The new studio is being redeveloped from scratch in wxWidgets. I took the decision to do it now, because I came to the point that I should make some GUI advances to start testing of new render engine features.
Thus, it was either the choice of enhancing fox-toolkit based GUI or start from the beginning with wxWidgets. had to take the latter decision due to:
1. Some features would need re-design of GUI and for them, a clean start would help.
2. wxWidgets have many more goodies implemented plus APIs for things like networking.
3. wxWidgets have native look which is especially good for Macs.
Unfortunately, starting the whole thing from ground zero will create a lot of frustration. But some dialogs would need a make-up anyway.
giannis
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New studio in wxWidgets
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Hi Giannis
will it be possible to save custom layouts .... for example you have setup different windows and arranged your GUI the way you like it , will it be possible to save it or even have a drop down to load different GUI layouts .
will it be possible to have the different window have a KT header/look and not the typical windows look ( i mean the borders of the opened windows )
Greetings Patrick
will it be possible to save custom layouts .... for example you have setup different windows and arranged your GUI the way you like it , will it be possible to save it or even have a drop down to load different GUI layouts .
will it be possible to have the different window have a KT header/look and not the typical windows look ( i mean the borders of the opened windows )
Greetings Patrick
for the first, yes. I think it's supported natively by wxWidgets to save windows preferences and restore them. Even if not, I will do it.
for the second, you are talking about skins. Which is a long shot at the moment and requires using special controls and overriding existing drawing methods. Which means a lot of work.
for the second, you are talking about skins. Which is a long shot at the moment and requires using special controls and overriding existing drawing methods. Which means a lot of work.
If giannis is using AUI, then yes, it is possible to save the users last layout, and to produce alternate layouts.patricks wrote:Hi Giannis
will it be possible to save custom layouts .... for example you have setup different windows and arranged your GUI the way you like it , will it be possible to save it or even have a drop down to load different GUI layouts .
Greetings Patrick
Hi Giannis and Chris
there is somthing i wanted to ask but i am not sure if i can explain myself good enough ...... so i will need the help from Chris
because he alreadie implemented somthing similare in Meridian ..... so he knows what i am talking about 
Meridian and KT Material Editor have somthing in common and that is the complexity a material can reach depending how good looking or accurate you want it ..... in the case of Meridian (or any other node based texture creator) ... the more "realistic" you want a material to look or even for other reasons , the node setup can get very complex and for a "new user" or even for the same person that have setup the node , it can get very difficult to remember what everything dos in the node setup .
Now Chris find a way to make the use of any created node texture very easy even for new users without having to "know" the node setup ..... by making it possible to have a node page property panel .
Each node allows you to copy any settings from the node to the property panel and this way you only have to copy the important settings to the node panel ..... meaning that you end up with a customised node property page that has all important settings to tweak the final texture very easy ( Chis please explain this better
)
somthing similare would be very good for the Material editor
imagine you could tell KT Material editor to copy the diffuse color slot to the "Basic Material Editor" and the IOR value( maybe the ior value could be changed for a slider ) , Bump and shininess value/map ...
The final "Basic Material Editor" would only show this components and values to the user and this way it would be very easy for anybody to setup a accurate material without having to deal with layer weights and inverted maps etc.
Now if a material uses absorption or/and translucence , you could copy the value sliders or color/bitmap/procedural to the basic panel ....
the idea is that only the needed elements are in the "Basic Material Editor " panel ( we could also call it Material property page )
Greetings Patrick
there is somthing i wanted to ask but i am not sure if i can explain myself good enough ...... so i will need the help from Chris
because he alreadie implemented somthing similare in Meridian ..... so he knows what i am talking about Meridian and KT Material Editor have somthing in common and that is the complexity a material can reach depending how good looking or accurate you want it ..... in the case of Meridian (or any other node based texture creator) ... the more "realistic" you want a material to look or even for other reasons , the node setup can get very complex and for a "new user" or even for the same person that have setup the node , it can get very difficult to remember what everything dos in the node setup .
Now Chris find a way to make the use of any created node texture very easy even for new users without having to "know" the node setup ..... by making it possible to have a node page property panel .
Each node allows you to copy any settings from the node to the property panel and this way you only have to copy the important settings to the node panel ..... meaning that you end up with a customised node property page that has all important settings to tweak the final texture very easy ( Chis please explain this better
)somthing similare would be very good for the Material editor
imagine you could tell KT Material editor to copy the diffuse color slot to the "Basic Material Editor" and the IOR value( maybe the ior value could be changed for a slider ) , Bump and shininess value/map ...
The final "Basic Material Editor" would only show this components and values to the user and this way it would be very easy for anybody to setup a accurate material without having to deal with layer weights and inverted maps etc.
Now if a material uses absorption or/and translucence , you could copy the value sliders or color/bitmap/procedural to the basic panel ....
the idea is that only the needed elements are in the "Basic Material Editor " panel ( we could also call it Material property page
)Greetings Patrick
My input...
What patrick is describing is a way to bundle a complex material setup into a single package. And only a small number of the properties from that bundle would be exposed to the user. The creator of the bundle or package would decide what properties are important and only those would be visible to the end user. This allows a very complicated material setup to be usable, without overwhelming the user.
For Meridian, this really did help usability. You can reuse common arrangements easily without all the setup time. You can present complex graphs really easily. It is nice to have. The difficulties I had in implementing it were deciding on how to allow for the packages to be made, how to select what properties to show or not, how to make the package interactive with the rest of the graph. Whether that's something that works with KT's internals or not, I don't know. But it would be awesome for example to have a "plastic" material, where all that's exposed is the diffuse, the shininess, and the IOR.
What patrick is describing is a way to bundle a complex material setup into a single package. And only a small number of the properties from that bundle would be exposed to the user. The creator of the bundle or package would decide what properties are important and only those would be visible to the end user. This allows a very complicated material setup to be usable, without overwhelming the user.
For Meridian, this really did help usability. You can reuse common arrangements easily without all the setup time. You can present complex graphs really easily. It is nice to have. The difficulties I had in implementing it were deciding on how to allow for the packages to be made, how to select what properties to show or not, how to make the package interactive with the rest of the graph. Whether that's something that works with KT's internals or not, I don't know. But it would be awesome for example to have a "plastic" material, where all that's exposed is the diffuse, the shininess, and the IOR.
I agree with your approach and like it very much.
Someone has to "decide" though what are the properties that need to be shown per material, and there's more work to implement for the simplified version.
This reminds me also the small wizard found in maxwell mat editor when clicking on Basics button.
giannis
Someone has to "decide" though what are the properties that need to be shown per material, and there's more work to implement for the simplified version.
This reminds me also the small wizard found in maxwell mat editor when clicking on Basics button.
giannis
what would be needed is a check box on all material properties (numerical value input and color, bitmap and procedural ) ..... the properties that got the check box enabled would get exposed/exported to the "Basic Material panel"giannis wrote:I agree with your approach and like it very much.
Someone has to "decide" though what are the properties that need to be shown per material, and there's more work to implement for the simplified version.
This reminds me also the small wizard found in maxwell mat editor when clicking on Basics button.
giannis
of cause Maxwells wizard would also be a solution
Greetings Patrick
