<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 21 Jun, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Andrzej Ambroż wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>William Reinisch wrote:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">[...] if we do adopt multiple sizes, it quickly becomes unpractical<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">with our current icon sheet. For multiple sizes per icon, an icon<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">format such as .icns is also a possibility, to keep each icon nicely<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">packed together [...]<br></blockquote><br>Yes, there's libicns library under GNU licence available but the problem <br>with *.icns format is that there are no cross-platform editing tools that I <br>know. Are there any? For Windows at least?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Hmm, yeah .icns may be more Mac-specific that i thought ;) I believe there are tools for Windows, but perhaps it's not worth it, especially if they should be easily editable by anyone, using open source tools.</div><div><br></div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><blockquote type="cite">But then again, if the tool icons will be identical they don't really<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">communicate anything ;) Probably better to either have no icons, or to<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">only make icons for the most common tools - like the top 20 or so. By<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">no means all operators! And you are right, most tools are too<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">complicated to communicate well with 16*16 pixels.<br></blockquote><br>So, Blenderheads, name the top 20 tools You'd like to have icons for and <br>I'll try to make some 16 and 32pix sketches.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Heh, of course this is the hard part ;) For edit mode it should be fairly easy - there aren't even that many modeling tools (Subdivide, extrude, loop cut, bevel). Perhaps we need icons for the basic operators in general, like transform, duplicate, snap? But these work in all modes and just about all editors too, so not quite sure about that. It might be weird to have buttons for those operations in the 3d view, but not in other editors. </div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br></font><blockquote type="cite">I know your icons were designed to look good at 16*16 pixels, but<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">since they are vectors, have you tried scaling them 200% while<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">maintaining the 1 pixel stroke size? It might not look too bad.<br></blockquote><br>I tried rescaling but higher resolution needs some extra love - 32pix icons <br>should have more tiny details that give the overall finish/decor feeling - <br>some shadows, light reflect, beveling and loads of other things that can <br>(read: "have to") be dropped for smaller sizes. Imagine plain 200% enlarged <br>gold cube :D Pure horror.<br>Every bit will have to be remade somehow. Not from scratch fortunately.<br></div></blockquote></div><br><div>That's what I thought. It might be good as a starting point though? One of the main tips I've heard again and again from icon designers is to start with the small sizes, and scale it up from there, because then you know it can be communicated in a compact way - it's easier to add more small details at larger sizes.</div><div><br></div><div>Of course other option is to just use vectors instead of bitmaps. This works especially well for iconic, flat icons, but probably not so much for nicer, more detailed ones...</div><div><br></div><div>-W</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>