I have a wish I’d like to express to the ZBrush team, regarding new releases…
I love the fact that you guys are busy creating some really wonderful new features in the product. However, I personally, prefer to experience these new things gradually, as I learn about them, as opposed to being thrust into deep water and have to sink or swim.
What I’m talking about here, is virtually every new ZBrush release has tended to change the default UI settings even for features that aren’t new. Change is not always a good thing. I’ve developed a lot of reflexes that I build upon when using ZBrush, just like doing sports, dancing, martial arts, or video gaming. Some things become nearly automatic, and I can apply them intuitively, like the ZB ninja I’m trying to be. But when a new release comes along, it turns into a train wreck, because all my well-developed reflexes go awry…
What I’d like to see here, is fine-- go ahead and change the defaults all to heck, but leave us old timers a saved UI configuration that does its best to mimic the previous release defaults. I spend an inordinate amount of time every new release trying to undo the UI changes that have been made so that my tried and true features are the way I’ve trained myself to expect them. It’s great for example, that you have the “local” rotation feature. But I find it extremely disorienting when the rotation center changes with every edit of the object. I’m sure some people absolutely love it, but I don’t happen to be one of them, at least not by default. So frankly, I wish there were saved UI configs for each of the previous versions, so that if I decided I liked the 3.1 defaults best for example, I could just load that up and make that my default for 4.0 and on into the future. So then, every new release would retain a certain familiarity, (at least within the bounds of what is possible given the new features).
New folks who’ve never seen ZB before can start right with the latest 4.0 features, but I’ve got work to do and it’s always a struggle tweaking everything back into the shape so that my reflexes are still useful. In time, there would be a series of saved UI configs that mimic each of the previous releases, where those who’ve learned to love a given setup have the option to start with what will be the most familiar and the most intuitive. Intuitions can be learned after all, and one of the things I strive to do with ZB is to learn some-- they tend to be shaped by the kinds of projects I work on, which may not be very much like what everyone else is doing. I spend a lot of time in 2.5D, and even things like the rendering settings and material choices provide a certain comfort when they are where I’ve gotten used to them being, and are much quicker to utilize when I don’t have to hunt for them like easter eggs…
Alright, so I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, and don’t really give much of a rats ass about “bleeding edge.” But there are features I depend on and when they’re constantly moving around and getting messed with, it’s not pleasant. What would be pleasant is to have a new version that at first seems just like the old version, but hey there are all these new options on the menus that I can experiment with one at a time, perhaps eventually deciding I like to make the default, but I can do that selectively, in the meantime knowing that all of the reflexes I’ve developed in the UI are still workable. It’s a much better way to integrate the features into my aged memory, and a little less “bleeding”. If the saved UI configs were forwards compatible, even the evolved adjustments I make to the UI could be carried forward, but I know that can be a lot to ask.
There’s no place like home…
–
Sync