Time Slider Redesign - More Compact and Functional Like Other Modern 3D Apps

[mg]

The design of Max’s time slider is a big waste of real estate in its current form. The over-sized width prevents accurate clicking on another frame that is current inside that area, forcing the artist to first scrub/click outside of that range to move it “out of the way” in order to then click on the desired frame you want to jump to.

Why does it always display one frame LESS than the actual end frame? If y active area is 100 frames (1-100) and my last frame is actually 100.. Max shows the final frame count as 99. This is not only confusing to the user but also takes up valuable UI space for info that is at first glance incorrect.

Check out the attached image for a comparison of Max’s time bar to some other popular 3d apps. This will give you a good feel for how dated and clunky it really is.

I've also included a couple of quick concepts for an updated time scrubber that don't involve a complete redesign of how it and the Track Bar work (thus less dev impact). One keeps Max’s traditional prev/next key arrows and colorized to match the trackbar indicator. The other does away with the arrows since there are hotkeys AND additional buttons in the UI for this. It also uses a black background for current frame indicator which I think looks nicer. The width of the icon could change width depending on how many digits are needed to display current frame.

[MartinBeh]

In addition, there should be a spring-loaded hotkey (i.e. active only while the key is pressed) that allows me to use simple mouse left/right movements to scrub back and forth in time, maybe with a viewport text overlay reporting the current frame. That way, we could even work without looking at the timeslider at all.

[aaronfross]

I agree, the time slider is too big, and at the very least it should be slimmed down. It would be great if we could get rid of the Time Slider altogether, and reclaim the vertical space, but that would mess with existing workflows for editing keyframes in the timeline.

As for the frame numbers, it's a long-standing problem. For some reason, 3ds Max has a concept of sequence "length" which is different from "frame count". It's always baffled me that someone actually thought that the last frame of a sequence has no duration. And this crazy misconception has not been corrected in over 20 years of software development. The Time Configuration dialog shows the insanity. The "Length" is always one frame shorter than the "Frame Count".

And to make things worse, the documentation doesn't explain this at all, and in fact gives false, misleading information. The help page for the Time Configuration flat out states that "Length" is "the number of frames in the active time segment", but that is totally wrong. "Length" is actually the duration of time, in frames, between the first and last frames of the sequence, not including the duration of the last frame. It's the End Time frame minus the Start Time frame, but this doesn't account for the duration of the End Time frame itself. It's crazy.

Also, the fact that I have to go into the Time Configuration dialog to change the active time segment slows me down. In Maya, I can change the animation start and end time, and the active time range (which are two different things), directly from the main UI.

Anyway, do we even need to see the "Length" of the active time segment on the Time Slider? Even if this displayed the correct information, how useful is that? In my opinion, it's not necessary, and could be removed to make the Time Slider more narrow horizontally.

[Tupaia]

I absolutely concur!!! I was about to post that myself.

The slider and the (blue or yellow) mark below it should be coupled, and the mark itself should also be draggable!

Acutally, when the mark itself would be draggable, the ugly block above plus it's screen space could be ditched. The current time could be displayed in the time ruler.

Thanks!

[electrotoast_old]

Have you guys tried 2018? You can tear off and dock it somewhere else and even it turn off completely if you want. You can also scale it down really small when you do tear it off. The slider itself could probably be smaller.

Also, regarding changing frames of the slider itself, you can use keyboard + mouse commands to change the in/out and 'pan' the slider. I used them all the time when working on sequences 1,000s of frames long.

Change out point: Alt+Ctrl+Right Mouse button drag

Change in point: Alt+Ctrl+Left Mouse drag

Pan frames: Alt+Ctrl+Middle Mouse drag

Keep in mind, if we were going to make additional changes, it would be in the vein of the current implementation. (See attached video in AKN article.)

[Tupaia]

Hi electrotoast!

Tearing it off is kind of nice, thanks for that! Please keep up the good work on Qt-ifying the UI!!

Anyway, please do consider:

The actual slider (the grey block) actually is, and always was, kind of obsolete, because the slider could simply be the blue, slim marker below it. Worse, the grey slider block is not connected to the marker, which feels strange. Kind of wobbly.

I also doubt that many people use the little arrow icons to step through frames. They are redundant, too, because there are next/previous frame buttons in the toolbar below anyway (those could be a little more prominent, by the way). I think it's also a somewhat strange and rare concept that the mouse pointer get shifted by clicking buttons.

In my opinion, it would be best to get rid of that oldschool slider block, declare the blue marker as the new, precise slider, and - optionally - introduce a range slider. (I'm aware of the keyboard shortcuts for the time range).

All other 3d apps have it implemented in such a way. There's a reason for that.

Hope this makes sense.

Thanks!

[electrotoast_old]

Yeah, that's why I mentioned the slider itself could be smaller. We're checking out a few things regarding this and may update the status soon.

[Tupaia]

Thanks! Hope you don't just settle for a compromise like simply making the slider block smaller or something. Be radical!

Anyway, looking forward... 😃

[Tupaia]

Something more - worth actually a separate idea post, but it suits here, too.

It's a nifty feature of Softimage's time ruler.

If you click it with the left mouse button, the red timeslider (or time-marker) is placed there, and the viewport updates to that time.

If you click it with the middle mouse button, a second, green time-marker is placed, which tells the point in time where the next key will be set.

You can block out animations (such as character poses) much easier, if you can settle for a reference frame in the viewport, and scrub the timeslider to where you want to set the next keys, without messing up your visual 'reference' in the viewport.

[RGhost77]

Would be good if we can make frame tags and quick jumps over it with hotkeys (SHIFT+1, SHIFT+2...) such as in After Effects.

[Anonymous]

Agree that the timeline needs a redesign for better functionality.

One of the biggest chores when adjusting time range is that you need to go into the time configuration dialogue if you want to type in numbers. I know about the CTRL+ALT+Mouse combination for adjusting in and out of the time range, and while it's better than nothing I have frankly never relied on it because I find it an unintuitive way to adjust a time range.

Most 3d software out there got a more direct type-in-number-along-with-a-slider approach to adjusting timeline ranges, such as Maya and Cinema4d.

There is a GUI script for 3dsmax called Extended Timeline (by Heavenly Pictures). It hasn't been updated since 2013 and only works up to 2017 though, which is a shame. But it is the closest to how I want the timeline to work. It emulates the functionality of Maya basically:

Whenever I do longer timelines I use it all the time and it is the functionality that 3dsmax timeline desperately needs.

[Tupaia]

Btw., would it also be possible to make those Pause/Play/Next/Previous buttons somewhat bigger, please? They're a wee bit small.

You did begin to convert all icons to scalable vector graphics, didn't you? ; ]

So Max is fit for a future with high dpi screens with a scalable UI...

Thanks!

[Isaac_Zuniga]

Very good point and compelling argument. I am all for this.

[Ehsan.Sarahian]

I think the philosophy of using Time Slider is faster access to the main animation tools for animators but If compared Max with other animation softwares, we have many shortags to achieve this goal.
some ideas for reorganize and enhancing this section:

-New custom key frame colors option: many times users needed to see Visibilty KF and Material KF in different colors for better diagnosis.

-Reorgnize old Time Slider right click menu and add more tools for faster access to primitive animation tools. (maya is a good exam for suitable tools access in Time Slider right click).

   some exams:
      Edit keyframe: copy, cut, past, tangent mode keyframes
      Sound: open Prosound, Mute, add new sound
      Playback menu for access to speed and direction playback
      Black color theme like other right click menus in Max.
      Access change tangents
      And etc.

-Write note for animations on Time Slider (similar Curve edtor’s note) but enhanced this like Adobe softwares Marker. Also can close or open this section in right click cofigure menu.

-Add visibility filter to Time Slider right click for filtering visibility keyframes. Finding visibility keyframe is so hard in Max!

-Faster access to mini drop sheet from Time Slider by a button. At the moment must go to Mini Curve Editor after that go to Mini drop sheet!

-Close button for mini drop sheet. Mini curve editor VS mini drop sheet:

[Ehsan.Sarahian]

Other good ideas for upgrading this section:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/time-slider-redesign-more-compact-and-functional-like-o...

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-ideas/timeline-range-manager/idi-p/7036236

[Anonymous]

I like the idea of having a proper customizeable quad menu for the timeline.

Will expand the possibilities of quickly manipulating keyframes with scripts.

[electrotoast_old]

@Ehsan.Sarahian Thanks for the additional links as well. We will keep these separate for now as they have distinct functionality called out. We'll keep an eye on all of them though and maybe they can be delivered together.

[Ehsan.Sarahian]

@electrotoast_old Thanks for your attention and opinion.