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Interface and control suggestions

NamelessPFG
Expert Protege
Quill's off to a good start with what looks like a very nice vector painting engine and nice, gradual response on the drawing trigger, but I immediately noticed that there were some unused controls. Right-handed configuration here, invert for left-handed as necessary.

-The left trigger does nothing. I had thought it was a second tool, but it's just unresponsive.
-The left analog stick also does nothing when the grip trigger is released, considering the lack of tool functionality on that hand.

I figure these things could be used for more shortcuts, and I'll get to that in a moment.

-Undo is mapped to X.

This isn't a problem in and of itself, except that I can't seem to find a redo to go with it - and given that I had just launched Medium a moment ago, I was expecting it to be a left flick on the left stick. (Redo is a right flick.) Also, Medium uses the left trigger for hot-swapping your right-hand tool to the Smooth tool when held; you may want to consider a custom tool-swap if the left hand continues to be the menu/support hand and not a tool hand.

The menu systems are very different between both, so I don't expect things like using left stick up to show the tool palette or left stick down to show the layer menu, especially as when the menu is open, you can just tab left and right with the left stick, no poking with your right hand necessary.

Much of my interface concern is the potential muscle memory issues arising from lack of standardization between Medium and Quill input-wise.

I know they're made by different teams for different purposes (Sculptris/ZBrush modeling on one hand, SAI/CSP/Mischief painting on the other hand), but imagine if you had to use a different undo shortcut because nobody agreed on Ctrl-Z across the board, or the usual cut-copy-paste with the Ctrl-X/C/V cluster. That just makes for unnecessary confusion.

Think of it this way: both teams are effectively laying the groundwork for productivity software in VR, and as such, it would be a good idea to agree on where the most common functions applicable to both should be located on the Touch controllers, particularly things like undo/redo and layers. At least both programs already agreed on mapping brush size to the right-hand stick.
8 REPLIES 8

ekestermont
Honored Guest
Hi namelessPFG.

Thanks for the great feedback! Your suggestions have been heard (and many already match thoughts and intent internally). Keep it coming! 

Just an FYI, the left trigger has the function of "alt" currently, only switching back and forth while using the thicken and thin tool.

The left thumb works while in the color palette to choose a color. As well as scaling when used in conjunction with the left grip, as you've discovered.

Thanks again!
Eddie


Anonymous
Not applicable
In the "Colorize Tools" , "Color Blend Modes" menu, I would make the icons the full width oft the bar, it's impossible to read the text on the N, H, S, L and C buttons.

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You could replace the "Tool Opacity" with a description of the action on both sides in some cases.
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I generally find that the buttons and text instances are small. It's fine for the bottom row because those can be replaced by thumb browsing movements. But for other buttons it's a bit much. I would also enable trigger clicking when the cursor is in "arrow" mode (close enough to the button pane).

I would also disable the "escape key" from closing the software. I've already lost some artwork to it while recording a GIF with an external tool.

NamelessPFG
Expert Protege
I actually wasn't aware of the Thicken & Thin tool shifting; that's actually pretty neat! But it's also the sort of functionality I would like to see in other tools, such as shifting between brush and eraser.

Incidentally, Medium handles that by double-tapping A (the tool settings button), which I also hadn't realized until I read about it elsewhere. It's neat if you want to quickly switch directions on the swirl tool, switch from adding "clay" to removing it and back, etc. Of course, it doesn't make as much sense with Quill's more consolidated menu system, hence the trigger shift.

As for the color palette, that one's a bit less obvious. It turns out that moving the left stick up and down shifts the hue slider, while the right stick only moves the saturation/value cursor only if you have it close enough to the panel that it shifts to cursor mode. The approach there seems focused on letting the user tap in the general vicinity of what they want, and then using the sticks to fine-tune their color selection if it wasn't right on the mark the first time.

Needless to say, when the tutorials that go over the controls don't mention these things, they're bound to go overlooked and make people think they have to do it the long way.

I also realized that neither program uses the menu button on the left-hand controller at all, for whatever reason. It'd free up X (Medium) or Y (Quill) for other important hotkey uses, I'm sure.

Neither program uses the click-down functionality of either stick, while I'm at it. That's two more button mappings gone unused that could be used as hotkeys.

weasel47
Heroic Explorer
Here's a small suggestion to improve the interface...

"Open Project" defaults to the SampleQuillustrations folder (which is located within the Oculus folder structure), which is nice for being able to find those easily.
"Save Project" saves to Documents\Quill and then makes that the location for "Open Project" until the software is restarted.

It's not very convenient to switch between these two locations for opening Quillustrations, for example to show them off to someone or even just to open my own project when I launch Quill. I tried giving both folders shortcuts to each other, but those don't show up in Quill.

A very simple solution might be to add two buttons to the "Open Project" screen, one that jumps to Samples and one that jumps to the Documents\Quill folder.  A more robust way to add more locations (if desired) would be nice too, but less important.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Yeah, I was pretty surprised that Redo is not an option.

Good catch on all the shortcut buttons. I wish they made those part of the tutorial or made it easier to learn.

worc
Explorer
is there any way to turn off the interface sound effects? if not that'd be a nice addition. the sound of the brushes isn't too bad, but the constant plop-plop-plop when you're moving around the menus is a bit much.

chorne
Adventurer
Redo: Double tap the undo button. Admittedly I forget what it is all the time. We're doing a lot of UI work so expect this to change at some point in the future.

worc: There's no way to turn off the sound effects. Usually I just mute the headset entirely and plug in my headphones to spotify when I'm working. 

Mr_Payne
Explorer

These suggestions are my first impressions. I had a chance to use the software over this last week and want to keep using it. Currently there are a few issues curtailing my full leap that I believe would help those of us who want to develop a workflow that can be used in a professional capacity.

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1) Asset repository - Local and online. Create a tree for instance. Want another? Just save that selected object that represents the tree you wish to save out as a quill-repo file into the quill-repo directory. Open a palette that allows one to choose from quill repo assets both locally and online, as needed. Choose asset desired and quill loads it into the current scene. The object should load onto the current layer and be ready to manipulate. In the local quill-repo palette, it would be nice if we could tag each asset with multiple tags and select tags from a drop down list which sorts and reveals only assets with the specific tag. This is for organization and would help tremendously with workflow. For instance, let's say I tag trees as foliage, large tree, and winter. Let's say I am creating a winter scene, I could just select the winter tag and poof, all winter objects show up. Then, select trees, and it further obfuscates all other objects thereby revealing only the trees that are winter based.  

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2) Push/Pull brush needs an intensity falloff options. This could be toggled so that the current push/pull functions the same for hard surfaces. For the new feature, it would be wise to give an inner option and outer option. Inner option should be a percentage of the total sphere size and have an inner intensity slider. The outer should be the total size and shoul continue to be scaled using the current method and have an intensity option. Under most circumstances, the inner would be at full intensity and outer at zero intensity thereby giving the ability to push and pull lines without smooth results.

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3) Line smoothing brush (Must have for shaky hands, messed up lines after push pull.)

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4) Line tangent handles for easy re-manipulation of lines and strokes without the need for the push/pull brush and gives an easier way to reposition a line without all the problems currently present in the software.

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5) Transform options - Pivot: world, and local option. Last selected or group center. Mirror along axis (I see this in there but cannot activate them when in the select brush mode for some reason.) Non uniform using axis gimbal widget. -Non uniform scale in general.

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6) Mirror plane - Anything done on one side automatically happens on the opposite of the mirror plane, but mirrored. Good for anything symmetrical or anything that could be started symmetrically then add the asymmetry later.

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7) Snap to starting plane. Keeps the brush flat against the plane writing on but allows to still draw in it’s local X and Y plane.

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