Using Bifrost – perspective on the current UX

[ihooper]

Many people who are accustomed to the Maya node editor look at Bifrost and comment on how fresh and modern it appears. It is our hope that this impression is not just skin deep. The user experience (UX) of a feature like Bifrost depends upon many factors, including performance, information architecture, learning resources, interaction patterns and so much more. Just as we plan to introduce more and more capabilities in future releases, we also intend to improve the usability and experience of working with Bifrost.

Some of the UX improvements that we have planned are major development efforts, while others are technically trivial, but require a lot of user testing and iteration to get it “just right”. To give you an idea of the breadth of things we are working on, here is a high-level list of issues that we know are negatively affecting our UX:

Backdrops	Adjust the font size, background color and even collapse your backdrops.
Browsable Node library (in-app)	Find what you need more easily. Browse all installed compounds, read summary descriptions, search and filter the list.
Browser Improvements	Connect the searchable library of graphs to the online community. Improve searching/filtering. Remove legacy Bifrost content from the old content browser.
Clear in-line messaging (InfoBar HUD)	Make the information bar at the bottom the graph easier to understand (and easier on the eyes).
Contribute to and learn from a social community	Integration with Screencast and other tools to make it easier for you to share your tips and tricks with the community.
Customizable hotkeys	Everyone works a little differently and having the right hotkeys for how you work can make a big difference.
Examples and Tutorials	We will continue to create more sample graphs and learning materials.
Fast & Responsive UI	We will continue to work at improving the speed at which you can work with Bifrost.
Get and Set Property Improvements	Automatically populate a drop-down list with available properties, including type information.
Get Started Learning Path	Quick, in-product steps to get started for those who are completely new to visual programming or anyone who wants a shortcut to familiarize themselves with Bifrost.
Graph filters and search	Find and highlight a particular node, or type of node with some default filters and keyword search.
Graphs (tools/presets)	Sample graphs with some additional guidance that can prompt for required inputs and settings.
High-level compounds	We will continue to build more high-level compounds that will allow for very easy to understand and build graphs.
Icon/color identifiers	More state indicators (i.e. disabled nodes appear disabled); More node icons.
In-app node descriptions	Improved Info panel content
In-node Parameter editing	Edit some attributes directly on the node.
Mini-map	Navigate the scene and understand your context via a miniature birds-eye view of the graph.
Mouse-over contextual help (tooltips)	Short, just-in-time information about tools and UI elements. Possibly extended to a “learning mode” where port and parameter info is available at your cursor.
Navigation bookmarks	Save and return to specific locations (both across and inside) anywhere in the graph
Output to final frame with no extra steps (terminals and materials)	Improvements to the rendering workflow.
Parameter Editor Widgets	Customize how the Parameter Editor displays the attributes for your compound. Choose from different standard widgets (i.e. radio buttons, dropdown pickers, etc.), set min/max ranges and default values.
Port grouping	Add port groups to more compounds. Make it easier to make and edit groups.
Portals / deep connections	Connect data from nodes deep in a graph with nodes at a much higher level without having the “thread the wire” through each level.
Publish to/download from a community repository of nodes/graphs	Find content on the community compound library or publish and upload directly from in-app.
Publishing Improvements	Metadata (tags) and other improvements to the publishing workflow
Sticky notes	Add longer format text notes to the graph. Include color coding, font and color control.
Tab search filtering	Add the ability to set which nodes are displayed based on metadata tags (i.e. hide “expert” nodes)
Type wrangling on nodes	Streamline (or eliminate as much as possible) the process of setting value types.
Viewport improvements	Improve the ability to display things in the viewport (i.e. forces, influences etc.)
Watchpoints / diagnostic view	Make watchpoints easier to use, less cumbersome and easier to understand. Introduce new diagnostic visualizations that will help with graph debugging.
Wire management	Add “elbows” and “cable bundles” to allow for simplified graph appearance.

This is a long list and it is not even a complete accounting of all the improvements we want to make. Looking even further out we hope to embrace entirely new ways of working that will be more creative and inspirational. This is just the start!

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Thanks for the List.

Great to see whats planned for the future.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Hi Ian how is it goin with the list above?

Im burning to see some UI improvements.

[g2m.agent]

just learning Houdini or Blender, they all good. Maya sucks.

[g2m.agent]

I just noticed this is last year's post! Nothing seems to have changed after a year. but this is not surprising, this is Autodesk's style!

[sklauss]

Mel/Python docs have example code below every command which is quite useful.

Would be nice if the info tab (or docs) did refer to at least one example graph explaining the node.