another 2017 UI customization post

[grue1970]

hello. i've finally had to move to 2017 for some projects i'm working on.  as a year ago when it first came out, still frustrated with the UI.  a couple of how-to questions....

1. i'm starting out slowly... how do i change the background of a text-box to white?

2. i've looked but haven't found any descriptions of "General UI Colors" listed... i hope the answer is "just change it and see" because several of them haven't made any observable difference!

3. see attached screen shots - 1 is my Customize User Interface > Colors tab and the 2nd is found in the online user guide.  I'm missing the drop-down for Scheme:  in the case of the online user guide, it's showing "custom".  is there a way for me to retrieve this?

thanks!

just a side note, is there going to be any changes in 2018 as far as reverting to a light colored user interface and not having to always change things, icons or colors?

[rendermaster]

first try to go to Customize Menu then Custom UI and Default Switcher and from the list, select the theme you preferred

If you wish to adjust/change the color...of an individual object or element....Go to Customize Menu then Color

[grue1970]

thanks ronel, but that isn't helping in my case.  i'm looking to customize that scheme further, at least to get a white background in text boxes or drop-down lists...  a white background in scene explorer etc...

by the way - your colors tab has the same problem i have, there's not a drop-down for General UI Colors!  the manual shows that color tab with it.  maybe it's just available if you use the "default UI scheme"????

it's really disappointing that although there's been tons of discussions,  this forum remains easier to see/read than max.  nothing in any of the hotfixes etc..

[sebastian___]

My post will not be very helpful as well. When I adjusted the colors I just tried each one and pressed "apply".

I noticed that some colors seem to "not work" even when changed. I also couldn't make the sub-object modifiers turn yellow or a certain color when pressed.

This was the closest I could get. My aim was also to increase the UI contrast.

UI screenshot

And of course try the files provided in the UI mod thread.

[grue1970]

nice.  i had the yellow button at some point, but then had to delete my user folder because of other issues.  i think there might be some "all in one" save feature, i saw in another post.  i'll have to investigate.  that way, if any issues come up it's one-click to restore customized settings across the WHOLE app.

anyway attached is what i wish for!!  the white background!!!

[sebastian___]

I want the same thing. But as far as I know, when I tried to make that white, some other thing turned white as well, which was undesired.

I tried to make my own help/documentation about the colors :

(not complete or accurate)

3d Dark Shadow ??? - seems it doesn't work

3d Highlight - among other things the colors of the tabs in Preferences    

App Workspace  ?

Background Even
Normal color (I've chosen 181) - background panels where the buttons are
Disabled Color (172 selected)  the border of the deactivated buttons and the checkboxes and text boxes 
Hover Color (174 selected)  the border of the active buttons only when you hoover the mouse

I can't write more now as I have to go, but I'll come later and edit this with some more

[grue1970]

right!  ha, some of the things are odd 🙂 

so to condense:

1. need descriptions of colors that can be changed

2. missing that drop-down for colors, right above the list of things you can change - this is where 3ds Max 2017 official documentation says you have the ability to follow windows color scheme

#2 is where my guess is for having white text boxes and drop-downs might be?

thanks,

[sebastian___]

Oh annoying - you can't edit your post after a while.

All right, so again (taken from my own "help")

..................

3d Dark Shadow ??? - seems it doesn't work
3d Highlight - among other things the colors of the tabs in Preferences

App Workspace ?

Background Even
Normal color (I've chosen 181) - background panels where the buttons are
Disabled Color (172) the border of the deactivated buttons and the checkboxes and text boxes
Hover Color (174) the border of the active buttons only when you hover the mouse

Background Odd
normal color (186) - background color everywhere
Disabled Color  -  colors of the small buttons deactivated (material editor, trackview etc) ?   
Hover Color ? - it doesn't seem to have an effect

Focus Border - border on the boxes where you write text or modify numbers - only when you click and make it active
normal - 
disabled -  it doesn't seem to have an effect
Hoover -  it doesn't seem to have an effect

Button
normal - color in the boxes where you write or modify numbers
disabled -
Hoover -

Button text
normal - black
disabled - 120
Hoover - black

Modifier Selection - it doesn't work ?
normal - 179
disabled -
Hoover -

Modifier Sub-object Selection
normal - 117
disabled -
Hoover -

UI Borders   - the thin line which separates different portions of the UI. Including the small window when you right click on the move tool

Unselected Tabs  - it was  215, seems to have no effect

that's all. Maybe someone can complete the rest of this

[grue1970]

Button
normal - color in the boxes where you write or modify numbers
disabled -
Hoover -

nice!  thanks.

i'll tell you,, playing around with Button, Button Text and Button Pressed, there's some weird things going on there!  it's like some are the same or one overrrides another... ugh.  oh well.

[grue1970]

[QUOTE}2. missing that drop-down for colors, right above the list of things you can change - this is where 3ds Max 2017 official documentation says you have the ability to follow windows color scheme[/QUOTE]

so is there any solution to this? ( see screen shots i posted above_?

thanks

[dominique.bouthillette]

Hi @grue1970,

Thanks for the post! I just wanted to see if I could offer a little help here with your questions.

If you wish to change the entire color scheme to include text boxes as white, there is a kind of secondary way to do this (as there is not a current UI layout for this, only the Light/Dark schemes). This will change all Buttons and Text Boxes, but can be helpful for your purposes. =]

In the Colors tab under "General UI Colors" I set the following:

• Button: Normal Color = White (255, 255, 255)
• Button Text: Normal Color = Black (0, 0, 0)

The dropdown menu for "Scheme: Custom Colors" is actually no longer included in the 2017 UI, since you can now use disabled colors and hover colors to customize the interface further. I did have a chance to speak with our Documentation team, so that we might have this changed to be less confusing to our users (myself included), as the image shown for the 2017 Help docs is actually from 2016. The UI should look like the image below:

I also wanted to mention that some options (like Disabled Color for Text) are unresponsive to changes at this time, but have been logged in our database to be looked at further for future resolution.

Please let me know if this helps to answer your questions, and thank you so much again for your post! 😃

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @grue1970,

I wanted to follow up here on @dominique.bouthillette's post to see if this helped with this issue.  Does that work as a workaround?  

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi @grue1970 as you said there is no Scheme drop-down in 3ds max 2017 Customize User Interface, some of the options are accessible through user setting files: here is a thread about it.

Cheers.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

That is one great post and thread @Anonymous.  Good work!

Best Regards,