YouTube's New Video Player UI
You've probably noticed the subtle change in the YouTube video player UI implemented a few days ago. They moved the "Player Size" and "Video Quality" buttons and incorporated them into the Cogwheel button. Their goal was to make the video player UI more compact and they've achieved that doing so.
Personally, I hate the new UI... not because I hate change, but because they moved the 2 of my most used buttons and nested them within another one. From an interaction standpoint the previous UI was simple:
- Set to Player Size: (1) Press Player Size button
- Change quality: (1) Press Video Quality button, (2) Set desired quality
Now with the new video player UI I have to perform an extra interaction in order to change the screen size and video quality:
- Set to Player Size: (1) Press Cogwheel button, (2) press Player Size button
- Change quality: (1) Press Cogwheel button, (2) Press Video Quality button, (2) Set desired quality
One extra interaction doesn't seem much, but for me and I think for a lot of other users it's an annoyance. Also, visually the new Player Size button is a bit weird. It looks like a toggle switch but it acts as a slider. I get confused sometimes thinking the "darker" side is the active one.. it's actually the other way around. To make it more intuitive and clear, there's a simple fix simply by adding a more distinctive rounded corner and by adding a drop shadow to the activated side.
3DS Max Adventures! Volkswagen Jetta WIP
What have I been up to lately? Well busy applying for jobs, working on art for a NDA mobile game and some 3D modeling of course :) As I mentioned in an earlier post, the second car model would be the Volkswagen Jetta. I got the rough shapes finished and started adding the details. I would say the car model is about 80% done before I can edit the normals and unwrap the UVs. The model is about 4000 tris at the moment, so it should be no problem keeping it under 20.000 tris.
Volkswagen Jetta rough shape
Jetta detailing
3ds Max Adventures! Nissan 350z
I finally finished modeling the Nissan 350z car model! I had a lot of trouble getting the topology right especially with the curved creases. I didn't want to add any unnecessary topology just for the creases, so I had to play around a bit until I was satisfied with the results. Overall I'm very satisfied with my very first modeled car and it's only about 11.000 tris in total without the wheels. The next car I'm going to model is a Volkswagen Jetta!
3ds Max Adventures! Character & Car
I started learning modeling with 3ds Max recently in order to make game assets in the future. I started off by modeling a character based on my friend Nicole's 2D drawing.
I got the UVs unwrapped and applied some basic colors to the model, but I'm too lazy to finish the texture for now.
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At the moment, I'm working on a Nissan 350z car model. I have no knowledge of cars or whatsoever, so I just picked out a random one with blueprints that I could use. The goal of this model is to keep it under 20.000 tris.
Outlook.com's UI Inconsistency
I like Outlook.com (revamped Hotmail), but there's an inconsistency in the Outlook.com's user interface which kind of bugs me. When switching from the inbox to the junk page, the "Delete"-button shifts to the left. If I'm in a hurry deleting emails from my inbox and junk, switching between the pages will cause me to accidentally pressing the "Archive"-button when I actually want to delete the email. Also, there's the weird categorization where they put the options to flag the junk mail message as "Phishing scam" and "My friend's been hack!" under the button "Not Junk"... Isn't that the opposite?
They could have move the phishing and hacked option under a new tag called "Phishing" for example, and place it left of where the "Delete"-button is. This way it shifts the delete to the right making everything more of less aligned and consistent with the Inbox UI.
Industrial Design in Today's World
A short documentary from Frog Design about the digital technology advancements and how it impacts the modern world industrial designer. Feels like I should have done more with the physical space when I was still in undergrad... possible future goal?
http://vimeo.com/69897436
Arduino Basic Connections - Very Useful Electronic Circuits
Arduino forum user pighixxx posted these very useful and informative Arduino electronic circuit cards. The cards tell you what kind of components you need and also how to hook things up. Below are some sample images of the Arduino Basic Connection cards. You can find the forum post here and the link to the download page here.
Testing Substance Designer 3.5
I found out recently that my Digital Tutors account from the ETC is still active, so I decided to do some tutorials on Unity3D and 3dsMax while I'm sitting here at home. It's going pretty well. Nothing to really show yet on Unity or 3dsMax, but I stumbled upon the Substance Designer software when I was browsing the tutorial list and decided to check it out. Substance Designer is a texturing tool which allows you to create high quality textures using nodes. It comes with a bunch patterns and filters and the software allows you to pack all your texture maps (diffuse, normal, specular etc.) into a single Substance texture file. On top of that you can connect the Substance textures with Unity3D or UDK and dynamically change parameters of your texture within the game engine. The software is really awesome so far. I can't wait to get more proficient with modeling, so can create kick ass textures for them :D
Below you can see a quick test using Substance Designer. I made a brick texture within Substance Designer with a normal and specular map and added a sketch of mine on top of everything.
View PSD & TGA Files in Windows Explorer
Want to be able to view .PSD and .TGA files as thumbnails in your explorer? Download the MysticThumbs software, install it, restart your system and BAM!
- x86 Installer (32 bit OS)
- x64 Installer (64 bit OS)
Source: http://tbxstudio.com/psd-thumbnail-viewer-on-windows-explorer-for-windows-7-vista-64/
SpritePlane: Converting GIFs to Sprite Sheets
SpritePlane is a great plugin for Photoshop to convert .GIF files into sprite sheets with just a few clicks!
It converts GIFs like 
to 
You can find all the information, instructions and download link on the SpritePlane GitHub page.