Resize UI

RobertH

Hi, I'm new to MTB2 and have just started using the demo version. I mistakenly asked this question in the Feedback and Suggestions section... so I'll ask it again here.

How do you resize the UI? I was messing around in the viewport with the UI turned off (using the space bar), when I turned it back on, the UI was about 1/3 of the original size. Can't figure out how to get it back. Thanks?

almighty_gir

that... shouldn't happen!

gimme a min to bring this up with the team.

almighty_gir

yeah we're all of the consensus that this is broken.

could you provide a screenshot of what's happening for us?

RobertH

almighty_gir wrote: »

that... shouldn't happen!

gimme a min to bring this up with the team.

Thanks... yes it was weird. I just got the demo and was playing around with it for a few hours (without reading much documentation). I was playing in the viewport using shift ctrl alt along with dragging the left middle and right mouse buttons and the mouse scroll wheel, again not knowing what I was doing, just seeing what would happen. When I hit the space key to bring back the UI it was much smaller. I tried uninstalling but that didn't help.

RobertH

How do I attach it? BTW this is on a 32" monitor. The original UI looked kind of large, but now I can barely read it. 2560 x 1440 resolution.

almighty_gir

i'd suggest doing alt+prtscrn to take a screenshot of toolbag (while it's your active program), then going to www.imgur.com and hitting ctrl+v to upload it there. just paste the link to the image here when done =]

RobertH

http://imgur.com/OnBRU0P

RobertH

HI almighty_gir,

Did the screen shot shed any light on the UI mystery?

almighty_gir

This appears to be working as expected. I have the same resolution monitor as you:


I will however add a new suggestion to our ever growing list, that we be able to scale up the interface for larger resolutions.

RobertH

Thanks for looking into this, almighty_gir!

There is something really strange going on then. For at least 5 hrs+ the 2 UI panels on both sides of the screen took up about half the screen real estate in full screen mode, when first using TB2. I had gone in and out of the program several times. The text was large and extremely easy to read, now it's miniscule. Most of the time I had the UI on and occasionally toggled it off. I then had the UI off while trying to manipulate the viewport, using all sorts of combinations of CTRL ALT SHIFT RMB LMB MMB SCROLL dragging etc. I naturally assumed something I did changed the interface. (I have a SpaceNavigator 3D mouse that I use on all my other 3D programs and felt lost without being able to use it here). When I toggled the UI back on, it was really surprising at how small it became. The resizing occurred in one session, no program exiting, rebooting etc. Before trying any of this I looked for a manual and a list of shortcut keys for TB2 but did not find one... granted I didn't look very long, and figured I'd puzzle it out. I've been a programmer for over 20 years and know my way around computers. I have never experienced anything like this without the UI explicitly having the ability to resize. None of my other programs, graphic or otherwise are behaving erratically.

So anyway I would like to request adding a larger UI option in a future release. I'm sure the UI is fine on a smaller monitor, but not so much on my 32". I'm really impressed with this program and purchased it this afternoon. Looking forward to many happy years of using your software...

Thanks again for your help!

almighty_gir

do you have a screenshot available of when it's taking up such a huge amount of the screen?

RobertH

No almighty_gir, I wish I did. Just thought that was how it normally looked/worked, because that was the only way I had ever seen it. Thanks again.

EarthQuake

I am going to double check this with our engineers, but as far as I am aware there is no native feature to resize the UI. This is all handled via the OS's DPI scaling. So, if you had the interface scaling in windows set to higher than 100%, it is likely that the Marmoset Toolbag UI would have appeared larger as well.

So my guess would be that you changed your Windows UI scaling settings at some point.

If you go to Contrl Panel - Appearance and Personalization -> Display, you should see options to set the UI to 100%, 125% and 150%, I would try changing those values and seeing if that helps. Note: these settings may be different in Windows 8/8.1.

Edit: I just double checked this myself and it appears Windows UI scaling does not affect TB2's UI size (only the top bar size) in Windows 7. Though if you have Win 8 I would be curious to know if you come to the same conclusion.

Edit2: I talked to our engineers and it does appear that there is no native feature in TB2 to resize the UI. So if you had a large UI at some point that would have technically been a bug, and we would be very curious to know if you can reproduce it the exact steps for doing so.

Thanks!

RobertH

Hi EarthQuake, thanks for your reply. I have windows 8.1 with a 32" monitor with a 2560x1440 resolution. This makes most program UI's very small. Luckily 95% of my apps pay attention to the windows scaling factor, which I have set to 150%. The few that don't have a built-in UI sizing capability, so they also work fine. On of the few exceptions that doesn't is Photoshop CS6, for it's main UI, although the menu system and some dialogues do. This makes it difficult to use but since I know it so well, because I've been using it for a decade or more it is not too bad.

I'm fairly sure that is what happened with TB2, thanks to your clues, that initially it was paying attention to the windows scaling factor. Then either it was not fully aware and "failed" using it, or some key combination I used turned it off. If it "failed" maybe it was just a fluke that it worked to begin with.

In any event would it be possible to have your programers implement it to pay attention to the windows scaling factor? I'm sure going forward as the cost of monitors goes down while the resolution goes up, this will be a useful feature for TB2 as more users migrate to larger monitors. Thanks so much for your consideration!

One other quick question, what programs would you recommend for build materials for TB2?

Thanks again for your help.

RobertH

OK - It is possible to change the UI to display it with larger fonts on a big monitor, here's how. Exit the app. Right click on the TB2 icon and select properties, select the "Compatibility" tab, then uncheck "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings", click OK or Apply. Relaunch TB2, it is now displayed using the initial large fonts that I saw when I first got the program. The downside is the display is not as sharp since we are working in a lower DPI setting, which is kind of a drag for a rendering app, but at least the UI is readable.

There must be some key combination when working within the app that toggles this value off. I've tried hard to reproduce it with no success. Even finding the right keys might not change the UI until it is toggled on and off using the spacebar, but that's just a guess on my part.

In any event it would be great if the developers made TB2 work on high DPI displays, without having tiny fonts.


Here is a link describing the problem that some programs have with high DPI displays if they are not specifically designed to run on them:

http://www.kynosarges.org/WindowsDpi.html


Here is a MS link for creating high DPI apps:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464646%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

EarthQuake

Thank you for the detailed instructions on how to reproduce the issue. I will pass this information onto our engineers to see if there is so way we can improve UI visibility in the future.

Thanks again