Gradient ramp -- update UI

[davision]

The gradient ramp UI has got to be almost 20 years old.  It is very tedious to use when you want to define a complex gradient with a lot of flags.

Please update the UI.

Make the ramp image itself able to either be zoomed in and out (for careful flag placement) -- or preferably, make it a resizable pop-out window so we can make it much larger on the display.  The small Mat Ed dialog is very confining.

[RGhost77]

And please make it usable in maxscript as map, and standalone gradient UI element.

[Isaac_Zuniga]

Please do update the gradients, because on 4K displays, the handles are so tiny that even scaling doesn't fix. Like Backburner, can we get an update to this feature, or a complete overhaul?

[MontroseDigital]

So many beautiful shaders could be made with the fine tuning the gradients and and mix curves.  Now the Gradient/Mix Curve UI is limited to the width of the material editor UI and very fine tweaking is impossible.   This would add a ton of shader possibilities to max with tweaking an existing feature.

[Swordslayer]

If you're not afraid of a bit of maxscript, you can have a resizeable curve ui for any of the curve controls in max. See edit curve control.

[michael_spaw]

Thanks for the Idea.

Michael Spaw

3ds Max, Product Owner/Designer

Media and Entertainment Division

[brentscannell]

Hi @davision

I hear the devs are cooking something up with this. I'll move this over to under-review status while I gather some more specifics.

[Isaac_Zuniga]

Exciting for sure, I cannot wait for better 4k support with the gradient ramp handles! 🙂

[dswahn]

Something that also needs updating is the position values for individual 'flags'.
This value needs to be float rather than integer.

I know you can set decimals through Trackview, but it's tedious to have to go there when you need to place flags with decimal precision.  

[samuel.enslin]

Would also be great if changes were undoable...

[panel01]

Would be great as an OSL map if something like this is possible with all the UIcontrols.

[joeaf9321]

I agree with this one and also:

What about the Values Adjustment Curve in Color Map in the Output of Bitmap Map and similars, it could be heavily improved to something like in Photoshop, so the user can handle easily the points just click to create and drag, you can even add tangents.

Max Color Map Curve

Photoshop Curves

[Kranos_Orphydian]

the UI style has to be updated as well

[Kranos_Orphydian]

How is the Softimage and Modo ones look like. Can someone provide some images ?