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I wish NL could contract an Interface Designer.
The current interface is not friendly at all, and it is designed by the programmers logic, which is not the user logic.
Both views are like diferent languages, and an user trying to understand an interface made with a programmer logic, produces missunderstandings.
Perhaps you were working for programmers in the past but a product directed to the public, and more precicely to an artistic public, should be designed thinking in the user.
I am receiving better support about Maxwell from a friend programmer that understands user interface, than from NL.
This is a big wish, I know.


Ernesto

very true but regretfully this will never happen. its like wanting French cars to be as reliable as Japanese.

I find myself within the Maxwell community surrounded by Unix experts who help me out with advise usually nothing more then click here or make a small program there and things like that. There is indeed hardly any artistic discussion on the maxwell forums simply because no artist would ever work with maxwell. obviously a few but in general never. next limit will never understand the logic an artist would like to be implemented and an artist will never understand the logic owners of a renderfarm would like to see in maxwell. also i find very few typical artistic examples of renderings, mostly bedrooms, known buildings and objects and gamelike stuff. i don't think any architect would ever want his creative energy sucked away in a mudpool interface. maxwell is not that bad but its clear that sooner or later some other company is going to come alongside with something simular as maxwell but simple to use. i expect within the next year already. i see that in the sketchup community in the beginning there was much interest in maxwell but my note on the release of the new 1.1UB had no response what so ever. Sketchup is an example of a typical designers tool, maxwell should be of high interest. with this interface nobody is advised to get maxwell.

I find the interface very easy to use and very easy to get used to.

However, most people who know me and my tools, will state that this is because Blender is very similar. In fact the Studio GUI was compared to that of Blender during the creation process.

On reflection, the Blender interface is initially difficult to get used to and does disuade new users from sticking with it.

In what ways would you suggest to improve it?


Tim.

"On reflection, the Blender interface is initially difficult to get used to and does disuade new users from sticking with it. "

I see this as a symptom of wrong design.


Interface is a language, mostly graphic language.
As normal languages chinese german spanish italian, etc some are more dificult to learn than others, but you can learn any of them.

Interface is the same but it is more complex because it is a NEW language, and it is expected that if you invent a new language, you will have to consider all previous standards, as well as the intuitive aproach.
In this case this new language does not take into account most of such things, which explains the difficulty to get new users to understand it automatically without an extra efffort.

Imagine a language where up means down, or where front means back, or smart means fool. It will be a new language, but it will be a VERYY risky language. In the same way Maxwell interface is risky because it is not intuitive enough.

Human beings get used to anything. Lets supose that you have a car which wheel works bacwards. If you turn the wheel to the right the car will turn to the left. If you practice enough you will end driving it automatically, but as it is violating intuition, every new user will need time and effort to get used to it.

On the other hand if you design it taking into account intuition, you will have half of the effort done!!!! and your brain will be ready to think more prodictive stuff than thinking of the interface contradiction to the human intuition.

FV, I do not think this is a problem of nationality. It is a comunication problem, and it has to be solved by a comunication profesional. It is that simple! You do not need an advanced industry or a high end technology, you only need a smart profesional that wants to do his or her work!

Ernesto

Could you give more specific information? What would you liked changed? The colors? The buttons? etc...

If you say you like an XP type of UI design, then another will say he likes a more minimal type of design....someone wants lighter backgrounds, others darker.

just to make it clear I think we all agree that designing an interface it has nothing to do with how it looks, which is much more as a consequence.

I also think that studio need a bit of work in the GUI design, mostly regarding routines and hidden functionalities; I'd like to see all of the command line options revealed, or at least the possibility to add custom menu and panels.
Some routine needs to be cut down, trying to keep the workflow consistent and to not force the user to open different tasks (such as mxcl to convert a bitmap in mxi), remember or browse deep path (such as for material maps), exporting instead of saving materials to keep an mxm update inside studio, etc.

also a bit of arrangement in the layout would be nice, maybe without loosing its already great flexibility.

Please try to avoid useless procedures and keep user focus on the content, not on the interface: this is the real challenge. I don't really care if it has to be like blender, modo, autocad or like anything else before, just keep it usable, you already are on the right track.

I think that (again from Blender):

1) have the possibility to store your default layout can solve some problems...

2) Also a basic layout colour management (not all parts and not all colours but just background and some few).
...so you fix your screen geometry and your favourite colour for your standard project...

3) can be also intended as a basic scene automatically opened each time: so you can save inside your default geometry (example a plane), your default materials, your default camera-set-up and so on...

In any case, I feel quite comfortable with this very simple and neutral interface and I would prefer not to have shiny parts.

Rickyx wrote: In any case, I feel quite comfortable with this very simple and neutral interface and I would prefer not to have shiny parts.

I second that.........I'm really impressed with the aproach NL have taken with the interface for MWR and RF.

I like a lot MW's interface flexibility but:

-right now I think it's a bit too based on text, which takes more mental effort and time to identify what it means than if it had some graphics. Most of the parameter windows are a bunch of text on one side and identical number boxes on the other and usually I have to scroll reading till I locate what I want. A graphical aid to locate things would be really welcomed;

-if I want to substitute one palette with another I have to point at the top left square, click, locate what I want in a text list without graphical aid (again) and click again. It would be better to have small (maybe a bit bigger) buttons (as the ones in the viewports) for a quick access and saving one click, scroll and reading;

-there are some palettes that refer to another one (camera list - camera parameters, or projector list - projector parameters) and usually both are needed to be opened at the same time. Maybe those should be the same palette with two tabs so they open at the same time.

my two cents.

I like Studio as a well thought out program. Non the less, I have to admit that the few parts of the Maxwell Studio interface logic I do not care for are similar to Blender.
No, I have no problem to understand what the program wants me to do, but I find it clumsy at times.

Object handling: Maybe this is a graphics card/computer performance related issue, but I prefer programs, which give me a more precise feedback on what is presently selected or moved or scaled. That's a thing,which is too suble to describe, but I know, that I tend to avoid selecting directly in the viewport and instead do it from the object list, if possible.
It is also well questionable, why a standalone rendering program offers object translation with a Transform Gizmo only. These manipulators are imo great and inevitable tools for subdivison modeling, but for precisely setting up a scene I feel totally spoiled by the comfortable options a CAD environment offers. I generally prefer doing everything which is a bit more than a mere movement or rotation in my modeller, Rhino. Manipulators may be a standard - but only in a part of the industries Maxwell is addressing.

There's a lot of know issues, which have not yet been looked at. Like customizable keyboard shortcuts. Like Mouse customization for navigation and camera manipulation. I personally try to standardize navigation and keyboard shortcuts in all my programs, to minimize effort. Impossible with Maxwell. Keyboard shortcuts are far from complete and mostly unusable for me in the present state.

I tend to stumble about quite a few dialogues and also about missleading context menu entries. E.g. "Remove Groups" - what does that mean? Are objects only going to be ungrouped or are they also deleted? This is nothing one can easily try out, as there's no undo for deleted geometry. "Ungroup" would be much clearer here. I also can not count, how many times I already incorrectly chose "NO" when I want to open a new file. No, in the sense, that I don't want to save the changes in the presently opened file. Maxwell is the only program I have, which lets me stumble at this point.
The windows standard works great here imo. If the latest state of the file is already saved, I will not get a dialogue. Only if not, the program asks me to save the changes.
I would appreciate, if the Maxwell dialogues were revised by a native speaker.

Icon placement ist not at all intuitive in the Material Editor.
Why this odd place to the right for Dispersion, Blend Mode etc? Even worse is the placement for the on/off switch for BSDF layers. It is not visible, in the layer stack, that single layers are currently turned off. That's really poorly made.

Colour, fonts and Icon customizing was desirable. Others might like the Orange items. I'd prefer them to look differently.

One of the things, which would probably also help alot was a status bar, which says, that an object previously has to be highlighted, when a user fails draging a material to the viewport.

Holger

I agree with most comments here.
Let me enhace one viewpoint:
It is important to separate what we like, from what works best.

Once we have an interface that works best we will like it more!!!!

I personally love the Maxwell Interface look, It is very modern, I love the greyish background, and the orange and green accents, it is way fashionable, and has a great look, that I personally love! but this is a graphic designer look, and has nothing to do with functionality. This look has nothing to do with functionality, and the key to understand this is the fact that, I can say I like it, before I learn to use it. I do not mean it should be changed, I say this look is great, and some change is needed to improve comunication, but this does not necesarily means to change the graphic design.

The Interface should be the most direct conection from the Software to the User brain, and viceversa.

If too much text is used, the connection is not that direct as it could.

Written language is an interface too, and it connects others ideas to the users brain, but this kind of language is not the most suitable for graphic and visual people like us. We prefer a direct 3d connection instead of a written¨"translation". That is the reason a more graphical interface would be much more practical. Imagine, Maxwell handles 3d perfectly, as our brain, why we should need a written translation in the middle?
It is like having two chineses trying to comunicate to each other trhough an english translator. It would be much more direct for them, to do it in chinese, right?

Just to mention some stuff, I feel not comfortable with command lines. It is like coming back to DOS where written language was the only way to comunicate with a computer. I would love these options to be replaced with buttons, or icons, which would need only a mouse click instead of a full command line where a wrong caracter could produce an error. This kind of options have two main obstacles: 1) they have to be translated to written language. 2) they have to be translated to programmers language too. It would be simply great if this could be changed, so that they get reduced to the number of real options. I.E a, b , c. or 0 and 1 !

Anyway this is just one sample, I am not a comunication specialist, but I use to work in the comuication area. There are profesionals that know about semiotic, psicology, and specially comunication, that have all the knowledege to solve this task.

Perhaps listening to users comments only, it can be reached to a good result too, but it probably will take longer since we are only users.

Ernesto

I think, that customizability is the key. I am a Designer but prefer text over icons and keystrokes over both. Whereas I want to use both of my hands to get things done, there's others who hate the idea of using the keyboard at all. Or tablet users: They want buttons all over the place. Non is better that the other. The result and the individual joy at work is what counts.

Holger

Our personal preferences could be influenced to our previous experiences.
Taking this into account, we can understand that personal preferences are not important at all.

Human beings get used to anything, and then we do not want a change.
It is easier to stay unchanged rather than improve anything.
But new users will have less problems learning a new interface, if this interface was well designed.

Nowadays knowledege was possible because the way it is transmitted to others was improved. In case we would have a comunication system unchanged since humans were living in caverns, it would take all your life to learn a simple stuff that you see at school in one day.

That is the reason User preferences should be ignored partially to get to a good interface design. Instead, there should be a comunication Professional who can separate Preferences that are old habits, from preferences that are real comunication improvements.

Ernesto

As a whole, the UI is ok not very impressive, but it works.. Th eonly thing that has annoyed me alot is the grouping / hierachy system.

an example :

I select a bunch of objects, group them up, and select the group.. hit rotate and h**l breaks lose, you will see the objects using its own pivot, annoying if I want to rotate my model a few degrees. I am new to the software, so maybe I have missed something, but this is my impression of it so far.

... yes the interface could show the hotkeys, icons could have been clearer and more logical - but that is just details.
I am not saying that those details do not matter, because they do. Studies has shown that GUI design is like a massive factor for succes, one of the reasons I dont use Lightwave or Blender. What I am saying is that the UI works, but only works.

But the renderer is awesome

Kindly

Carsten Lind
Denmark

i like the interface very much, functions wise and graphicwise....

please keep it.

cheers
stefan