iClone 6 - Minor ENHANCEMENT requests and suggestions


https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic211799.aspx 		Print Topic | Close Window

By justaviking - 11 Years Ago
Uh oh...

I wasn't sure if we should be using the old "Wishful features" thread, but I wanted a place to put in minor requests that are fairly specific to iClone 6.

If I'm wrong on this, and everything should go in the "issues" list please share your opinion.

"TAB" to navigate input fields:

  • Select a prop
  • Type in values for X-Y-Z position and rotation
  • You have to CLICK WITH THE MOUSE to move from the "X" input box to the "Y" input box
  • That results in a lot of keyboard-mouse-keyboard hand action
  • .
  • You should be able to type the X value, TAB, type the Y value, TAB, type the Z value...

Have APPLY and CANCEL buttons on the Indigo settings panel:

  • You want to set the Indigo settings, such as the screen resolution, before you click the Render Scene or the Export Scene As button
  • Use the "Render Settings" icon
  • There is no "Apply" button
  • Your only option is to "X-out" (close) the panel
    • In the rest of the world, that acts like CANCEL and your settings will not be saved
    • This is CONTRARY TO ALMOST EVERY OTHER SOFTWARE I'VE SEEN
    • No settings should be "live" like that
    • What if you make an accidental change?  How do you cancel that change?  Put if back the way it was, manually?  What if you didn't notice the old value?
  • The Indigo "Render Settings" panel should have BOTH:
    • Apply
    • Cancel

I'm sure we'll come up with plenty of little things like this.

Not bugs, exactly, not major product features, but some fine-tuning and polish.

By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
I've got a little UI thing that could be useful as well. :blush:

If we could put non-docked panels together to have a floating, tabbed collection of panels, it'd give even more layout flexibility.
By animagic - 11 Years Ago
It's a useful idea, but I think the topic should be pinned then, otherwise it gets just pushed to the second page and beyond and becomes invisible. 

I hope we can keep this thread clean from unwanted noise of which there is a lot right now.

The TAB key to navigate between fields is an old request, actually, but still useful.

By justaviking - 11 Years Ago
D'oh!  Have you ever pressed the Back key, and your browser goes "Back" and you lose your typing and have to start all over again?

Hi Rampa.  That was quick.  Nice suggestion.

I was already having second thoughts about this thread, especially since my entries were closer to "issues."  Yours is quite clearly an "enhancement."

I'll add one more thing that was on my mind, and we'll see what the reaction is from the community (or moderator).

Two improvements for the LIGHT TOOL dial:

  • The "dot" should be GREEN because it is a setting that can be keyframed
  • The dial should show the current value
    • Ideally it would "animate" during playback
    • But at least when the timeline is done moving (you move it by hand, or Play and then press Stop), the dial should show the current value
    • That will make it easier to know which way to turn the dial if you want to make a change
By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
Try restarting iClone, JVK. My dot is green.

Here's a hint that War Lord shared with me about lights. If you attach 2 or more together, the parent controller controls all the child lights.

War Lord, feel free to share any hints of mine as well! :)
By Sifr - 11 Years Ago
Well I have a few to spew.

1. The ability to drag tabs into the desired order would be nice. Currently adding a tab to the docked panels pushes the previous top tab down when adding a new one. I would like to have most used tabs at the top then work down to least used without having to undock all then reorder.

2. Please bring back the panel scroll hand grabber. It is easier to grab anywhere on the panel to scroll with a digitized pen, than to grab the scroll bar in a specific location, the color scheme makes it difficult to see scroll bar position.

3. Middle mouse button click equivalent to middle mouse scroll wheel.

4. Allow iC6 to display the user assigned pointer scheme, not the default scheme.

No bugs or noise to report here just, minor enhancement requests, thanks.:w00t::w00t::w00t:
By justaviking - 11 Years Ago
rampa (12/21/2014)
Try restarting iClone, JVK. My dot is green.

Restarted.  Same result. I wonder why it's not green for me?  I have an AMD card, not that that should make a difference.  I guess I'll have to report that in the "Issues" thread.

The "flash" button is green (when on).  Actually the flash button should always be green.  The icon changes appropriately with a slash (flicker = off) or no slash (flicker = on), so it doesn't need the color to indicate if it's on or off.

My on/off button is green.... but only when on.  On or off, it's still able to be keyframed, so it should always be green.  (So how to indicate on or off?  I'm not sure.)


Here's a hint that War Lord shared with me about lights. If you attach 2 or more together, the parent controller controls all the child lights.

Cool hint.  Thanks for passing it along.

By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
I came up with another one. :blush:

The new UI is quite nice in its customization, but something about it just feels kind of "busy". I realized that it's all the parallel lines around boxes, tabs, bars, frames, etc.

I think that for a pleasing "flat" design, it might be better to have planes of slightly different grays rather than lines around the same gray for the differentiation.

This may be a self-correcting issue, as RL has spoken of user-creatable skins.
By animagic - 11 Years Ago
Rampa, you would still need sufficient contrast. If the shades are too close it might be hard to distinguish them. We have older users to take into account, myself included.
By Sifr - 11 Years Ago
I don't understand why ui custom color scheme wasn't just added, there are non user assignable swatches in the preference.:unsure: That's just a lazy update path scheme. C'mon RL we really have to wait to add customization swatches.:w00t::w00t::w00t:
By justaviking - 11 Years Ago
I first mentioned this in a Soft Cloth discussion.  https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost212200.aspx

PLEASE USE "MEANINGFUL" VALUES FOR FRICTION

A physically meaningful value for friction is the "coefficient of friction."  Typical values range from around 0.25 to a bit over 1.

A value of 1 means it takes 10 pounds of force to drag a 10 pound object.  A value of 0.2 means it only takes 2 pounds to drag a 10 pound object.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction#Approximate_coefficients_of_friction

CURRENTLY ICLONE HAD DIFFERENT "FRICTION" VALUES FOR HARD PROPS AND CLOTH

For a "hard" prop:

  • Values range from 1.0 --> 9,999.0
    • That range makes no sense at all
    • I had to use a number 750 to make some blocks behave even close to correct... obviously my "realistic" value of 0.8 was way off.

For soft cloth:

  • "Friction" values range from 0 --> 1.00
    • Why so different from other props?
    • Is it actually "friction"?  If not, we need that explained.

CLOSING:

If properties have physical meaning, then their values should be reasonably consistent with the real world.

I realize this isn't an engineering tool, but a value like "friction" should at least be moderately close.

By justaviking - 11 Years Ago
Today's minor request:

Please keyframe "On/Off" for lights.

It would be so much nicer for the user if the On/Off check box was keyframed.

Currently you have to do several things if you want to turn a light off and on again:

  • Change the Multiplier value to 0.00
    • Of course it works, but that is not an intuitive method, especially with the "On" check mark right above it.
  • Open the timeline
  • Find your light
  • Right-click on the light to display the Multiplier value
  • Right-click on the keyframe
  • Change the Transition Curve from Linear to Step
    • This is NOT intuitive at all, especially to a beginner
    • This is what makes it "turn off" rather than slowly fade to dark

Next you have to REPEAT the steps above:

  • Change the Multiplier back to... oh... wait... what value was it before?
  • D'oh!
  • Gee, I hope you wrote it down or memorized it.

Yeah, just a simply On/Off would be a lot faster and a lot more convenient to the user.

P.S.

It's okay with me if it simply automates the steps described above, and "Steps" the Multiplier value.  But from the user's perspective, it turned the light off, and then on again back to it's previous value.

But I think the better solution is to make it work just like "Visible" for props, with the line on the timeline showing when it's on and off.

Either way, the user should be able to just use the Check Box, shown above.

P.P.S.

It's not just me.  https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost212793.aspx

 

By thebiz.movies - 11 Years Ago
One thing I miss from IC5 was the polygon count for items in the scene manager. Yes I see the total and selected poly count in the render window but it was nice to see all the items in the scene together to see where you might be having a rough time of things.

That said, its cool to be able to change surface options and realtime smoothing options on an item by item basis.
By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
thebiz.movies (12/26/2014)
One thing I miss from IC5 was the polygon count for items in the scene manager. Yes I see the total and selected poly count in the render window but it was nice to see all the items in the scene together to see where you might be having a rough time of things.

That said, its cool to be able to change surface options and realtime smoothing options on an item by item basis.


Scroll down to the bottom of the "Project" panel. You can open it and the "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. Both can be docked. I have the "Project" as a tab pn the right, and the "Preferences" as a tab on the left.
By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
justaviking (12/26/2014)
Today's minor request:

Please keyframe "On/Off" for lights.

It would be so much nicer for the user if the On/Off check box was keyframed.



Currently you have to do several things if you want to turn a light off and on again:

  • Change the Multiplier value to 0.00
    • Of course it works, but that is not an intuitive method, especially with the "On" check mark right above it.
  • Open the timeline
  • Find your light
  • Right-click on the light to display the Multiplier value
  • Right-click on the keyframe
  • Change the Transition Curve from Linear to Step
    • This is NOT intuitive at all, especially to a beginner
    • This is what makes it "turn off" rather than slowly fade to dark


Next you have to REPEAT the steps above:
  • Change the Multiplier back to... oh... wait... what value was it before?
  • D'oh!
  • Gee, I hope you wrote it down or memorized it.

Yeah, just a simply On/Off would be a lot faster and a lot more convenient to the user.

P.S.

It's okay with me if it simply automates the steps described above, and "Steps" the Multiplier value. But from the user's perspective, it turned the light off, and then on again back to it's previous value.

But I think the better solution is to make it work just like "Visible" for props, with the line on the timeline showing when it's on and off.

Either way, the user should be able to just use the Check Box, shown above.

P.P.S.

It's not just me. https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost212793.aspx



+1 for that!

There actually is a way to have all that functionality now, and that is to use a light controller object. The "power" button puts in step keys.

That is on my short-list for tutorials. I have been playing with the light controllers a lot, and figured out some possibly useful tricks. :)
By thebiz.movies - 11 Years Ago
rampa (12/26/2014)
thebiz.movies (12/26/2014)
One thing I miss from IC5 was the polygon count for items in the scene manager. Yes I see the total and selected poly count in the render window but it was nice to see all the items in the scene together to see where you might be having a rough time of things.

That said, its cool to be able to change surface options and realtime smoothing options on an item by item basis.


Scroll down to the bottom of the "Project" panel. You can open it and the "Preferences" from the "Edit" menu. Both can be docked. I have the "Project" as a tab pn the right, and the "Preferences" as a tab on the left.


There's a nice breakdown of stuff there but it does not include the polygon count as shown in IC5:
By Rampa - 11 Years Ago
Oh! I see what you mean. Yeah.......:blush::)
By justaviking - 10 Years Ago
Time to dust off this thread.

As reported here:  https://forum.reallusion.com/FindPost217525.aspx

Please allow separate settings

for BUMP and DISPLACEMENT strengths.

That would allow us to have high bump with low displacement, and vice versa.