Official ProBuilder 5 vs ProBuilder 6

I've been in a similar situation with my tools for MicroVerse. Personally I prefer the less clicks the better. Mine is built on context. Has advantage and disadvantage. Advantage: you see the only options available, ie context sensitive filter. Disadvantage: You need to know which gameobjects to click to know which options exist.

Few comments on the video:

• icons are hard to identify, optional text is always preferred
• detach eg the standard transforms menu from what's available. you are in the PB context, emphasize that, otherwise it's information overflow
• the less clicks the better, I'd prefer a menu that's always open and shows my options

Either way, excellent additions showing the direction

 

yes integrating into a menu from both ends makes it far more confusing

 

I think this is meant:



It's confusing.

 

@Rowlan nailed exactly that, its been merged into another menu but both ends, and so its easy to not realise you need to click on the top one to get the face, node etc selection etc, what if we want the probuilder at the top?/bottom.. frankly anywhere else?

 

Hello!

In no mean sense, I've tried Probuilder 6 for a good few days and I am sad to say I actually hate it

There's a lot that's downgraded in quality of life in the transition between 5 and 6, and it's not old-experience based nor rose-tinted.

The first thing is that instead of having a palette to pick from when creating shapes, we now have to click and drag, this brings multiple problems:

1. Instead of choosing at ease, we have a smaller hit-area on screen to pick probuilder creations.
2. It takes more than a click to pick what we need, the drag also changes in length/coordination depending on which shape we want, we we can't rely on hand-eye coordination until we are already dragging, slowing the process.
3. Any misclick would get you a wrong shape and require going entirely back to the click & drag, or worse, move the context menus so its no longer in the same place, errors punish you more.
   
4. It's impossible to dock "create shape" properly, and there are no reminders of what options are available.
5. Without the create shape details, its far harder to customize the created shape, you could properly and perfectly configure it before you create the shape if you want exact numbers. Now that's far harder to do.

As Rowlan mentioned, I too prefer a menu that's docked in a consistent place that I can always rely on. The removal of that is a reduction in quality of life.

In general, the context menu introduction feels very poor and unreliable, I want to be able to pick my options by reading what they are and knowing where they are, instead of guessing what the icon of the week is and under which menu sleeve its hiding this time.

I'd also like to point out that nowhere does the shape selection menu actually hints you need to drag, that is entirely built on your own tribal knowledge.
Left click doesn't open up the options.
Right click doesn't open up the options.
Middle click doesn't open up the options.
Dragging within the button doesn't open up the options.
There is no animation that pushes to an 'out' side.
There is no animation that hints its a drawer that will open.
There is no tooltip telling you to drag when you hover over it.
The only thing you get is a static corner arrow that you can't click and is not explained.

It even mismatches the instructions on the documentation, though I wager that's because Pro Builder 6.0.1 doesn't have any.
(says what's new in probuilder 5, when we're in fact on 6, and none of the 'creating shape' pages show context menus)

Basically, zero discoverability for the features shown in the video video means extremely poor new user or upgrading user experience. Not convertible from previous probuilder version tutorial videos on the internet either. I watched a friend who never used probuilder before, struggle with this for far longer than they should have.

It's nice to think and believe people can like something, and I hope that's where we'll end up with probuilder, but I don't think that's where we are.

If I had to rank the usability of ProBuilder 5 vs ProBuilder 6,
ProBuilder 5 would get a 8,
ProBuilder 6 would get a 2 at best.

This extends with a few other inconveniences introduced in the shift,
Though given how many times you pointed out bugs in the video I now don't even know whether to critique some things as user quality reduction or straight up unstable versioning.
Is there a reason it's not marked experimental?


As for my own top thoughts and wishes for ProBuilder:

• I want to see text for features, Icons make everything worse instead of better in regards to actually executing actions.
• I want to have the new shape palette docked with its customization options visible again. We have palettes in photoshop etc for increased usability. Imagine the horrors of having a palette be only contextual. (On a side note, its fun to stare at the vertex colors palette, that you can dock...)
  
• Unrelated to the feedback between 5 & 6, having some more options in how the UVs are set up specifically for the rounded objects would be great. e.g. Stair UV aligning to curve.

Thank you for making this thread, and the video! I want to stress that this is feedback for probuilder, nothing aimed directly at the effort shown here

 

Here here, oh and PS bring proper progrids back they are just too useful!

 

It's not just like the old tool - though I can confirm that it appears, it appears at an entirely different corner, instead of right by the selected shape. For how I had my editor when I tried it, the actual shape selection is on the top left of scene view, while the parametric settings are on the bottom right of scene view. As far away as possible. Pretty reduced visibility and extra hassle to change anything before use. (Would it be problematic to still show the full tool palette on the Shape Settings interactive tool?)

I've taken the time to do a sanity check, here's the ProBuilder 5.0.7 on 2023.1.3f1
You can see the palette + shape creation details all stay until I stop placing new shapes, so unless that's a bug you definitely had a consistent setup before?

The toolbar is docked to the left and is always there, with most of the options visible to me regarding probuilder is what I meant. I can't find any way to make it show up in ProBuilder 6, though I did listen you saying you're working on the vertex colors in the video so I assume you're working on that as a whole. I do still prefer written text options. (Tiny icons at 4k 27inch resolution monitors don't do much to help)

It was clear in terms of 'more options, but no normal action worked. I checked for sanity, and in those other apps, even going as far as pre-2020's photoshop, right click does open all your options. Probuilder 6's (or I guess, Unity's new toolbars as a whole?) do not.

On that note, Photoshop also lets you choose which tools are stacked under the same menu button, so you can extract all the tools you like out to always be visible.

Paint.NET also treats them as dropdowns that open up their options on a left click.

It seems Blender is the tool that matches the "hold left button to see options"? It also lets you display button names - and to resize the area available (to increase button size), I hope you will adopt that!

I also want to point out that consistency with the dropdown arrow like other existing tools deserves improvements too, they open by left click on the arrow, which is an event smaller hitbox, and don't open on a drag, and don't have highlights separate from the primary button that doesn't expand the menu.... lots of user-hints problems. The problem comes with them all being small arrows and you'd think they have similar use at first, though 1 is admittedly on a corner and aligned diagonally as opposed to cradinally downwards and higher up. Hard to tell at quick glance.

As a note, I've tried making a ProBuilder 6 equivalent of the ProBuilder 5 video to show the differences, but bumped into various usability bugs. for example, I can't create non-unit-sized objects, holding 'ctrl' lets me pick the spawn precisely (as opposed to precise being the default, which - snapped is fine) but I can't place precise shaped objects at all unless explicitly specified through the bottom right interactive menu ahead of time. Is this an enforcement or a bug? Also numerous undo problems that keep the objects in the scene (extremely convoluted example)

 

Yeah I hate to pile on, but the truth is even on a personal level I had to square the fact that as a programmer creating tools with the overlay system is cleaner, more elegant and gives you a wealth of free features by being in the ecosystem... but when I take my dev hat off and use my own little tools... I hate them. I can't find them, I don't remember the icons I picked and generally am used to contextual blindness of the sea of small toolbars.

The beauty of usability design is it isn't a mystery. You show it to people and watch, and universally people who have years of probuilder experience, years of unity experience and who have programmed their own tools using that system and know how it works... don't like it. That should indicate that if there is that much friction for the well informed, you are likely to see a lot more friction from the uninitiated.

The truth is, context based menus sounds great, in practice what it means is your ui is shifting sand with no landmarks.

Probuilder is a powerful tool and the way most of us learned it was by quite frankly...staring at the screen. You click a thing and look at the words available. The colors was an elegant ui decision because it let us see all things that can be done... but highlights the ones that are relevant in this context. letting you know that if you want to do something... you might be in the wrong context. now, unless you know both the thing you want to do, and the context you must be in to do it, you can't even search your options because you have to _already_ be in the right context to even see whats available!

Not to mention, while power users will be thinking in terms of hot swapping modes, most people don't. Good design is driven by usecase. you may think that "edge tools should show up when I am in edge mode". That _sounds_ right.
In practice people think in terms of I am in "box blockout mode" or "window making mode" and as a result, they want a disparate set of available tools and options tied to solutions to problems not venn diagram of availability.

I 100% understand that on paper consistent design should be easier. In practice though the optimal design is NOT the optimal design. Any book on user experience design will tell you, the right design is the "rule of expectation". It is sometimes "don't make me think" or "rule of least surprise" but there are seas of studies showing how a sub-optimal design that people get, is better than an optimal design that people dont.

Not to mention the fact that people historically don't actually use menus. Weird sentence right? Well a long time ago microsoft did a study where they turned off the default auto save for Word for some of their new users as a ux experiment. It was still there. in settings, auto save. But as you can imagine they got a sea of bug reports because
expectation is king.

Now, I 100% understand the reaction that you must be thinking "they just don't like change". I can see how this looks alarmist, but the fact is I won't use Unity6... because of this. I actively hate it. Now, having watched your video I am willing to give it a try again and see if with more esoteric runic knowledge it is more intuitive but I am willing to bet it wont be. Why? because I always worked with labels. So already its missing the way I used to navigate.

At an absolute minimum. the idea that a single small movable icon in stack of similar icons, changing to a different small icon indicating an entire mode switch for all contextual actions ... vs a static bar, with a static set of states, with one visibly being selected.... surely you can see the informational difference there. The ability to glance and verify you are in the right mode. That singular thing is the canary in the coalmine.

Second to that is the whole "I learn by exploring" concept. you now have a scenario where someone could follow a tutorial, do the same steps as the person they are watching... and get entirely different menus... because one icon, somewhere on screen is slightly different.

This is not just aversion to change. It is an earnest application of gestalt theory of design. When google changed all their android icons to be "consistent" it was nice for them... but screwed over everyone with glancing reflexes as the different icons, who now have no landmarks to parse at the sea of nearly identical icons in their product line.

Homogeneity and holistic system design always sounds good. In practice, its usually just good for the designers, not for the users. Please try roleplaying as someone with no experience and empathize with the idea of solving problems using only the information available and provided to you by the ui. It's easy as programmers and power users to see the world through a set of features. Users don't see the world that way. they are walking in foreign woods desperately looking for signposts and help. Our old english list of directions is now a floating, moving collection of hieroglyphics that change position and shape depending on other symbols.

 

To clarify, in PB5 the shapes palette is right there with the tools, so once you turn on the object placement, you dont need to hang around the top left side anymore at all (in PB6's equivalent)

I've tried moving the interactive panel to right near the mode selection, and I can confirm it works better, though it is a bit clunky to read with the words overlaying the placement menu, so thank you for that idea. I am concerned that it means every context menu will be there but it is conceptually better that they're in a single place, so I'll take it!
(show of clunk text dropdown overlaying the rest of the menu without much contrast, if it matters at all. Some shadow might help?)

The video above also confirms that, yes, it was the grid snapping going weird on me. the ctrl key still allowed proper starting placement for probuilder, but not proper sizing, which is odd. May want to look into that as a bug?

Unrelated, but didn't know grid snapping would interact with probuilder at all, I'm going to assume the inconsistently with ctrl is the bug, but its overall a good adjustment. Is scene view grid snapping something we can poll from user code and adjust against accordingly? for overlay tooling.

In PB6, there is no option to put this whole menu, and everything is shoved into right click plus context hover, which takes more time. (As a side note, right click context menu also moves to align itself with position in screen, so its unreliable whether it will appear far or near the mouse e.g. this image)

In PB5, you have this menu. I can't find a way to make it show up in PB6.

P.S. What is the purpose of this unclickable mesh filter icon? hovering over it just says "tools" which is the general panel's name...

I understand the push, but disagree with the speed statement - there's costs that make it slower when you're in level-design trenches.
Discoverability is lower, so you'll not be using the best tools every time due to sheer nature of not keeping them all in your mind and not having an easy reminder.
Some actions need to be repeated multiple times, its not just the extra click but the extra mouse movement. For example, mesh subdivision has to repeat the click and movement for every division.
In some ironic conjecture, I'm afraid of a future where the right click becomes massive if most tools decide to add context menus instead of toolbars. At least it luckily shows up at the bottom of the list, for better or worse (lots of mouse movement).

Thanks, hopefully this gets better.

Okay, that's on me, you said material and UV editors, and my brain auto-filled for vertex color instead. I'd like to apologize for that. (That said, am happy if vertex colors window stays as is)

Will attempt and submit one and give you the issue number, though does sending a minimal test case project really help here?
Here's a direct display with Unity 6000.0.0b13, ProBuilder 6.0.1-pre2, I open the project, create some cubes, and undo (ctrl+z) them all. Vertex colors get undone properly, placement doesn't get undone, instead the cubes teleport to a new place.


Also - Thank you for the thorough commenting! That helps a lot more than the video in seeing your rationale. I can't say I'm fully aligned with how things are, but I'll watch for bug fixes and re-evaluate probuilder's viability.

 

The menus have moved around, i dont think there are any actual options missing, they are just not where we look for them
https://forum.unity.com/threads/probuilder-window-missing-in-unity-6.1577161/

 

Finding reasons doesn't justify it always There's no point in having the transform modification icons constantly visible. I have no information what others do, but I never ever clicked those buttons. I always use the keyboard shortcuts. For information reasons, they may make sense there, but realistically they are just a waste of screen space.

I've been using eg the spline tools for quite some time now. And I still don't see the point why the spline button is on top while the rest of the spline tools is at the bottom.

You may as well make the transform buttons a horiziontal toolbar, detached from the rest.

 

What with Boolean operation on mesh?