2.6 "General Settings" and "Visual Settings" dialogues

    A few notes on the settings and layout of the new dialogues...


    - Good that they are split; general program settings in one dialogue and settings that are relevant to individual 'scenes' in another. I think perhaps it should have been a step bolder and split into three rather than two: program settings that are generally set once on install (saved on machine), job settings that are set once per project (saved within the native file) and scene settings (saved with reference to scenes within the native file - not necessarily within it.)


    - It would be really helpful if the dialogues had program specific focus rather than system focus (They are 'always on top' of everything, including other Enscape dialogues). It would be much more helpful of the material window did this and the settings didn't. Same with the 'scene name' popup - it always seems to hide under the settings window. It would also be nice to be able to re-size the windows, and/or have the Visual one re-size to match it's content.


    - Both dialogues have different styles - tab layout on Visual and bookmark layout on General. These would give a better, more polished aesthetic if they were the same. Stylistically it would also be nice if the 'grouped' settings within the Visual settings could roll up/down so that users could custom which of their own 'active' settings were visible. With reference to aesthetics, most/all of the sliders would benefit from having a visual icon that changes with the slider. And when sliders are disabled, the relevant label and text fields should also be disabled (again, for aesthetics.)


    - I think that the most used and/or the most changed settings from scene to scene should be on the first tab: I don't know about other users, but while the first thing I might adjust would be the image and atmosphere settings, the settings I'm in and out of most are the camera ones. Perhaps if the dialogue remembered it's state when closed it wouldn't matter as much.


    - The Rendering|Quality settings are to do with the Enscape window/ VR experience rather than the output render quality - Perhaps the 'capture' and 'quality' settings should swap dialogues?


    - The Illumination settings I would suggest be moved from the Atmosphere tab to the Image tab: these are settings that would be tweaked along side the ones here.


    - Enscape has the ability to change/set the time per scene; It would be nice to have access to this from the Atmosphere tab of settings rather than rolling the mouse with the <shift> key.


    - The settings within Visual | Atmosphere should be grouped/toggled so that functions which are skybox relevant only show with skybox and those relevant to a preset horizon only show when this is selected. Perhaps have the top option of the horizon be an option for "Custom skybox..." that would change all the settings below/within the group when selected?


    - (Previously noted on several occasions) Each settings needs a numeric input to type in an exact value rather than trying to slide something. The sliders could also do with 'snap to' positions on them.

    Thank you for the feedback. Please note that the current state of the preview is work in progress and we are working towards having visual settings per view. To that end the visual settings dialog will undergo at least one more change. I have forwarded your review to the relevant engineer.

    I'll copy paste my feedback on the settings from the preview topic here as well. Just making sure it doesn't get lost in the noise in that topic :)



    - I feel that Automatic Resolution is not really an image setting but more a 'general settings' thing (it's a performance setting)


    - I think it would be easier if you gathered all settings that affect 'lighting/brightness' in one place. These settings are spread out right now over 3 tabs, making it harder for non advanced users. Perhaps rename atmosphere to 'lighting and sky' ? At the top you could have Exposure + Ambient brightness, followed by the Skybox settings, followed by the illumination settings. I would put horizon, clouds and fog underneath that.


    - For some settings, it would help if we could type in an exact value


    - the 'auto hide' of certain sliders doesn't seem to work yet? (for example: the contrast sliders when you turn auto contrast on, or the rotation of the skybox when you don't have a custom sky)


    - You could make some of these dialogs more compact by adding more 'auto hide' . For example with clouds you could just have a checkbox 'customize clouds', which would show all these extra sliders. We generally don't change any of these settings and leave it at default. Same with Fog. Also, if white background is on, you can hide all the settings for clouds.