surface

Phong shading is an interpolation method in 3D computer graphics, using interpolation of surface normals in rasterizing polygons, to get better resolution of specular reflections such as those generated by the Phong reflection model.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_shading
 
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