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Feedback Update inspector UI & UX

Discussion in 'Cinemachine' started by MechaWolf99, Nov 19, 2021.

  1. MechaWolf99

    MechaWolf99

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2017
    Posts:
    294
    Hello, I was looking in to updating the UI and UX of the Cinemachine editors.

    As I was doing that I was thinking of updating them to use UIToolkit as from my understanding as an outside user, Unity whishes to move most/all of the editor UI to UITK eventually. However because of the way the editors were designed this is not very feasible while still making sure that other user's custom Cinemachine editors look the same.

    So here are my questions:
    • Would a PR with the UX/UI changes be something you would consider accepting?
    • Would you want/accept a PR replacing the current IMGUI editors with UITK editors?
    Some additional thoughts about UITK editors. There are a few options when doing this.

    IMGUI editors could stay untouched, and create new UITK editors. This way users with custom editors would still have them work as before, and the new editors could have a nicer and cleaner structure. The downside is that A, there are now two sets of editor files, and B either both need to be maintained, or IMGUI marked as obsolete and no longer updated.

    Another option is to update the current editors to be UITK, leaving in all of the 'built-in' IMGUI methods as is, but making them empty and calling the OnInspectorGUI inside of a IMGUIContainer. (At least I think this would work) The downside to this is that if the user has some elements that they are currently hiding in the editor, they would show up. However their editor would still be fully functional.

    About the actual UI and UX changes.
    Here is a work in progress mock-up of what I would possibly do for changes. It has clearer headers for each section similar to the new inspector for materials, and post-processing volumes. So it should feel familiar to artists who work with those as well.
    The "Follow" and "Look At" are both within the section that they are relevant to, and there is more spacing between sections of properties.
    It is still work in progress, so there are a few things missing and I am still working out some UX problems, also not sure about the mini headers. But it is close enough to show and see if it is going in a direction you like or not.

    (Mockup done in the UI Builder, to view as if it were in the inspector)

    Please let me know what you think of both the IMGUI vs UITK thing and of the editor design. And just to be clear, I am not asking for you to do these changes, I am offering to do them and make a PR.
     
  2. marc_tanenbaum

    marc_tanenbaum

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2014
    Posts:
    637
    @MechaWolf99 ... this is a very generous offer. Could you please direct message me and we'll discuss? Obviously adoption of UI Toolkit is something we want to do, but there are a few gotchas that would need to be considered. The team are interested in this, but we want to ensure we don't waste your time.
     
    Gregoryl, awesomedata and MechaWolf99 like this.