Is anyone else loving the MMB Panel as much as I am?

Looks the Side FX is adopting a bit of a modern look with it.

While its still has some questionable UI placement it solves one of the biggest pain points I have had with Houdini!

I wonder if SideFX is going to take the ‘fresh UI’ design of the panel and apply it to the rest of Houdini at some point. It would be cool to at least see the parameters pane under that design.

Not a fan, classic example of good intentions marred by poor implementation. Very restless alignment of elements and odd relative font size choices.

Will get used to it though, no doubt.

Agree on the font and alignment of some elements.

Is there a way to quickly change how the visualizer works?

For example, when you check the visualizer of an integer attribute from the info window, the visualizer assigns a random color to each unique integer by default.

I'd like to change it to "mark", in other words, just showing the integer itself as text.

I know I can click the edit button here:



But it's quite weird that while we can toggle the visualizer from info window, if we'd like to change it we need to find the edit button at an entirely different place...

kodra
Is there a way to quickly change how the visualizer works?

For example, when you check the visualizer of an integer attribute from the info window, the visualizer assigns a random color to each unique integer by default.

I'd like to change it to "mark", in other words, just showing the integer itself as text.

I know I can click the edit button here:

Image Not Found

But it's quite weird that while we can toggle the visualizer from info window, if we'd like to change it we need to find the edit button at an entirely different place... it feels like the old info window got a pretty face but its functionality is as ugly as before.

You can CTRL click on the visualizer toggle to bring up the visualizer customization options. This existed in the previous MMB info window as well.

You can CTRL click on the visualizer toggle to bring up the visualizer customization options. This existed in the previous MMB info window as well.

Wait what? Mind blown. :o

Sorry but I find it both harder to find stuff, and some things like attribute data MUCH harder to read. I have to CTRL+= to zoom it up then drag the window wider to expose everything again... every single time I open the window pane. It's beginning to grate somewhat. Also why add the visualizer button when you could already just click the attribute itself to visualize it.


A.

I like it, but ran into some annoying bugs that I’m trying to repro… e.g. had a pane on, added a comment… that comment seemed to persist as I switched the nodes.

But to me, the fact that I no longer have to MMB click 1000 times is a great step forward in the user experience.

LukeP
I like it, but ran into some annoying bugs that I’m trying to repro… e.g. had a pane on, added a comment… that comment seemed to persist as I switched the nodes.

But to me, the fact that I no longer have to MMB click 1000 times is a great step forward in the user experience.

How does the new info window change the number of MMB clicks for you? Genuine question.

kodra
How does the new info window change the number of MMB clicks for you? Genuine question.

There's a node info pane.

KaiStavginski

kodra
How does the new info window change the number of MMB clicks for you? Genuine question.

There's a node info pane.

Exactly. It removes one of my biggest PITAS with Houdini
I can have it open like the parameters view.

It's good to see Sidefx trying to improve these UI matters - so a big thumbs up for that. There are some good new technical features such as the panel docking which are really welcome.

Sadly, the visual design comes up short for me. Think about some of the very basic principles of good visual design: visual hierarchy, contrast, alignment, proximity, the good and appropriate use of colour and typography. I don't see them well employed here TBH.

My repeated and sincerely hoped for wish, is that Sidefx invests in someone with a high level of visual design / UI knowledge, know-how and experience, and gives them authority to deliver. It's important.

I really like everything, but a significant minus for me is the small font for the number of elements in the group. Why ? This is useful information, often necessary for debugging, and you have to strain your eyes to see it, while below there is a lot of rarely used information with large numbers that seems to have been created or modified with simply huge numbers. Who needs them? This is weird. Maybe you can think about the size of the numbers in groups?

Functionality wise the new Info Panel is really good:

- Can be docked.

- Dependencies are listed there AND clickable (navigated to)

- There are visualization toggles for groups now too, very useful. Although I don't know why there are a small animated slider, where I guess a checkbox would do.


That said there's some reading issue with it. Dunno if it's just the font or alignments, but.. see for example how visually the elements are clustered in the older format:


vs the new format:


Previously you would read the class and its number together and the color coding drive you to go to the correct line faster.

The current panel almost makes you read all the figures first; 2886, 2889,... etc first and then wonder what are each of them about.

So yeah, there could be some improvements about driving the use to find the relevant information faster, since it's an info panel.

I would also like to understand why did they put a dot with the corresponding VEX color code for that data type:

The data type is stated there anyway. Again, seems to me that one's eyes was more quickly directed to the cluster of info where you would want to search something in, but maybe that's just my... "eye muscle memory".


Cheers

KaiStavginski

kodra
How does the new info window change the number of MMB clicks for you? Genuine question.

There's a node info pane.

Are there plans to add pause functionality to the geo spreadsheet?

probiner
Although I don't know why there are a small animated slider, where I guess a checkbox would do.

I don't have Houdini open, so I don't know the exact term, but in the settings menu, there is an option to turn off the animations.

It's in Node Info panel's gear menu, and it's called "Reduce Motion". I strongly dislike animated toggle switches, so it was the first thing I enabled when working with this panel.

i removed the 'defined by' and 'date' options by deleting those entries in the node_info_template.json file.

It looks like H21 has re-designed this window a bit from the above screenshots. I'm not particularly liking some parts of it now.
Particularly, the top data in the H21 window where it displays the "center/size/min/max" data is just too large. The font is very large and there is a TON of wasted space, also from the H19.5 days, I'm now missing the vertical orientation (also above) of the "Points/Primitives/Vertices/Polygons/...etc" data. Now its a horizontal list of "columns"

I've been digging thru a few posts about Mako files etc.. and I'm wondering if there is an actual "layout" file that could be customized for this that would allow you to reformat this data a bit to more closely match either the above layout that feels a bit more compact, or just turn off whole sections entirely. One of the above posters mentioned a "node_info_template.json" file... Does that still exist in H21? and to edit it, can it be "customized" with an override version in your home directory? or does it have to be done in the install directory?


Thanks for any info! I did also see the whole doc page about adding to the info pane with python scripts as well, which also seems very useful. I'm just starting to dig into all this new stuff. So, just trying to find an entry point to editing the info window layout if at all possible now.