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1

generators UI and intuitive workflow

Explorer ,
Jul 28, 2023 Jul 28, 2023

After using Painter for over a year I still get lost in the menus.
I find the UI in Painter much harder to read than in other Software, and here is why, let's take "World Space Normals" as an example:
The properties panel is a very long list of options without subdivisions, meaning the only visual indicator for another type of parameter is a bold text setting with a little arrow.
So jumping around in the menu is not very intuitive, because what really stands out are not the categories, but the sliders and the "Invert False/True" buttons, which don't help finding what I'm looking for.
The distinction between a category (in this case "World Space Normals") and a subcategory (i.e. "Right to Left") is merely a little offset, otherwise they look completely identical. Again, this is hard to miss, especially when you don't want to collapse the category you're in and need to go back and forth between categories a bit. 
These issues get much worse with more complex generators like the mask generator.
I'm at a point where I'm not even using it anymore and prefer using separate generators instead, just because they are easier to read and navigate.

So my wish would be for hierarchies to become clearer. Switching between Painter and other Software like Toolbag, 3DS Max, Zbrush, even Photoshop tells me that it can be done.

Using Toolbag as an example:
The logic of the UI is no different, but it reads a bit better.
Category headers have a solid grey block as a background, which helps noticing them while scrolling through a list with several categories open.
Subcategories have the same appearance, but distinctively darker, so they don't compete with the higher level, when jumping around in the menu.
The sliders appear as solid boxes, darker than the menu background and with a drop shadow, like they are behind the menu and clearly sub objects, not headers, while the slider names are centered, so they don't compete with any of the category headers, which are aligned to the left.

I'm going to this length to make my point because - as it stands - Painter's texturing featuers (baking aside) make it our texturing solution of choice, and a software of that quality deserves a better UI, imho. 🙂

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1 Comment
Adobe Employee ,
Jul 28, 2023 Jul 28, 2023
LATEST

Hi @NilsDeitmers,

 

Thank you for your detailed feedback on the UI, this is something we are very grateful for, because it helps improving Painter in the right direction. I'll share the insight with the person in charge of the UI.

 

Best regards,

Cyril Dellenbach (Micro) | QA Support Artist | Adobe
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