Noob wishlist for T3....

[leaston]

Hi,

Ok, I'm a complete noob with Terragen 3 and the forum, but even after only a couple of hours playing with the interface two features I wish were present have struck me immediately...

1. Panning in the nodes window. Please, please enable this. Navigation in the nodes window is really hard work and I can't figure out why it should be. Something like holding down the middle mouse button to pan around the nodes would be intuitive and far easier. I can't actually figure out how to pan in that window at all other than zooming in and out until I can see the nodes I want and it's incredibly painful to have to do it. Middle mouse wheel scrolling works, so why no panning? I realise I can click on the node titles on the left side, but that zooms right in and I'm trying to get a handle on how each is linked to others. With a lot of boxes and an instant zoom like that, it's hard to get an overview. I know what I mean anyway.

2. Tooltips. I know I can navigate to the docs here or the wiki for documentation. BUT, hovering over a tickbox such as "Defer atmo/cloud" or any of the other cryptic sounding functions and features and seeing even a brief sentence about each would save a massive amount of time going back and forth between the browser and TG. The gui is inconsistent; there are tooltips for the top row icons and yet none I can find for the features down the left side of the main window.

I hope this doesn't come across as me being overly critical. But, from a newcomer's perspective these are just basic gui design features that would make things so much easier, at least for this novice anyway

Flames on a postcard to....

Cheers

[Oshyan]

Hello Leason and welcome! Thanks for the feedback.

Panning in the node network is done by holding down Alt and using the left mouse button. This is documented
here: http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Terragen_3_Network_View_Guide#Navigating_The_Node_Network
(search for "network" in the documentation wiki and it's one of the top results)

Tooltips with documentation are not likely to be added as they are far too difficult to maintain with the rest of the documentation, and often encapsulating useful information in such a small space would be challenging. There is a ? button on every node which goes to its wiki entry, and while it's not as quick, it is still pretty fast and easy. Hopefully that helps.

- Oshyan

[leaston]

That'll teach me to look more closely at the documentation

My bad for not checking properly. I'd tried a few things to pan in the node network, but had clearly missed the Alt key. Likewise with the ? for the wiki link.

Please accept my apologies for jumping the gun and thank you for taking time to reply. I'll be a bit more patient in future

[mhaze]

Don't worry too much, I do it all the time and we're all very patient around here.

[leaston]

Don't worry too much, I do it all the time and we're all very patient around here.

Thanks. It's a good job with me around hehe.

[Lady of the Lake]

Gosh, I am glad to learn about the Alt.  I have been struggling to get around in the node window also.  My life was just made so much easier.   

[Upon Infinity]

Ideally, I think navigating in the node window should be as one-handed as possible.

[gregtee]

I'd agree here as well.  Middle mouse clicking and dragging around is how many other apps work and it's become an intuitive expectation.  The only reason it really doesn't bug me is because alt + left click and drag is also fairly standard too.  Would be nice to have it just a single hand operation none the less.

I think another thing that would help beginners, myself included, would be pre-built networks for some of the math nodes.  Properly assembled they're extremely powerful and do a lot of things that would be difficult or impossible otherwise.  It's only because I went scrounging around on the forum that I managed to find some networks built by others that I was able to plug into my flows and then experiment with that I started to learn the power of them.  I'm still unsure what more I can do with them at this point unless I can see an example that someone else more knowledgeable has already put together. 

[mash]

I've noticed the preview window and the node window don't use the same mouse movements
preview Window:
Pan = Alt+Right mouse
rotate = Alt+Left Mouse
Zoom = Alt-Middle mouse

Node Window:
Pan = Alt+ Left Mouse
Zoom = Alt-Middle mouse

Maybe fixing the pan so it's the same in both windows would clear up some confusion.