Designing a new UI

[Rooster]

Hello there. I have been playing with W3D for a while as I was looking for a simple polygon modeler, to use as a starting point before bringing in the mesh into Sculptris to make it more gritty.

I'm kinda got used to the highly clean dark charcoal UI's these days, and as a graphic designer I was already looking to expand into UI design. I honestly am one of those weirdo's that could have no clue how a certain software work, but enjoy the UI

So I like to design a new UI for W3D, will start in vectors which I can then export to pixel formats. But my questions are basically:

1. If I want to use my own design, or when others want to have it as well, how exactly do I 'connect' it with the architecture layer underneath it? I am not near a programmer, so no clue how to fork the code and change it.

2. If others like it, is it feasible to export all the elements, for the W3D team to implement it, or how does helping the dev team exactly work here?

3. If I'm the only one who like to use it, what do I need to do?

Thanks.

[Rooster]

Hmmm not a very active forum I guess?

[micheus]

Just to not let you without any information...

Hmmm not a very active forum I guess?

Wings3D doesn't have as many users as other 3d applications have, but it has a lot of 'supporters'. Our forum is usually visited by around 22 registered users every day - that revisit the forum many times a day. But, yes, no much activity here.

The current UI uses the wxWidgets library which brings to the app the OS's look and feel. So, there is no much space for visual customisation. You can basically do that with colours and fonts - in Preferences dialog (User Interface tab).

Share this kind of settings is possible by using the File->Save Preference Subset.
To store the color informations that we change in the Preferences dialog the Graphical Settings checkbox must be checked in the save dialog. Same for the windows layout (arrangement) that we must check the Window and View Settings checkbox.
The file (*.pref) usually is stored in the same place as Preferences.txt that is stored in a place like 'C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\Wings3D', but it can be saved anywhere.

The icons in the toolbar are almost "hard coded" (you find them here). They are "compiled" to create a pack with the '.bundle' extension: wings_icon_bluecube.bundle (default), wings_icon_classic.bundle and wings_icon_purpletube.bundle (you find them in a place like this: C:\Program Files\wings3d_2.1.5\lib\wings-2.1.5\ebin).
The icons/orig folder contains the png and Gimp file used to build the icons introduced to 2.* version. For the old ones you can find the psd files in psd folder.

Cheers

[Rooster]

Ok I see, so no chance to get a sleek dark charcoal flat UI working. Hmm, maybe I can look into customizing the widgets instead. Thanks.

[oort]

Rooster,
You can change many of the colors under Edit > Preferences > User Interface Tab... maybe you are wanting to change more???

oort

[Rooster]

Unfortunately I do haha. I'm kinda allergic to the oldskool look and feel, I'm one of those weirdos that seeing a great UI to my taste makes me hungry to explore, equally seeing an UI that is not of my taste, makes me hesitant.

I see potential in W3D becoming a lightweigth but very powerful pure modeler (with uv mapping), if only it looks modern, hence my interest in making a dark charcoal skin, flat styled skin (so no round corners and overly gradient buttons etc), increasing contrast in terms of shapes, not just colors.

Maybe someday, the devs (or someone else) will port this to Visual Studio, and I can design the UI and make it work.

[dgud]

> overly gradient buttons

hm, which version are you running and what buttons are you talking about?

[nemyax]

highly clean dark charcoal UI

The way wxWidgets works, your visual theme is inherited from your system settings by default. If your Windows theme is configured to be charcoal and clean, then Wings will be.
For example, this look isn't all that dark, but you don't get much cleaner than this as far as I'm concerned: http://i.imgur.com/gwzY66T.png