[Bf-taskforce25] Some comments.

[Eclectiel L]

Hi,

I posted a message at the Wintercamp's Blender org thread (http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14543), but I believe this mailing list is a more appropriate place for it. (If not please let me know).

(I've read Ton's message about keeping arrows in number buttons, so please just ignore that part of the message)


The message quoted:
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I could listen the audio (parts of it) of March 06 morning from Wintercamp (it wasn't uploaded yet when I listened the others the first time). I did like some of the things discussed there, especially when someone, I think Jean-Luc (french accent), talked about having 3D widgets for each setting of 3D tools. In some of my proposals there is some notion of that, but I never thought it in such a general way, and I really love that.

Among other things, I like the cleanliness which the new buttons are being designed with. Also the graphical system for adding keyframes (right click), is quick and solves well the graphical addition of keyframes in an everything-animatable program.


In the Auto-Layout page there is a generic way to handle groups:
http://wiki.blender.org/uploads/0/0a/Dev_wcamp_properties_08.png

In this case I would suggest a different approach, at least for shape keys. It doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like in my proposals, but what I think is important is to have always visible the settings (or some) of each shape key.

An example: http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7795/shapekeyspanel.png
And how it would look proportionally in a screen: http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/1931/propertiesincolumnem6.png


Some reasons why I think this:

When working with shape keys, for instance doing lip-sync, sometimes may happen that all the shape keys are well modelled but when the character must say "A" the mouth is still shut.
Without all shapekeys' settings visible at a glance users don't know if they forgot to put a keyframe for that shapekey, if the "A" phoneme's shape key was muted for some reason, if the "A" phoneme is right but there is another that shuts the mouth that is having a greater (incorrect) weight value and steps on the "A" phoneme (for instance a previous "T" phoneme that was never weighted down), or if there is a mix of these issues, or just the jaw bone had a wrong keyframe there.

The way to check what the problem is, is to click on each shape key to see if it is muted, or has an erroneous weight.

With a list of shape keys always showing their settings, the user would see the problem at a glance.


Lip-sync is just an example, same goes for driven shape keys, where the user can check at a glance if there is a problem in the skinning setup, or if the character is activating a shape key even if it is in rest pose, just because the angle of the driver bone is not well settted.
If the character has 30 or more shape keys for pose correction, selecting each shape key every time that is needed to check if everything is ok may become overwhelming.
If the character will be exported to another soft and the base pose is slightly altered by shape keys it may bring some problems.

Always visible settings would give the user a fast way to check that everything is as it should be. And would also favour drag-and-drop.


In a layout like the one in the Shapekeys-panel proposal, the space usage could be handled using grouping methods to reduce vertical space (i.e. when working with lip-sync hide the body corrective shape keys), and as a way to reduce horizontal space usage it may help a proposal I posted about number-widgets without arrows http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5448/numberbuttonswithoutarr.png

But again, it doesn't have to be necessarily as my proposal, the important thing I think is the settings are always visible and accessible to the user.


This may be valid for other groups, like vertex groups. For instance to see at a glance how much weight they have in a specific part of the mesh: The user selects some vertexes, checks the vertex groups panels and sees how much weight each vertex-group has on those selected vertexes (not included in my vertex-groups panel mockup), verifying if there is any vertex group affecting an area that it should not affect. Like SHIFT+LMB in Weight Paint mode, although with more control since the users would be able to choose exactly the vertexes they want to check. And also giving the ability to check bigger zones than the SHIFT+LMB alternative.

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Here is another proposal for implementing something like what I mention in the previous message, with the Wintercamp mockup's style:
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8321/genericgroupswithsliderl.png


I keep updating the proposals at the Blender org thread (http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14130). If it would be good to bring any of those here for further discussion, just let me know.

It's been quite a long time since the last time I used a mailing list, so here it goes a mailing-list-noob question:
¿How do I reply to a message that was there before I subscribed to the mailing list?

Cheers!



      
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