Multiple feature requests - ongoing thread

[Slipgatecentral]

Hi! Absolutely love Nomad, coming from 20+ years of Zbrush

I have lots of suggestions, want to keep it in one thread if that’s ok, I’ll keep adding here once I find something worth mentioning.

-Some extra Gizmo options needed

My biggest issue with current gizmo tool is how tiny the translation circle is, the one in the middle. I use camera-plane translate more often than arrows/axis planes, and sometimes it’s hard to hit this circle because axis manipulators are in the way
Suggestions:
-Remove the inner part of axis arrows so there’s a void space around translation circle.
-Swap scale with translate - I often found myself trying to move object by pulling on outer circle, kinda intuitive move.
-Give a hotkey bind for move, where I can hold it and move pencil above the screen, moving the object in camera plane. Same can be done for 3-way rotate and uniform scale - optional hotkeys.

-need custom hotkeys for custom brushes

currently there’s no way to assign a hotkey to custom brush. Though I like how tidy keybind menu is. Maybe have a separate sub-tab for custom brushes hotkeys?

-brushes settings defaults everytime program resets

This is very annoying, I mod my default brushes heavily, every time Nomad resets in memory I gotta go through all the hotkeyed brushes

-AO masking, cavity masking, height

In addition to brilliant PBR polypainting, this would be very nice for texturing

-Adjust polypaint

Basic operations like levels, curves to all 3 channels

-Render roughness and metallic polypaing channels

Tbh would be cool to have all available channels exposed for rendering, I can only do normalmap now, through matcap.

-Render depth

Depth and maybe a simple fog based on that depth

-Layers color blending modes

Dunno if that even possible, but that’d be a game changer. At least basic ones: add, multiply, overlay

-Layer eraser needs intensity control, like morph brush in Z

Using layers as morph target most of the times, so having a soft blend/eraser brush is critical.

-Support fot Flipbook alphas like in Marmoset

8x2 arrays of different looking alpha stamps, this makes great organic brushes.

-gradient for lasso selection tools - for highpoly meshes w/o multires

In Z, you can zoom out and use lasso selection to select, say, a dense dynamesh model and get a nice soft gradient mask transition. Blurring it normal way would not work because of mesh density (no multires). So maybe have some kind of modifier to lasso select tool that blurs the border how we want it?

-Bend Curve

I havent used curve array yet, but Bend Curve is different - can be applied quickly to any horisontal or vertical object to bend it with few bezier points. Very powerful and I miss this tool a lot.

Hotkey to frame an object, I couldnt find a bind for it.

[knacki]

So many stuff! I wonder if you know or tested some functions which could help immediately?

First: Are you on 1.78 already? You’ll love it!!

1. Gizmo -. tap on Gizmo icon on top first from right.
   There you can adjust thickness and widget size and switch to compact version.
   You should be fine with it, as I never hear someone else complaining about center dot size. A slightly camera rot and you are done. If you want to move precisely, you’ll use arrows and squares anyway.
   BUT!
   I highly recommand to check most overseen transform function.
   The white icon which looks like a coffe bean.
   It has all restriction options on the left.
   One finger to rotate, two fingers to move. easy and comfortable!

But there are a bunch of super useful stuff to let you even move an object on surface normal of another object via snap and so on and so on. Check it out carefully. You need sme seconds to get used to it, but while I am reading your request, you’ll never look back.

2. Custom hotkeys…no comment

3.Brushes - long press on your brush icon and a menu will open.
Here you can save, clone, last save, reset or even define your own icon. Made my own icon set this night. You can find it in my “Sculpted Joy” thread.

4. AO Masking - I requested that as well.
   With 1.78 there is depth filtering for each brush in menu. Which is a blast. Not exactly cavity masking, but a big step.
   But there are tiny issues I’ve read. Check discord discussion

5. Adjust poly paint. I agree it would be lovely to have Post Processing for sculpt only, not for background.
   Post processing offers all you listed. But it is no big deal to compose in 2D app.

6. Render Depth go to interface icon, second most right icon. Now check Debug. Go to render section and check height map. You can render this as second pic and compose it in any good 2D app to achieve your fog effect. Not a one click solution, but it is there.

7. Layer color blending, I guess this is a bit difficult and my best guess is again to use passes and go to a decent 2D picture app, which has all of it and much more. But do you know the layer menu hidden behindthree points on right? There you can seperate color, roughness, metallness, create masks from layer etc. etc. It became such a monster in functionality, you will need days to explore and master all of them.

8. Layer eraser - it has all options a regular brush has as well. Now even with depth filtering. You can do a bunch of different ones fitting all your needs I guess.

9. Flipbook alphas - I love this! Fun and effective

10. Gradient masking is really a culprit in nomad workflow. I still like transformation line in zBrush for this as well.

Blurring a mask on a high density mesh is kind of pain as well. I don’t know the lasso gradient in zBrush, not using it enough anymore. I could imagine a lasso gradient to work like this:

To gradient mask a hand, start at the wrist, the tool will check the motion vectors of your lasso stroke. The part which is most away from starting point is mask = 0, starting point is 100%, direction angle is estimated from connection line between starting point and far most point? That would be cool.
Farther more a simple mask line, but with gradient function.
Pen and finger are not working well together on Android. Otherwise I would say:
Drag line with pencil, hold, drag with finger to define length of gradient.

11. Bend is really missing. There are workarounds but no convincing ones. Soon we come back to gradient masking again. But Gizmo options has tangent roll threshhold set to 20° by default. Worth to play with it.

[Holger_Schoenischka]

I wish:
A quick menu like in Procreate with freely assignable slots for all tools and functions.
Subfolder for the brush tools.
Movable resources, so that you can sort the images / alphas - drag drop - like the brush tools.
For the insert tool, access to your own objects … like an special insert object library. (Not via add to scene).
and much more.

[Genko3D]

Yes, a Procreate-like quick menu with assignable functions would be a blast!

[Bonaparte333]

I would LOVE an on screen slider ( or a gesture?) to be able to go up and down the different multiresolution levels and not have to have an open menu to do it.

[mestela]

I stumbled across this, would be great to be able to customise it:

[knacki]

Oh yes! Activated it accidentally. Searched quite a while till I found a way to switch it off.

This is quite sticky and the smaller your device, the more it is annoying. Quick menu would be less screenspace filling.

Infinite Painter has another option for quick access. You can just drag & drop each icon as a second row menu for quick access.
But this would need an icon for every task and those should be smaller. I like it in infinite painter but would be a bit tricky for Nomad.

Anyway - Procreates Quick menu is not a nice reference in my opinion. This could be done much better.

[Genko3D]

Procreates menu is far from best as its pretty basic, but even a simple menu would be a huge time saver.

Here is how quick menu in mubox looks like:

[ray]

Could make sense to merge the menu discussion into this thread UX/UI Concept - #4 by cgenteprimero

Radial menus are a design challenge, most I’ve used over the years had one flaw or the other, for example forcing the user to pause at some point during the gesture, having a structure that’s too deep, or having mixed-in normal drop down menus.

I think Nomad lends itself to try something new, some crazy new UI concept that’s never been done before no idea yet what though

[dhante]

+1 for a quick customizable menu (not necessarily radial) to access the most used action/brushes.