08-11-2022 - Open UX UI Office hours (Add your request in comments)

[yuyihsu]

SIG-UI-UX Office Hours for 08-11-2022

Hi O3DE Community, We want to invite you to our UX UI design review and office hours.

• Date/Time: 08-11-2022 @ 9am PT
• Location: Discord SIG-UI-UX Voice Room
• Moderator: UI/UX SIG Committee
• Note Taker UI/UX SIG Committee

The SIG-UI-UX Meetings repo contains the history past calls, including a link to the agenda, recording, notes, and resources.

To sign up the Office Hours.
Please add a comment to this ticket with following information:

• Discord username:
• Topic of conversation:
• How much time you might need:
• Any UX resource you have already been working with and if their attendance is required.

This is a bi-weekly meeting will cover the following items.

• UI-UX SIG team will show some of the O3DE workflows that are currently in-progress.
• UI-UX SIG will provide feedback to other UX designers about their O3DE designs.
• UI-UX SIG will provide feedback to the community about O3DE work they are working on.
• Will have open conversations about UX/UI related problems coming down the pipeline.
• Discuss UX tickets

Schedule

• The Sig UX-UI meeting (Triage and UX updates) will be on every Thursday at 9am PST
• The design review/Office hours will be on the opposite weeks.
• This means every Wednesday we have something fun for UX going on.

How do I sign up get feedback?

• You can sign up by going to https://github.com/o3de/sig-ui-ux/issues
• Find the specific event you are interested in attending and getting feedback on.
  • In the comment section of that ticket place the details you would like to talk about.
  • Please include your name and/or Discord Name
  • The area of topic you would like to cover
  • The amount of time you might need to review this topic
  • Any individuals you have been already working
  • Any specific people you would like to attend this session for help.

How can I use office hours:

• Request a "sign-off" on your project from the UI-UX SIG.
• Usability/UX review of your designs/mock-ups.
• Discuss certain customer pain points or UX related topics.
• Brainstorm ideas or solutions to a user problem or feature.
• Submit user research or UX design requests. What should I bring to the office hour:
• Nothing is required but the following items would be helpful
  • A brief project overview or documentation, This should include the following
  • A simple user problem statement. As a user I want to solve this problem...
  • Who is your audience? Who are the users/user groups affected by the change?
  • What is your vision behind this change or update?
  • What is your UX issue related to: user interface, usability testing, learnability, documentation etc?
  • Materials/Workflows of the existing product. Sketches or wire-frames of ideas. PR/FAQ are also help.

Cut-off time / cancellation

• The UI-UX SIG Office Hours is sign-up based. We will check the topics 24 hours before the scheduled office hour, if no one signs up in the session, we will lock down the agenda of that day.
• If you are unable to attend after signing up, Please just reach out in discord or on the ticket to let us know about the change.

[mbalfour-amzn]

I'd like to (roughly) demonstrate and discuss our intent for a gradient-painting workflow for use with terrain and vegetation and get UX feedback / suggestions.

[rainbj]

@mbalfour-amzn thanks again for presenting the new workflow today. Amazing stuff! Can't wait to play with it. @amzn-leenguy I heard you say you took some notes. If you have any for Mike, please post them here. Thanks!

[amzn-leenguy]

Paint brush:

Short cut suggestions:

• [ ] can be used size up and size down brush size
• UX suggests 1-9+0 could be used for opacity? Although does this conflicts with 1-3 viewport ui shortcuts? No it doesn’t. Painting mode has no transform rotate scale.
• , . can used to toggle between soft brush or hard brush? (reference photoshop)
• can we do on viewport UI file menus? Like a slider in the viewport with right click (like photoshop) UX suggestion. (Maybe stretch goal?) Work with Lee on this.

In 3d painting mode, there are 3 modes that we need to be aware of:

• Push, pull and blend
• Mike mentions that this isn’t like a 3d tool - this is not push and pull. Since we are painting a 2d plane.

There will be no other viewport ui controls in the painting mode. So we should consider adding some viewport UI clusters so users know they can edit those properties directly in the viewport. E.g. increase brush size, decrease brush size, set opacity.

Lee’s suggestion: Mini map idea inside the viewport to show.

Josh is concerned that adding more viewport elements, we need to be sure that users can toggle it away.

Question 2 - modifying gradients and drawing via layers:

• Post FX also has different layering. Which they may be making a layering tool. This may solve this problem.

• We don’t want two tools to solve the same case.

• Mike B should have a offline conversation to ensure we don’t double up.

• We want these tools aligned.

• we should replicate patterns to the other tools.

• override paint layer wouldn’t be there.

• ordering can be discussed with UX.

• Could Mike write out the parameters that should be there and not?

• Josh suggestion: Let’s leave it as it is. No need to change the way we edit image gradients.

Questions:

• What Paradigms are we using to save in and out of modes?

[amzn-leenguy]

@mbalfour-amzn here are the notes. A copy of these notes are also sent to you on discord too!

[mbalfour-amzn]

Here's my notes combined with yours.

Paintbrush functionality:

• Keyboard shortcuts would be nice for controlling the paintbrush
  • [] can be used to change the brush size up and down
  • ., could toggle between soft brush / hard brush? (reference photoshop)
  • 0-9 could be used for opacity?
    • Conflicts with the 1-3 viewport UI shortcuts potentially. Doesn't right now because no transform/rotate/scale while painting.
    • Might want to reserve numbers for changing sub-modes though
• Can we do in-viewport UI menus?
  • There will be no other viewport ui controls in the painting mode. So we should consider adding some viewport UI clusters so users know they can edit those properties directly in the viewport.
  • Have radius / intensity / opacity icons going vertically, with sliders that come out from them?
  • Or maybe a slider in the viewport with right-click (like photoshop)
  • Work with Lee on this
• Should we put the image preview in-viewport?
  • It would be like a mini-map in a game
  • Josh is concerned about adding more viewport elements, it should have a way to be toggled on/off
  • Mike is concerned about usefulness, since the image itself isn't as important as the in-viewport effects of the painting
• 3D painting typically has push / pull / blend
  • It's not a 3D tool, so no concept of push/pull.
  • "blend" or "soften" might still make sense though.
• Will we ever need to use painting for colors, or materials?
  • Seems extremely likely. Might even need it for painting into multi-channel gradients now.

Paintbrush layers:

• Do we need to worry about painting into layers?
  • Post FX system also needs layering, and a layering tool. Should share tool if needed.
  • For gradients, right now there's no concept of layers, so Mike doesn't think this is applicable.

Paintbrush tool access:

• Should this be through the Image Gradient component, a new Gradient Painter component, or a separate Paint Tool?
  • For now, put it on the Image Gradient for simplicity.
  • Discuss parameters and ordering with Josh

Open questions:

• When do we save any changes to the image?
• How do we create new images?

Follow-ups:

• (Mike / Lee / Danilo) Discuss hotkey mappings
• (Mike / Josh) Discuss Image Gradient parameters and ordering
• (Mike / DTs) Get DT feedback on paintbrush and workflow