New render settings layout concept

[Ludvik Koutny]

Hi,

I just spent two hours making this mockup of new, cleaner, more convenient and intuitive render settings layout. When i looked at most recent build this morning, i realized how horrific and chaotic render settings look and that if i was a new users, using Corona for a first time, i would probably get a heart attack.

Alpha v4 is coming and there is always some UI cleanup before any public alpha release, but it is usually followed by uncertain balance of development priorities.

The thing is both me and Keymaster have different list of priorities. Sometimes, things that might be working from programmer's point of view might not be completely working from artist's point of view.

In my opinion if UI has to perceived as clean and intuitive, it has to be iterated to the every last detail.

So, i am presenting you my concept of new render settings layout. It is based on to-the-pixel precise alignment and clean left to right - top to bottom flow (to which human brain is used due to the text reading).

(Left one is old, right one is new)





Aside from layout changes, i also added and removed some things that i found unnecessary:

Removed # of threads setting - was implemented only to diagnose improper performance scaling on multiprocessor machines
Removed photon kernel dropdown menu - did not contain any settings
Added View/World dropdown menu to displacement settings -  for more obvious and self-explanatory displacement mode change
Added Max. Subdivisions setting to displacement settings - This setting will be probably necessary for displacement to better control amount of geometric subdivision.



So, to wrap it up. If you like this concept, then i ask you to help us decide if we should invest more time in such things, and that you really want clean and comprehensive UI, not some half baked semi-okay UI. The reason i put it up here is that we discuss this internally a lot and do not always came to a simple conclusion.

Thank you in advance.

[lacilaci]

I do like it... and I'm happy to see this: "Added Max. Subdivisions setting to displacement settings"!!!

[NicolasC]

Ah yes !! good to see you've attacked this :)
Indeed, software UI is something very important. When you think about the time we spend in front of UIs, it's definitely a software aspect that shouldn't be ignored like it often is. I'd even add it's a software aspect that should deserve much attention and care !
Not only it can help new users not being scared (and then they'll more likely try your software), but it can also help understanding and using software more efficiently ...

In a nutshell, I'm definitely in :)

[lacilaci]

I think most important reason for Ondra to care about simple straightforward and selfexplainatory UI ,is that it is pretty important that new people trying corona out cannot say: "It might be nice, but I'm lost in the settings and have no time to learn new things".

Also having it cleanly designed, some additional possible features/modes etc. will be not just stacked up onto each other. The sooner there's a system in those things the less work in future there will be with it...

[Ludvik Koutny]

Yes, that is my thought process too. Even when there is exactly same amount of settings, layout can radically change how users perceive settings' complexity.

[NicolasC]

Even when there is exactly same amount of settings, their layout can radically change how complicated they are perceived.

+1

[racoonart]

Good concept! A clean UI definitely is important. I just would give the group boxes a little more space.

[Ludvik Koutny]

I have changed formulation of original post a bit to not sound like blaming Ondra for something. We all know he is doing his best to make Corona the greatest renderer of all time, so i do not want to sound ungrateful. We both have a little different order of priorities, but it's usually more of my fault, as sometimes i struggle with presentation of my reasons and ideas. That is the reason i share it here, to get more feedback :)

[Paul Jones]

it's a thing of beauty! (the new one that is)

[Chakib]

Sounds nice layout good work, hope to see it soon for legacy buid.

can't wait to see the new features of alpha 4.

[maru]

I like it. The only thing I am not sure about is the position of "lights" and "global illumination" sections. Maybe you could swap them? Is it intended for an average user to often change values in "lights" section or is it something better left at default except for some hardcore situations?

[lacilaci]

I personally think that lightsamples are very important to use accordingly to scene lighting situations. Defaults are great for open scenes with lots of even lighting or studio like lighting setup.

But closed spaces with only daylight+sunlight coming from windows or few corona lights that needs lot of samples might be better tweaked to get somewhat "even" noise convergence..(samples multiplier)...
So I like having pt samples and lighsamples close together...

[Ludvik Koutny]

So, Ondra was very willing and what we speculated about this morning became reality this evening.

We worked out the way that i can take care of UI layout directly, and we also agreed on hiding most of the settings that were there for debugging purposes, and therefore creating more user friendly UI.

This is not a mockup but an actual current state of UI:

[Chakib]

i think i'm fine with this new layout it looks light to my eyes i like it

[lacilaci]

so no max displacement subdivisions?