[Bf-funboard] Object manager update (Luke)

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2004 at 03:11:52PM +1000, Luke Wenke wrote:

> > > Could you clarify something? Is "Head" layer 1, "Background" layer 2,
> > > "Mystery" layer 3, etc?
> > They are groups. Could be compared to layers that contain layers.
> 
> So are they sublayers? If so, then maybe the layers should also be shown...
> BTW, since you have visibility, etc, stuff there, would the layers buttons
> still exist?

Sorry, my "layers that contain layers" is misleading. The items with 
disclosure triangles in front are groups. The others refer to single 
3d objects. And it's a move away from the layer metaphor, because 
objects can be in multiple groups. I think it originaly comes 
from 2d software, were layers are important for z-ordering. In this 
regard it does't make sense in 3d apps anyway.


> For visibility you could have a picture of an eye. The eye could go to
> triangular points on the left and right sides (like a fairly realistic eye)
> and have a circle for the pupil and an iris. Maybe it could have eyelashes
> that radiate outwards at the top of the eye's boundary.

An eye was my first idea. There's the general advice to not use pictures 
of bodyparts, because it might be offensive to people of some cultures.
Allthough eyes might be safe in this regard!?
But it's the most easily recognized thing, and could be distracting 
(it's a strong attention magnet). And I wanted something on the same level as 
the icon for rendering.

> For rendering... well 3dsmax uses a kettle... blender seems to use a
> pictureframe... maybe you could use a picture of a sun (circle with
> radiating lines that aren't joined to the circle) for rendering enabled, or
> if it is no-render, the icon could be a ghost. (like a pacman ghost) BTW,
> what do the icons mean exactly? I mean for the visibility icon, does it mean
> things are visible, or they're not visible? For rendering, does the icon
> mean that things will be rendered, or not rendered? For the lock I guess
> that means if the item has a circle in that column then the item is locked.

The icons changed role from state indicators to column headers. Because 
all the complex icons were too noisy, so I now use simple slashes (disabled) 
and dots (enabled). There's enough room, since the timeline needs a scale 
(didn't think of that before). Oh and the dots/enabled means is visible, 
will be rendered, is locked. The logic of the system would imply unlocked 
should be enabled (because it's treated like visibility on), but I guess 
that just feels not right. But I'm thinking about having editable instead 
of unlocked, so the icon would depict editable state, the dot meaning the 
group or object is editable.


Thanks, Luke!


---
Thorsten