4.0 UI

[Simon]

A second colour seems like a good choice. You could paint with the right mouse button too. Of course you lose the ability to select objects with right click while you have a paint tool - but as that is already the case with the sculpt tools it is not a problem.

If I add a settings button to the top you could choose to add all of the various useful colour tools - like HSV bars, Swatches, Recently used colours. Or if you are happy with a simpler view you could remove the RGB bars for a smaller panel. Also would be nice to have type in boxes for RGB, HSL, Web colors.

Perhaps there should be 2 versions of a panel, the settings could have 2 columns of tick box options. And a single click on a toggle in the header bar for a panel switches you from 'lite' to 'detailed' controls when you need them. I've used that system before in Fractal Painter seemed to work quite well.

In fact there should be 3 versions of a panel - the other one is just a named title bar where the whole panel is collapsed, but it is still there in the UI for when you need it. Some apps will take the 'minimised' panels and put them in tabs onthe top or down the side. I quite like them minified and staying in place in the docked column.

The other option is to have a button that popups the full control list temporarily so you can tweak the values then let it disappear again. I suppose I can try out both and see what feels best (possibly keeping both methods).

[Dan Silverman]

I would use the KISS method on this one ... Keep It Simple, Stupid. A color picker has no need to be over complicated and painting with a right-mouse button on a stylus is no fun. Instead, just make the color picker similar to what you see in Photoshop and other paint apps. There is a foreground and background color option and you can switch between them by clicking one or the other. In most cases, it's just used as a simple way to store two colors for quick access. In other cases, it's a quick access to a background color for tools that use/require a background color.

If you want people to store more than one color for use, then add a palette where people can store lots of color squares for easy access.

These are just my opinions.

[Simon]

Yes on the KISS. It is already a bit complicated in that the Colour Wheel sometimes shows a painting colour, and at other times shows various material colours and the backdrop colour. I need to make that selection more obvious. I think other apps would have the colour purpose in a tab, or even duplicate the colour wheel for each material attribute.

It's getting quite easy to mess up the workspace with silly numbers of docks and panels now. I need to add some of the auto-hiding auto-minimising code to shuffle away panels that aren't currently relevant or don't easily fit.

[Funken]

Simon, long time no update. How's the development going?

[Simon]

I'm working on some very tedious UI stuff now. Where you open a popup from another popup, and it has to draw on top of the other panels around the screen. Necessary but dull!

I really want to get back into some actual sculpting to help me think about how best to reorganise the tools and commands. I have lots of ideas but it is slow going.

In other news - I had to spend some time on another project, that is pretty much complete now so I should get back on Curvy full speed now

[Simon]

Moving towards a better slider:

[southpawami]

I was looking at the UI, and call it the drafting class in college, but I'm concerned some TLC isn't going to the layers. Anything on that front? Maybe specifying the color of objects on any particular layer, or quick keyboard shortcuts to change between layers

[Simon]

I've not given the "Layers" panel much thought. I rarely use it. However it could certainly benefit from suggestions

The "Groups" panel also needs a revamp, I really want to make it easier to work with scenes with lots of objects, and also remove the need to setup a group to do a menu operation.

[Simon]

I'm making some promising progress on Drag & Drop and Copy & Paste of files into Curvy. I hate digging around in file open dialogs - so it is quite a relief to be able to use the normal file explorer windows and pick and choose what to drop in Curvy.

This is especially useful when making use of large libraries of images and models. You can simply drag multiple files onto Curvy to import/load them all.

[drawsattention]

Totally happy about the new release coming up! I think Curvy 3D is the best 3D program out there. Howler is the best paint etc. Program. Both together are total magic.