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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

Metrons
Expert Protege
PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE let us turn off the 'brush shape' when sculpting. i can not be the only one who finds it confusing trying to sculpt when i see a giant green/red mass where i'm trying to sculpt. I like having the brush shape there but when i press the trigger i want that gone. i want to SEE what i'm doing, i don't want anything in my way of seeing what i'm sculpting. again, PLEASE let us turn this off. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Metrons said:

PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE let us turn off the 'brush shape' when sculpting. i can not be the only one who finds it confusing trying to sculpt when i see a giant green/red mass where i'm trying to sculpt. I like having the brush shape there but when i press the trigger i want that gone. i want to SEE what i'm doing, i don't want anything in my way of seeing what i'm sculpting. again, PLEASE let us turn this off. 


Also with the material sliders, at least while they're being adjusted.  It's very hard to see what its going to look like in terms of color/reflectivity etc when it's bathed in a massive green selection glow.

Speaking of highlighting, it would also be really useful if a child element is selected in a closed menu, if the parent menu was outlined (preferably in a different color).  Not a major problem when you have 2-3 layers.. can be a huge problem when you have 80-90 of them, select an object that's a couple layers deep in the hierarchy, and try to find it.  Even bigger issue when you accidentally drop it in the wrong place and don't realize it, forces to open every sub-menu until its found, which can also cause accidental hierarchy changes

Anonymous
Not applicable
Mirror calibration tool:

The mirror size is often useless for calibration (maybe due to variances in resolution in different layers?).  Would be nice if there's a mechanism where when a layer is selected a mirror reticule of some kind can be called up.  Idea is that it would be on a scale that is workable with and can be placed more precisely.  Once positioned, the actual mirror could snap to it based on the orientation.  

Thinking of the reticule as something like the orb that shows up when a layer is first created, maybe with cross hairs  on it, like a small mirror that you could orient so it splits the sculpt how you want it.  Alternately, just a workable scale icon similar to the mirror icon.  

Whatever the actual look of it, idea is to be able to have a small mirror thing for placement, and then the actual mirror can snap to that point.  Once snapped, it could be disposable or kept as a type of stored mirror savepoint for that specific layer.  Bonus points if you can cycle/toggle/select any of the 90 degree axis based on the center point you select.

Not sure how well I communicated that, I can diagram it, if needed.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Photo Stamp

This one's kind of wild, but would be incredibly useful for texturing (either directly or through intersects). 
Probably a completely new tool, not sure if it would have to use a base rectangular stamp or if could be more flexible.
Idea is to take a photo image, line it up with the target stamp.  The color information would be given depth [extruded], similar to the way the spraypaint tool works.  Basically it would map the color information on the photo, then project that in a straight line to and through the target object. 

So if a rectangle that matched the photo size was used (for example) the top layer would get the pattern(s) color(s) information from the photo, and look like a photo.   The layers underneath would be colored similarly to the way that a stack of identical photos would be  (ie, the color would be the same as the surface image, just go all the way through the pile).   If the rectangle didn't match, the user could cut away any border, if necessary.

This would allow color/texture information to be translated through stamping.  Alternately, if intersection was used, the intersected object would acquire the color/texture info, regardless of the depth, as long as there is overlap.

Upshot, I'm pretty sure this would radically change the power of color stamping, among other things.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Voxel Patterning 

If you look at organic patterns they are typically based on shape and color repetition of some type, often with a parallel contrasting color, when contiguous.  Color intensity functions as a form of depth cue, even when a surface is uniform.

As I understand it, a voxel is a base unit of volume with limited attributes.  Relative position and presumably singular color information (base color, brightness, etc) is attached which lets medium do its thing.  The limitation being that, as a base unit, an individual voxel can only be one color at a time. 

If I had to guess, the sliders essentially rewrite the data, at least on the voxels that have empty adjacencies, for the entire layer.  For example, emissive increases on a layer would add brightness to each voxel uniformly.

At this point, a linear sequence is used to travel a matrix or a tree-like approach is used to identify which voxels are in the set, and make the changes.   Presumably, there are different path solutions available with different levels of efficiency.

If I have the essence of this right, then some possibilities come to mind for texturing.  The exact implementation would vary with the traversal method.   Some previously unusable methods might be valid, since it doesn't require searching the entire set, instead it might skip some voxels to produce the desired effect.

The idea

Assuming the above is reasonably accurate, a texturing tool which changed characteristics of some of the voxels, rather than uniformly applying the changes, on  a mathematical selection basis becomes possible.  Whether this is fractal based, or whether it computes color changes on adjacency or adjacency curves, or whether it selects on something like every two moves forward and one to the right (step/procedural basis) or radians/paths from center, depends on how the point math works.   Possibly different approaches/sliders can be set to take advantage of various options.

Anyhow, from a viewers perspective, this would do things like create veins of light/dark color, or perhaps increasing emissiveness or reflectivity along the path.  Perhaps it would shift colors (bumping the rgb numbers or value).  Alternately it might uniformly affect the selected voxels, while ignoring the others not found in the functions path.  More computationally expensive, it might gather data from its neighbors, and do interesting things.

Maybe easier to do all of this within the framework of a cube and
perform the equivalent of an intersect, rather than apply to the typical
non-contiguous form.

Perhaps it would be possible to make a single screen for generating these, where each slider controlled one aspect of the function (spread, direction, color shift, density.... whatever is possible after consideration).  This might (or might not be) displayable by a preview pattern on a sample cube/sphere, or a surface. 

From the users side, they'd move some sliders (with or without feedback, and hit apply).  The composite function that was generated would then run through the layer or intersection cube and adjust accordingly.

Not sure how much (if any of this) is within the scope of the current computational power, although perhaps enough here to spark an idea in the mind of one of the programmers.  Just mostly hoping for some deeper texturing options, so thought I'd see if I could spin something up!

Anonymous
Not applicable
Allow us to export the poly Meshes we imported for the sculpt as well. This way ,we can use Medium for more complex projects like architecture without having to figure out the alignment again outside Medium.

Medium is basically my favorite VR art tool, keep it up!

Anonymous
Not applicable
Fluorescent light tubes (light sources that are long ovals), useful for things like starship running lights, neon, etc.

Better yet, convert stamp (or layer) to light source.  [Not sure if this is possible, but would essentially make the object invisible and ultra-emissive in the same way that the point light is, drawing color and/or dispersal source based on the stamp or layer].  Would be cool for all sorts of things, city "window" illumination, etc

Middle ground: A "draw-able" intensity controllable light source, maybe built off the capsule or sphere. 

thoiter
Protege
Not sure if this has been suggested already, but some kind of dodge and burn tools would be really useful to simplify lightening and darkening of areas without having to keep selecting colors from the color pallette.

Anonymous
Not applicable

thoiter said:

Not sure if this has been suggested already, but some kind of dodge and burn tools would be really useful to simplify lightening and darkening of areas without having to keep selecting colors from the color pallette.


You can use black/white/gray (from the far left side of the palette) at partial opacity and spray over.

I wouldn't mind seeing  a shadow lamp though, that reduced light levels in it's projection area, rather than illuminating them.  Might be interesting.

matt_cat
Explorer
Hello 🙂 totally blown away and only 2 days in, thank you for such a fantastic peice of software - I love it so much !!
I dont know if its been mentioned already but can the Lathe also spin anti-clockwise please (for right handed people) 🙂
Speed controls would be great too..
Got some other ideas but going to get some more millage first BBL
xxx


EDIT: I found the lathe controls, amazing 😄