It's been a while since I last posted , but I wanted to say that I like the direction the program is headed based on these first few alpha releases, and thought I'd give a little feedback.
I like the new logo by the way, and am very excited to check out the new hair tool in 3.0. I wonder if any of it is based on the method described in my previous post http://www.makehuman.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=424.
I'm also curious as to what the Manga and Anime tools listed on the Make Human road map are going to be? Are either of them anything like the mesh editing method described also in the above linked post? If it is, that would just make my day!
Also it looks like the Manga tool didn't make it into the last alpha as per the original roadmap entry, and probably not alpha 3 either, you may want to update the RM to show this.Now on to the feedback for Alpha 2.0
1. Implement a way of locking selected parts of the mesh that the user wishes to remain un-altered in detail and micro-detail modes. This prevents the problem of accidentally selecting and altering a piece of the anatomy, or being unable to reselect a specific part of anatomy the user was working on to make further changes (this happens more often in micro-detail mode).
a. I visualize the solution to this problem as something like a drop down menu list of all the "detail" or micro-detail areas on the mesh, (depending on which mode your in ) with check boxes next to each one. Clicking in the check box next to a listed "detail" area would lock it from being altered by the user until they uncheck that box again. The best example I can think of in other software would be like locking / un-locking image layers in programs like Photoshop, illustrator, gimp, etc.
b. There also needs to be a switch for the list that locks and unlocks the whole list / mesh, so that if the user only wants to work on a specific part, they don't need to lock every detail / micro detail manually, just un-lock the one / ones they need.
c. It might also be helpful if when hovering the cursor over the name of a detail or micro detail in the list, that the corresponding area of the mesh would become highlighted so users can understand exactly what they are selecting.
2. Real-time symmetry editing instead of having to use the symmetry tool, also changes made on one side of the mesh and then mirrored with the symmetry tool are not able to be undone with undo.
3. Something like a tree style undo / history list, as at present it's to easy to accidentally undo the wrong changes.
4. *Edited*, Just played with alpha 2 again and realized the brush cursor is fined, ignore my earlier suggestion about it if you read this pre-edit
5. Assuming a locking system such as I described earlier gets implemented, then the ability to affect multiple adjoining unlocked micro-detail areas at the same time would also be welcome. This could work by holding down the CTRL key to allow multiple selections, similar to selecting multiple files or icons in Windows (While holding down the CTRL key to select, the mouse would be unable to manipulate the geometry of the selected area until released).
6. More modifiers for micro-detail sculpting brush beyond move and scale, such as rotate, pinch, and bulge for example.
7. A way to smooth (probably by increasing the mesh resolution) selected mesh geometry in all three modes, Basic, Detail, and Micro-Detail
wandererBC