Hi everyone,
after using D5 for more than a year and creating lots of images and animations, since my last animation creation I tried to write down everything I think can be better in the D5 client, and here are some of that.
I am trying to make this list larger, but for now, I have these:
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Undo/Redo/Lock for scene updates for both scene list and clip list: It happened a lot to all of us, after creating a detailed scene in a clip or a stand-alone image with only a misclick on the update bottom it is all gone!
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Coordinate for camera in animation: it is very handy to have a coordination for the camera movement. There are cases that the camera should be at a certain precise spot. Also, there are situations that the camera will twist and what ever you do you cannot edit it manually so having a numerical adjustment there would be very helpful.
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Scene Management: Most of my projects were large scale ones and there were lots of scenes and it very hard to handle and work with these. It would be very lovely if I could make a group or sub-group for my scenes and for example separate Interiors and Exteriors or things like that.
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Shotcut to switch between image and video(Generally more shortcuts is needed very often)
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Assets layout is too choppy: In general it would be very nice to manage the assets library better. Most important things is having Model an Material open in different windows so no need to only use one of them at a time. Also the color layout of the assets are not very good since they are all dark and not distinguishable where exactly we are. I feel like having top categories horizentally and and subcategories vertically will help a lot. Since categories like Nature, Character … are very general they all can be a big button and the sub ones open a new window
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Detecting Tags from Sketchup is a must for D5: When we have couple of options in design it is difficult to match scenes and tags every single time changing to a new view.
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Ability to open the scene list in new windows with more options: I strongly believe Scene list, Layers, Environment, Obejct list have to be able to open in a new windows so we can keep it open when working so there is no need to switch back for every edit.
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More adjustments for assets: Simply it would be nice for assets to be more editable. Like colors for tree leaves,cars,people etc…
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Bump map: title says it all!
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Global artificial light control: It is very good to have a global “artificial light” control so we can adjust the general exposure of “only artificial lights”. There are situations where all the lighting is done and exposure and natural light are not matched with artificial lights and editing all of them is not possible easily.
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Assets names and tags: In general the asset library names are not handy that much. It would be so nice to have the names more simple and more categorized. Example: Large tree - yellow or Kid - running. I think this is more related to tags so having a checkbox for tags and be able to sort the assets is very good.
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Drop into other directions: Not only drop to the ground but also dropping to ceiling and even walls are useful sometimes
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Loaded asset checkbox: Beside the check box like favorites/ dynamic/ … a “Loaded” checkbox is very good specially for low speed internets.
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More camera tools: In general there is not much control for the camera other than a path-shaped tool which is not working well although having a list of controls, it is not accurate that much. Simply if you think of it as a drone control you see it needs lots of more control.
It was a long post but I think it was necessary to write it all.
I would love to add to this list in the future.
By the way, I wanted to write in the “requests” section but it was too many things I wanted to mention.
Thank you!
Nima.