on Android the S-Pen blocks finger input if the pen hoover close to the screen.
Hence, if you want to use any of the quick left buttons or change the intensity with your fingers, you have to lift the pen about one cm. I know its due to samsung, but its annoying.
This hinders me a lot in my work flow.
However, changing the intensity I see easily because the cursor size changes if the finger input got registered. However, for all the other quick buttons such kind of visual feedback is kind of missing. My thumb blocks the changed icon color. Hence, I do not realice if the finger action was performed or not.
Can you some how improve that?
I would consider visual / audio feedback - e.g. a changed color of the cursor, or maybe a larger “pressed button effect”, at least bigger than my thumb. Maybe a growing circle when a finger press of one of the quick button is registers, maybe it even keeps pulsing as long it is pressed?
Especially for the mask button + one / two finger gesture this would be helpful.
I’ll add a small visual clue (one character, */s/m) at the top right corner of the screen, I don’t want to spend too much time on it so I’ll settle with the easiest solution that is not invasive.
Note that for Smooth and Mask, there is already visual clues since the tool is actually changing (icon on the top bar, icon change on toolbox and typically radius value).
For the alt/sub shortcut it’s more of an issue indeed.
Well, I understand that’s on a low priority for you as it’s a minor issue. But a visual hint outside the user’s focusing point would be not so helpful. Rethinking that the “pulsing icon” is really not that helpful…
However, I think changing the cursor color if one of the modifier icon (e.g. mask) is pressed would be the most intuitive and consistent way of implementing. The same if the modification is induced via shortcut or S-Pen button pressed . It’s more a feature like indicating mask/sub mode is selected or not (like the cursor turns green when pressing the f key to change the brush size).
Well, beside not being intrusive, it at least would help all android users alot! A very quick response, everyone realizes instantly as soon s.th. essential is changed, or not.
Even all new (iPad) users would benefit getting used to the UI, as (strictly speaking) masking as well as negation (add vs sub) have nothing to do with drawing with a different brush (changing geometry differently).
Emphasis on consistence in UI-design is key to potentially act intuitively ! That I still remember from my studies…
And it shouldn’t be so difficult to implement. It’s just a different color for an object dependent on the action selected. He knows how to do it as seen for the brush-size resize shortcut.
Only improves my hope he will implement it. The benefits would be enormous against the suggested (more or less) never recognized “token out of eye focus” while in the battle with the UI…
It’s more or less what’s happening in blender (bottom navigation bar is the only indicator when using ctrl/shift/alt).
Usually you don’t want to overload the canvas with superfluous information.
Color change makes sense but there are 2 things you are missing out.
alt (sub) is not exclusive with mask and smooth, so one color won’t do, alt could change the color brightness but it will be less noticeable
there is already two colors depending on if the cursor is on the mesh (red) or on the background (orange)
The second point might be less important though.
Update: so I tried to darken the color when using alt mode and it works fine. I took the same color as zbrush for mask/smooth (yellow/blue).
yes, I still hate Blender for this. But to be fair: you have a quite reliable button feedback and can map all actions to different buttons if you struggle in your work flow. That we miss in the Android univers (not limited to your project, of course).
Nevertheless: thanks for including the cursor “recolor”. So even in screen recordings (-> tutorials) newbies will realice that a destinct action is performed. I still remeber my days I was peaking on the recorded blender status bar, if a youtuber missed to include overlayed keypress-recording.
So even the one caracter visual clue is obsolete.
. It’s more a feature like indicating mask/sub mode is selected or not (like the cursor turns green when pressing the f key to change the brush size).
I don’t think it would be intrusive at all.
! That I still remember from my studies… 