Core UI Modo
polycounter lvl 6
Hello,
Spent a lot of time creating a layout for modo 10 that cuts down on wasted viewport space and searching for tools. The tools are always available on the top tool bar and you can customise further by adding or removing what you need or don’t need. You can also assign a Hot Key to any tool bar.
To install just drop Core_UI into your kits folder and restart modo.
Step One: Backup your main modo config file (MODO10.1.CFG)
Step Two: Create a new layout and name it
Step Three: On the top right of this viewport use the arrow head and find CoreMAINLA
You will have 5 viewports and a constant tool bar:
Will post a video next week covering the basics. There is a shuttering effect in the viewport when the uv tools are open, too many draw calls ! Unavoidable.
At the top right I have added a Custom form so you can add all your plugin/form icons.
With everything new it will take you a week to adjust to this, I will never go back to modos standard UI.
Use the K key to see the tool properties and make sure to use the pin function on the pop up, every time you use a tool it will be visible. With snapping on you will see where it is.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=02829327642772091927
Let me know if you have any issues.
Cheers
Spent a lot of time creating a layout for modo 10 that cuts down on wasted viewport space and searching for tools. The tools are always available on the top tool bar and you can customise further by adding or removing what you need or don’t need. You can also assign a Hot Key to any tool bar.
To install just drop Core_UI into your kits folder and restart modo.
Step One: Backup your main modo config file (MODO10.1.CFG)
Step Two: Create a new layout and name it
Step Three: On the top right of this viewport use the arrow head and find CoreMAINLA
You will have 5 viewports and a constant tool bar:
Will post a video next week covering the basics. There is a shuttering effect in the viewport when the uv tools are open, too many draw calls ! Unavoidable.
At the top right I have added a Custom form so you can add all your plugin/form icons.
With everything new it will take you a week to adjust to this, I will never go back to modos standard UI.
Use the K key to see the tool properties and make sure to use the pin function on the pop up, every time you use a tool it will be visible. With snapping on you will see where it is.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=02829327642772091927
Let me know if you have any issues.
Cheers
Replies
Fixes the missing icons and Tool Tips !
This update adds a few enhancements and fixes !
In use video:
Speaking of the toolbar, you did a really good job with the icons, the UV pallet ones especially, they're very logical/intuitive; I didn't often have to check the tooltips as it was already obvious what they did (compass = orient etc). On the other hand, the regular text desciptions (unwrap / relax or whatever) are just as functional, though perhaps not in terms of taget size (square icon vs long thin box). Minor detail though imo. While I'm not 100% sold on icons over text buttons, I would definitely prefer a constant toolbar on the left hand pane; floating windows are just weird to me.
Can't comment much on the baking stuff as I don't bake in modo but the UV Bake Export layout seemed very handy and well layed out, particularly having the VNTK as a permanent part of the window.
The foremost reason I would be reluctant to adapt to a custom UI like this (apart from already being used to the default) is that every time modo updates I'd have to worry about something breaking or some new tool not being present... if this were something I knew how to maintain myself it would be less of a problem, but that might be too much effort to go to every time something changes.
I only watched about 20 minutes of that video, and I must admit I am somewhat confused by it. Firstly, that "BA" script - what's the benefit of manually entering bevel values one-by-one? You just end up, as in your video, having undo the bevel multiple times and guess at what value is large enough, when you could simply use the interactive tool, where you can click and drag, see changes in the viewport, left+right arrow keys for increase/decrease level (a behaviour shared across multiple tools). Secondly, bevelling edges to make a highpoly? Bleh. You also mention manually removing edges (bevelled edges at that) from that highpoly to create the lowpoly. Sounds awful; why not just keep a non-bevelled copy? Also that cut/paste thing to fix the bad shading; why would you ever do that... even more so, why would you have a macro to copy/paste it into a new item layer, which you then go back and delete anyway, instead of cutting/pasting in place. No need to reinvent ctrl+x/v. Anyway all you're doing is creating hard edges by splitting those borders (which will be merged next time you run a mesh cleanup anyway, unless you untick merge verts). Why not just add proper supporting geometry / use sub-d instead of some hacky mess. Or at the very least if you're set on bevelling, do a square bevel first to define outer bounds, then do select -> sharp, then round bevel; that would at least give acceptable shading, and is a few edge slices away from being of any use once you press the tab key. Sub-d might take a little more time but at least then you'll have a smoother transition at the bevel border; plus you won't be SOL if you need to merge verts down the line. As model complexity increases that method only becomes more and more unreliable; having to manually select every face you need to cut on a complex model... yeah no. Anyway. Ideally modo will just get some amazing plugin/tool that does nice quad bevels and then you can do it all in one step.
Also when doing the uv stuff / getting rid of the dumb default streched cube UV's; do I hear you say "try doing that with the default modo tools" at 19:35? Because if so, I'm not sure what you mean by that. You are using modo's default tools. Project (Atlas), Fit, and scale... the only thing different is you're using custom icons to run those commands. It takes exactly the same time to do so in regular modo; in fact you can do it quicker / in less steps by not deleting the UV's as it's unneccessary; the projection recreates them anyway. I only mention this petty nitpick because it seems like you're saying the new UI makes this amazingly fast compared to default, which isn't true. Otherwise I'm not sure what the point of that demonstration was.
My advice - if you want to advertise this UI, just make a simple 5 minute video explaining the basic changes and why they're advantageous... not many people will watch 50+ min video, especially one that seems to focus more on random workflows than the ui itself. Just tell me why I want it. If you want to go in depth for say, the baking stuff, make it a separate video. Or at the very least; start general and gradually get specific. I'd remove the background music too, just so it's easier to hear what you're saying.
That said, I think what you're doing is very cool and I'd love to see more modo customisation; maybe it's something I'll look into so at least if I use a custom layout I wouldn't be SOL if an update came and broke everything or made them redundant.
Yes my videos do drag on
I can see the Foundry doing an over haul of the UI (they really need to do this) in the future until then core ui might make life a little easier for some users.
PS I think the bevel tool is going to get a major overhaul with the last update this year (October) and about 400 fixes and enhancements to the long standing issues with other tools.
I do have to say though that using your CoreUI for only a few minutes has breathed new life into my workflows. I'm not good at doing all of the customizing, but have had to do my fair share of it - but never could get it to read as concisely as your layout. I've already changed a few things to suit my needs, but your CoreUI has definitely given me the solid base that i've been wanting for years - so THANK YOU for that.
Hopefully I'll be able to give more actual feedback, as I hope that this can continue to be a thing that you keep developing. I'd hate to see people use it and just not comment and you give up developing it. Ha *raises glass to you sir. GG
If one or more can put it to good use then that's whats it's all about
It is another approach to using modo and one needs a while to get used to it, took me about week.
Have fun with it !
cheers
Last update folks: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=51870316449937730359
Cheers
Firstly, i think modelling tools are very hidden. I set shortcuts to mostly used tools for myself but also would want to see others easily by just one click. I think you can use left side of the UI for modelling tools like how softimage does. (IMHO)
Secondly, default vertex edge polygon selection of modo lets you convert between them by using ctrl or shift buttons. In Core UI it doesn't work. I would change mine easily but since it's default modo behaviour, you shouldn't take it out.
Thanks for your time to make create this UI. If it's possible, can you release some update note summary too? Because i customized Core UI 1.1.2 to my needs and not sure if i update it to 1.1.3 and lose my customization too.
also, I've been using CoreUI for a bit more now, and I'd like to have the default modo snapping icon next to the grid tools too, the one where you Alt+click and it will open the popup menu with all the snapping options - just in case I need certain snapping. I've tried adding it myself but wasn't able to :surprised:
another thing that I think you should try and implement is highlighted toggle buttons, for example when the user clicks on "fixed grid" under the grid tools, the button will be highlighted in orange when the option is on, otherwise would be default. it's a bit confusing now.
overall, I really like the UI, getting more and more custom to it :]
I imagine thats probably the sort of thing the area for CustomTool bar was for - I ended up adding Grid and Vert snap to that (along with the other primitives I use in that area) and have replaced where he had the dropdown for primitives with other tools that I use.
Ha, it's funny that the point of this was to customize modo..that the customization after the customization...gets well customized
As a side fact, I personally love having no left bar - and have just made a popover form that stays pinned for my tool settings - thats really the only thing that I saw as lacking in this for me since almost everything else is hotkeys & custom pie menus.
^^Anyway, yeah...use that custom toolbar area!
I'm trying to copy over the default snapping button, but when I copy the form and place it under CoreUI custom toolbar I get that weird tick box without the functionality of the default button whatsoever
From what i've read from foundry forums, repete won't find enough time for Core UI because he took place on a different project. Even though that, Core UI is very good place to start to customize modo.
Thanks again repete. Very appreciated.
The convert between edge, poly and vert has been added in the latest update:
I will update again later with the snapping icon added. As for customising the top tool bars you can add/remove whatever you wish, it means you need to dig in a bit regarding the form editor which imo is not a bad thing.
If you do edit the top tool bars you have to find the right form (CoreTopToolBar1 for instance) and save it over the original in the kit folder but updates will of course remove your customisation.
So the whole idea (as you are now experiencing) is to set it up how you want it, that's why the top tool bars are there but remember the more tools that are visible around the viewport the more jumpy viewport navigation will be. Also you can assign hot keys to any of the tools, I use F1 for the mesh edit tools and you could use shift F1 for the Bool tools for instance.
Will post the link later !!!
Cheers
If I get the chance to come up with something new I will post it first here.