Well so long wings 3d

[neostyles]

The problem is that when new things are added there, arent any guidlines to kind of govern how they are added. For example, look at the pdf that provided the framework for the blender ui redesign. More tools are simply added to an already over loaded right click menu and that is now 3 times as big as it was when i stumbled upon wings in high school. I mean, sure you have things here, and there but the problem is that you wouldn't see it unless you knew what it was. Wings is moving forward, granted. I dont think there is any denying that but its crawling forward instead of bounding forward like it should be. Put the wings of today up against the wings from he last two years and i doubt you could tell them apart.

Someone mentioned blender well i think thats good. Blender is fantastic example of progress. Every week this thing grows by leaps and bounds. Now of course wings cant have that many new features every week but look at the type of improvements that blender fans receive.. You cant help but feel excited when you look at whats new with every release of blender. This is what wings should aspire to be. It's not just about more tools (the bug fixes seem like they account for 90% of the changes are good certainly but these don't really improve wings in a meaningful way imo.) Its about smart tools - so maybe we can cut down on the clutter in the menu. The object and scene graph are at this point very dated and there are much smart, much more efficient ways of doing this.

Look at nondestructive operations (which blender and basically every modelling package supports) where you can adjust primives and tool options interactively. If you got the angle on a bend wrong, you should be able to just adjust it in the panel for that tool instead of having to undo and then retrace your steps.

[Radi]

I'm think you just used to other apps. I hear a few opinions that even experienced blender users have a piece of paper with shortcuts they use in everyday manner. This is something funny compared to Wings, and many Blender users like to start a model in Wings rather than there.

For myself, RMB menu is easy to work with, rather than 10 submenus. -just one look at menu and I can see interesting option. ^.^

probably you refer to ManifoldLab edition with long list ('Lots more'), Sometimes I think that these two versions should be merged and organized, no boolean tools or select planar surfaces (and a few other basics) in modeling app in 2015 ? Thats strange for me too . .

Also, you aware that TAB key on keyboard works with many options in Wings ?

just look on this simple example below


1: oh my bend angle is not what I need


2: Thanks to Undo command I can revert it back and MMB click on that icon:




3: with TAB button I can set now proper angle (or just by moving a mouse like normally):


as you see, interface of Wings is very intuintive it just need some practice

[neostyles]

Right but with most modelling apps, you would only need one step which is to type a new value into the panel for that tool.. Wings's throwing s*** at the wall and hope it sticks workflow is what makes it feel dated imho.

[micheus]

That is not a productive discussion. Even who is registered for about one year already know that Wings3D development is slow.

It's a work of two men (dgud and bjorng) - all busy people. It had great additions when Optigon was working very hard (2006-2011).

Some people prefer to mix different applications in their work-flow, trying to get the best of each one. It's a personal choice - what can be good enough for me can't be for you.

[Radi]

Seriously neostyles, you want too much for nothing, that sucks. Wings is dated ? You probably dont see Milkshape...

[Geta-Ve]

Well ... this sucks. I had a super long post written up and then I pressed a random button and it all vanished. Ugh.

Anyhoo, the long and short of it was that while wings is definitely dated, it is far from useless. On a personal level I use Wings almost weekly, even for paid work. On a professional level, while still being super useful, it is unfortunately virtually non-existent in the production world. The skills you learn from using Wings, especially from some of its quality of life features (vector ops I'm looking at you) simply do not transfer over to the big packages.

Which makes dedicating any amount of time learning the intricacies of Wings, for new users, not worth it.

In my opinion, the best thing the developers could do to keep Wings relevant (if that is even their goal at this point) would be to overhaul the backend and turn it into a super solid retopology program.

Just my two cents.

[VladD]

" No on screen widget, no booleans, etc. It's 2014, about to be 2015 and this thing still feels dated. "
No screen widget has been a deliberate design from the beginning, and it will stay that way I think. So, yes, at first it might seem dated to have to go through the context menu to access basic transforms, until you just toggle the tweak mode on and then get these functions quite easily.

Ironically, I'll point that most recent versions of the well known 3D packages are more and more implementing workaround options to get rid of the "always in the way" 3D widget, for selection or transforms, that they had from their beginning (Maya 2015 is a shinning example of this). So we might argue that a "dated UI" would rather be one still forcing the user though a cumbersome 3D widget. Matter of perspective I guess.

Booleans are in the manifold labs, as you know, and I'd agree that they could and probably should have been officially integrated into the main package long ago. IMHO.

Wings main UI is anything but "bloated" or cluttered, on the contrary, it's one of its strength. Even installing the manifoldlab plugin doesn't really clutter it since most of its - granted- dense options are not cluttering the context menu more than through a "more..." submenu that any user is free to use or ignore as he sees fit. So, that's not really a fair assessment of yours, IMO.

I wish you luck and pleasant hours with the "sleek" Silo3D, and its prone to fits mirror, essentially constrained to use from the grid origin, and still heavily bugged... that Wings3D virtual mirror leaves far behind. And yeah, even if I'm speaking in as "nice" and "gloves off" tone as you are (only fair eh?), it comes from experience too.

"Pressing the "select edge ring" hotkey in wings occasionally select the whole object instead and the only way to fix it is sometimes to quit wings."
Odd. I never ever had to suffer this bug, no matter which version.

[Nova]

I use wings every day professionally, making props for game development. Compared to my colleagues, who are all using Maya and Max, I am able to do things MUCH faster (Even UVing, which I feel like is Wings' biggest weakness atm). I don't agree that wings is useless, FAR from it!

[neostyles]

It's not just the fact that there are no on screen widgets (although this would make the workflow arguably much faster) that makes wings feel like something that dates back to early 2000s. Like i said, not having any way to adjust things interactively (aka tools) and having to undue when ever you get something wrong is like a throwback to the early days of 3d modelling. Most modelling packages allow you to for example change the axis that a tool is operating on instead of cluttering up the menu with 3 "different" tools.

The manifold lab is very cluttered (i often need it for the circularize option) it dumps a crap load of options into a menu that is already bloated
http://i59.tinypic.com/bzccg.jpg

I dont know how the average person can be expected to make heads or tails out of this.

In my opinon, wings's growth has slowed so much over the last few years because simply put the current ui has sort of reached it's limit. Wings must evolve if it wants to grow. Simply dumping more options into the right click menu isnt going to help grow.

Wings may be able to do things faster but i feel like that is highly dependent on what you are trying to do . Alot of stuff is much more difficult in wings, like if you want to say divide face, you get stuck manually cutting the edges and connecting them, where as in say silo you can just adjust things in real time. Its much more artist friendly. Wings has never felt like it was very geared towards artists and i think that is part of the problem. The workflow is still very tedious where most apps have beyond this stuff years ago.

The undo button seems like it's become such a critical part of wings' workflow that it was even given its own dedicated button. I think this is entirely the wrong approach. Instead of making it easier to for the user to do trial and error, wings should focus on helping you get it right the FIRST TIME.

[lietus]

From my experience, it's not widgets that draws people back, but space to deselect