Favorite UI features

[dkendig]

Hey everyone,

I just thought I'd throw this question out there. As we all know, our UI could use a little tweaking. We've had some discussions about this in the past, but I thought I'd pick everyone's brain on here just to see if anyone had some ideas we hadn't thought of. I was wondering if anyone has used another application, and really thought that something in their UI stood out as being extremely helpful. For example, I'm a big fan of the way Maya handles all of the elements in the scene.



Another example would be Rhino's Sunlight system. It's a great way to let a user visualize the lighting of the sun in the scene.

[Gijs]

Re: Favorite UI features

just a couple of UI features that I miss:

drag and drop of materials;
drag and drop of textures (for example, dragging an image file into the diffuse map slot should but the bitmap in the diffuse channel);
dragging and dropping between materials and between material items;
instancing of textures;
selecting multiple materials to change settings for more materials at once;
overview of all used textures in a material (ala 3dsmax);
ability to see the map in a slot or at least its filename while hovering over the slot;
changeable material editor scene;
auto-update of material preview;
auto-update of texture preview;
material-icons;
link option for reflection and highlight glossiness;
global material subdivisions override and/or global material subdivision multiplier;
global light subdivisions override and/or global lights subdivision multiplier;
separation of saving settings: right now it is only possible to load and save all settings. I would like to load only those settings that affect quality;
option to disable maps for all maps: for example, environment maps cannot be turned off, they can only be turned off in materials;
rendertime and polycount feedback in framebuffer;
a light lister (ala 3dsmax);
instancing of lights;

In general I think that the material and texture editor misses the overview. Also it needs too much clicks to get somewhere.
I'd prefer to have Vray specific lights rather than the Rhino lights. often the GUI of the Rhino light or the sunlight pop up instead of Vray's. I also dislike the fact that I always need to use the drop down box and change object to light when I need to change a light setting.