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.

[Anonymous]

Due to work, I migrated to Max from Maya and Cinema.   The GUI feels like a 20 year step backwards, with parts designed by people who never spoke to one another.

I'll second almost every point made in this thread.  Not being able to click in the numeric portion of the timeline is a big surprise.  I end up doing the "move-the-slider-bar-out-of-the-way-and-then-click-back-to-maybe-the-right-frame-if-you're-lucky"  ( deep breath )  maneouvre.

Also, moving between consecutive frames versus moving between keyframes requires a mode change.

In Cinema 4D, it's fast and efficient:   'f' and 'g'  to frame-step,  'SH-F' and 'SH-G' to key-step.

Quick.  Intuitive. No extra superfluous mousing to do...

Max' GUI feels like it was designed by someone who just didn't want to be bothered with the keyboard...

[3dtasarimokulu]

3ds Max, Dev team, dont sleep please...