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Oculus Medium Suggestions

slipgatecentral
Explorer
TL&DR: Medium is a very nice toy, but it's hard to be productive in it. 

After playing for few hours with it, I have some ideas that might improve this software for professional artists, without ruining accessibility for beginners.

-Almost very tool needs an alt modifier, that will allow user quickly switch to alternate mode. Example - for clay tool, to cut holes you need to open menu, select "Erase", and close menu. Needs to be faster, preferably holding modifier button on left controller (like the one we got for alternate tool). Every sculpting 3d software has this - primary function can be switched instantly to it's opposite.

- We must be able to select same tools for primary and alternate, but they must not share settings. This will be extremely useful in many cases. Like, you can paint using 2 different brushes with different color.

- Desperately need move/pull tool. Smudge doesn't do much. If there's no room on the palette I suggest removing useless swirl.

- Need an option to customize brushes and my palette. Would be great to have my own selection of saved tools with different settings. Time saver.

- Need bigger color swatch accessible from menu. Right now only 3 colors in it.

- Eyedropper tool takes too long to select. It also needs a button modifier for quick operation, like Alt key in Photoshop.


I am a professional 3d artist and I'm looking forward to work in VR. Those are just first steps but I see tons of potential in VR sculpting. 
323 REPLIES 323

Anonymous
Not applicable
Crease brush -- you can also use a stamp that has a point on it (like in the Traditional and Organic stamp folders), set to negative mode. Or sculpt the brush profile you want and save as a custom stamp. Goes on the model sharp, easy to smooth. Roughly like this:

dpn4d19ko78o.jpg

I made this from a sphere, using a larger sphere set to negative, with the lathe turned on.

Feature request: A pinch brush with adjustable inner and outer radius would be awesome for organic work! Please and thank you.\m/

Jellybit
Explorer
Toggle Elements in Rec Playbacks - Recording is very useful in social media, however, sometimes we use anatomy reference that's not safe for social media, or the avatar gets in the way of some clear video of the creation process. It would help a lot if we could toggle elements like Avatar, Brush shape, and References independently. I would love to just go in and censor my existing reference, but it's embedded in the rec file, and the file format is too complicated for me to figure out.

More Control Over Rec Playbacks - This is less necessary than the above, but it would be a "nice to have". Currently, timelapses of Medium sculpting on youtube are extremely erratic in first person, and in third person, it's almost impossible to see the details of what's being done. If we're able to get rid of the avatar like the above, it would be fantastic if we could lock the sculpt rotation to the viewer's control so we could clearly show the sculpting work itself, maybe even put that locked rotation on a lathe to record the whole process for social media. All the data is there in the Rec file. We would just have to ignore general document manipulation by the recorded session, and give that control to the viewing user. Zbrush does rotation smoothing in their timelapse playback to avoid that jittery erratic angle changing, so maybe there's something there, but Medium does a LOT more rotation than ZBrush in normal use.

Timeline Jumping - Oculus has official video tutorials, and encourages users to download new ones. I can't tell you how many times I had to restart a 10+ minute tutorial from scratch because I missed a spoken line, or missed a menu someone went into. This really should be fixed.  I would love if this were possible in rec playbacks too, but I understand that may be more complicated. I am trying to use Medium with social media more, and not having this control makes it very difficult to put a timelapse video together that isn't flying all over the place and allows the viewer to see the details of the work. More control over those recordings would allow me to change the camera angle when necessary and present it in a better light. As it is right now, Medium is a bit of a nightmare for social media compared to the stuff other art apps can do, and the nature of other types of digital art.

Masking - I know I know, much requested feature. This is greatly needed in the move tool for the ability to pose characters. Also having it in the cut tool would allow for more precision and complexity. It would be helpful in paint mode to be able to mask a selection. I have no idea how it would be helpful in clay mode.

Resolution Indication - I don't know if I'm alone in this, but it's frustrating. Imagine you're working in photoshop, and each layer is a random resolution, with no clear indication of what that might be. Merging layers would result in some blurry parts, some overly sharp parts, or might even downgrade the resolution of the clear parts. It could get maddening depending on what you're trying to do. Currently, in Medium, once you get into non-default resolution, it's a nightmare trying to work with layers to merge in a way that matches/retains all the visual information.

In order to judge if a different layer is the same resolution as the layer I plan on merging with, I have to tilt the layer so that the edge of the bounding box touches the floor in a specific spot, undo the rotation, choose the new layer, tilt it again to the floor, undo, and if it differs, up or down the resolution. Even if it just shows the bounding box during the highlight phase, I would be able to judge easily by toggling between. Instead, it only shows the box when rotating the layer, which I have to undo after the check. Currently, my workaround is to duplicate a layer, and erase everything on it, but I've unintentionally left artifacts behind before because I couldn't see it all, and I have to plan ahead on which parts are going to merge with which other parts.

stayinwonderland
Explorer
I second the path stroke suggestion.

So I'm sat here in the middle of a project for the studio I work for and I need to draw a snake but from a tricky angle. I instinctively keep thinking about reaching out to 3d or VR to place this snake in 3d space, ideally in Oculus Medium. But I would need a spline which I could push and pull, smooth out, get the curve just right and then have OM stroke that path with a brush to make a snake-like tube. Ideally where I could choose a taper % for start and end.

Jellybit
Explorer
Yes, I too would love a way to get splines in there. The way Gravity Sketch does lines feels SO good, but I also understand that you want to keep more physicality. I just think spline tools are maybe more physical feeling than the move tool, so it should fit within stated goals.

I have a couple more suggestions:

Latest Tools In Order Of Latest Usage - Currently, the latest tools are all kept there in the order they were originally used. This results in my most used tools being in random places in this long list of stupid shapes I was just trying out for fun or to see what they did. This makes 90% of the latest tool list a hindrance instead of helpful.

Favorite Tools On Main Clay Menu- I'd also like a few slots below the sphere, square, and pill on the main page to mark my three favorite stamps.

Custom Stamp Size Adjustment - I'd like to adjust the usage size of my custom stamps. Currently, when I make a long stamp, the maximum size is shrunk to lose all detail. It's very frustrating to make a stamp the maximum size, and still have it be tiny. What if I want to make buildings in a higher resolution city scene? I have to first stamp in low resolution, then raise the resolution. I can't stamp in the high resolution scene without the buildings being tiny, so either way, I get a very low resolution stamp, losing all the detail I tried to put into the stamp originally. There is no indication that I would be losing so much detail, so I can't even design around that limitation. I just find out after the fact that my detail work is lost.

Steadycam For Better Shared Media - I would love some sort of steadycam/lazymouse option on my camera so I can take smooth videos of my work. I do a walk around, and it shakes all over the place with both my headset cam, and my hand cam. Most phones nowadays have video steadying to solve this problem, and that's dealing with real life footage. It must be a hundred times easier to do the same thing in VR to have pleasant videos to share on social media.

Custom Move Shape - Maybe this falls under masking, but maybe not. It would be great if I could change to a pill shape for move, or any brush shape at all. I can imagine why this would be difficult to do mathematically, so I understand why you wouldn't do it, but if you used custom brushes, the center could scale based on normals. Or you could let the user paint the brush shape purely with the sphere if you wanted to simplify the math. I don't know. I just know that there are so many times when I need some sort of long thin area of influence so that I don't mess up the rest of the model to fix a problem in an area I was forced to merge due to a lack of layers.

Parhelion
Protege

Jellybit said:
Steadycam For Better Shared Media - I would love some sort of steadycam/lazymouse option on my camera so I can take smooth videos of my work. I do a walk around, and it shakes all over the place with both my headset cam, and my hand cam. Most phones nowadays have video steadying to solve this problem, and that's dealing with real life footage. It must be a hundred times easier to do the same thing in VR to have pleasant videos to share on social media.



This would be cool. I like this idea.

stayinwonderland
Explorer
I personally really need a way to monitor the resolution of layer and the scene as a whole. I increase the resolution of a layer but I don't know by how much, what the consequences and how close I am to slowing Medium down - or - what the consequences will be at export. I could be sculpting something impossible to export for all I know.

Overall, resolution is the biggest killer for me. I'm often sculpting way lower in detail than I'm comfortable with and it feels very frustrating to have little control over details because I'm afraid to up-res and bulk up my scene. It can only handle a few increments of that before it's maxed out and it still feels fairly low res.

Additional: needs more sculpting tools like pinch etc. just having build-up and erase feels limited.
thx

DeadlyJoe
Rising Star
Medium 2.0 suggestions for the file browser:







  1. Please bring the Username+Date file name schema back as the default, instead of the new "Untitled" name when saving new files. The date-based naming schema was extremely good for a number of reasons. It avoids naming conflicts when saving files without giving them a proper name. It also lets you see a glance when the file was created even when the created date isn't displayed. 
  2. Make the digital keyboard movable, or push it back about 1/4 meter so it's not sitting directly on your belly when you're sitting in a lean-back chair. The position of the keyboard makes it difficult to type when sitting unless you're standing, or sitting straight up or leaning forward in a chair.
  3. Add the Documents folder to the PC tab.
  4. Enable window scrolling using the joysticks.
  5. Save the window position when the file browser window is moved, and restore it to that position when it is opened again. (This goes for all windows).
  6. Maybe don't hide the /Documents/Medium folder in the browser. It's a little confusing. Is there a reason why it's hidden?

And above all, keep up the good work. You guys are amazing! ::smile:

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
FTR - points 1&6 are bugging me a bit too! Just a bit, mind. Update is still king of epic! 

Adamska_Voyevod
Honored Guest
Have not read all suggestions, but here's one:

I was painting some tomato plants today, and as I approach to paint the leaves on the tomato, I noticed how unpractical it was to paint so easily stuff underneath that, like the fruit itself, so I had to go from red and green to paint my natural mistakes.
I thought that maybe you guys could implement (this is to avoid creating layer after layer where its not needed) a "paper or cardboard "  sheet for the support hand that can be toggled from the Paint tool. So this sheet could be place exactly underneath the only thing you want to get paint, avoiding paint to fly over to stuff underneath or far from where you just want to be painting (hard to describe this process without an adequate virtual sculpting dictionary). Paint shield or some function like that...

Thanks for the update! UI is feeling much complex and inviting to try more stuff out

BiteyThing
Protege
Medium is my favorite program (desktop or vr) to create in.. Favorite program period, really 🙂 This is mostly nit-picky stuff, but wanted to add my .02...

- Remove frame around reference images. I like to use PNG's with alphas

- Pressing down on the left thumbstick should always gives you options based on current layer. Currently you seem to have to select the layer even if it's already active in order to see the options... Much of the time at least(?)

- Creating a new sculpt layer has to be one of the most used buttons. Being at the bottom of the popup with the other tiny buttons, it's not easy to reach... Kind of missing all that stuff popping up right in your face... Getting used to it though 🙂

- Have the scene objects hidden by default... Just thinking of the audio object i guess

- Ability to toggle to a specified tool, last tool, or a menu(?) with the y-button (kinda like with the left trigger) ...If not, maybe split up some of the menus or include the options from 1.x there as a quicker way to reach them.

- Ability to customize the skybox and ground

- Ability to setup a default save folder... I moved "my documents" to my D drive, but Medium still prefers my small SSD C drive.

- Would be nice if Inflate tool didn't eat away at thin pieces of geometry

- A brush like zbrush's Dam Standard

- Pickiest of all the nit-picks.... The sound for the "single" stamp option used to only play once. Last couple/few updates it repeats