Instance Bar feedback thread

New in R398.2 is the Instance Bar, a new way to view and organize all the instances in a layout. Next, a short description about some of the features off the top of my head.

Hierarchies

One of the bar's primary objectives is to help visualize and build complex hierarchies, which can get a little bit tedious and confusing just by using the layout view. Hierarchies can be made by dragging and dropping tree items on top of each other and also by dragging an instance from the layout view into the Instance Bar.

Folders

The other main feature is that now there is a way to organize instances in a folder structure which is independent of how they look in the layout and has no impact at runtime.

Additional Information

A secondary feature is showing, in a compact way, information which was previously not easy to see at a glance. By left clicking on the bottom of the bar or right clicking anywhere else, you can bring up a context menu option called "Show more information for", to toggle additional information about each instance, such as if they are a template or belong to a timeline among a few others. This was done like this because there is quite a bit of this instance specific information and showing it all at the same time could become messy very quickly.

Search

The search bar at the top of the bar can be used to search by the display name of items, if there is no match with the display name though, the search will also attempt to match, with the object type name, the plugin name or any tags an instance might have. Typing a layer name will filter the tree to show only the instances in that layer.

Additionally there are a couple of "special" search terms. Typing "mesh" (or the translated name if you are not using C3 in English) will search for all the meshes in the layout. Something similar happens with the word "hierarchy", which filters the tree to show only the root level hierarchies.

Tags

The bar also has a minor integration with the new Tags feature. Any instance which has tags will show the first tag as it's display name instead of the object type name which is shown by default. The other tags can still be used in the search bar though!

Global layers

There are a couple of features which are not obvious and they have to do with how the bar displays instances coming from global layers. If any, these instances are also shown, but in a slightly different way because as it turns out, showing them like any other instance caused some problems. When toggling the "Layers & Layouts" options, an icon will be shown next to global instances to quickly identify them.

Under certain conditions, items in the tree might become highlighted in red. This cases are tied to global layers. Since it's possible to make hierarchies from instances in a local layer to instances in a global layer, it is possible for an instance to show up in hierarchy, but be no where to be seen, those instances will be highlighted and toggling the "Layers & Layouts" options will tell you a little bit more information about what is happening.

Another edge case caused by global layers is that a hierarchy might only be shown partially, because the rest of it comes from another layout, that case is highlighted as well.

Performance

Due to an initial bone headed implementation the bar is quite sluggish when a layout has a lot of instances. That is already being fixed.

I think that's all about it. If you have any feedback or have already written some elsewhere, it is a good idea to put it in here so everything is in the same place.

I absolutely adore this feature, everything about this is extremely useful in my daily usage of C3 for two different projects I bounce between, and I appreciate it so soo much!!

I have a layout containing many different templates of different UI menus, maybe 50+ templates scattered around the layout. I was placing text objects to label each template visually, and had to scroll/zoom around looking for whatever template I want to edit! Now it's all neatly listed and easy to jump over to any template, such a major time saver!!

Also helps with another project with character hierarchies with many limbs and such, as you'd have guessed. Eager to fiddle about with this some more.

I like how popout window just works like any other bar in C3.

I also like the Show Information option with so many choices, it's so adaptable.

Went in neutral, but ended up amazed. Just love finding any possible way to speed up my workflow and this is definitely a huge boost.

Thank you!!

First of all, I'd like to say a big thank you for this amazing feature, it's the feature I've been waiting for the most for several years, and the implementation is perfect, it already comes with a lot of very handy things and the changes that have been made to my "Hierarchy Bar" suggestion are even better. It's very cleverly designed.

Also special thanks for all the right click context menu options on the instances in this new Bar (flash selection, scroll, hierarchy/template/layer etc..) this is just awesome.

Here are the first feedbacks i'd like to provide after trying the Instance Bar:

1. Show/Hide UID Option

Add an option to show/hide the UID number of the instances, as we can name instances using tags anyway but also because it could help to lessen the number of infos so it's less overwhelming in some situations(this option could be available in right click context menus)

2. Put extra info on a seperate, right-aligned column

So it's more readable, we should be able to drag the separator horizontally because the space required for the extra info could vary a lot between "Template/Replica infos" and "Layout/Layer" info for example, and we should be able to make sure the whole Template/Replica infos fits in 1 line (in case the name of the instance itself is very long for example)

Also maybe the separator column would allow to remove the parenthesis ?

3. Selecting an instance Folder should select all its instances in the Layout View

(or at least, there should be a right click context Menu > "select all child instances" option for the instance folders)

4. Option to automatically select the layer of the selected instance (while displaying Layers/Layout)

This is an adaptation of a suggestion i made for the Layer Bar but for the Instance Bar instead, as it might be better.

If the Instance Bar is currently showing more info for Layers/Layouts, add a check option just above to automatically select the layer of the instance. It would be very handy as way to select layer in workflows were a lot of instances are placed in the Layout. (avoid placing new instances on wrong "HUD", "FX", "Background" layers)

Also now we have a lot of handy bar but not many places in the editor to dock them, it would allow to stack the Instance Bar and the Layer Bar together, and switch between the 2 only when needed. (as Instance Bar would allow to select Layer too)

(it would only do something if the last selected instance was selected individually or if all instances selected together are on the same layer, if several instances were selected exactly at the same time on different layer, it wouldn't switch the Layer)

That being said, having that option directly on the Layer View too could be great, maybe the best would be to have that option accessible both from Layer View and for Instance Bar in "show infos for Layers/Layouts" mode (disabling it in one place would disable it in the other place)

5. Allow unfolding searched Hierarchies and Folders

This would be amazing both for Project Bar and Instance Bar, it's something i always wished we could do in Project View.

This way by default, only explicitely searched Folders/Instances are displayed (folded), but then we can just unfold those Folders and Hierarchies to find their children (even if those are not explicitely searched)

See example below, where i want to find a "Player" instance by typing "Chara" as its part of a "Chara" folder.

01: 'Scroll selection into view' Should be Keep Current Zoom Scale

Currently, using'Scroll selection into view' will change the editor zoom. I think it should keep the zoom and just change the scroll position.

02: Separately control the display and lock property of instance objects

Currently, we can only control a layer, But it is not to target a specific instance.

It would be more convenient if each instance could be controlled individually.

(This is from the previous sketch)

and add a common 'editor' property to all object types. Like the layers bar, can be hidden or locked for each object.

I have a suggestion that isn't directly connected to the Instance Bar, but made more obvious by it. I would assume most user will have the instance bar as a tab of another bar, i.e. like this:

here the Instance bar is a tab you can switch to from the properties bar. The way the tabs are positioned has two downsides:

• Redundancy with the header, leading to wasted vertical space.
• They are positioned below, which goes against common conventions, making it less intuitive.

My suggestion is this, here the tabs are positioned on top and replace the header:

First let me say that I love the Instance Bar feature, and even if nothing changed it would already be a big help. That said, here are some things that would IMO help to improve it further.

I like all the functionality but the UI/UX needs to be improved IMO. The view feels pretty cluttered with lots of repetitious information, and I think the switching between different "show more info modes" is unnecessary.

Why write "Showing more information for: Something" at the bottom when that space could be used to actually show more information.

Putting a general infobox at the bottom similar to how it already works in the Properties Bar would free up the clutter a lot. It's important to easily get to info quickly, but that doesn't mean it has to be everywhere all the time.

Here is a mockup of my improved UI/UX suggestion:

Every menu item is made up of 3 sections, furthest left are the layer icons ( Locked / Hidden / Global ), in the middle is the actual object with the icon and its name, and on the right are all the extra icons ( Hierarchy / Template / Timeline / Plugin / Mesh ). The extra icons on the right are always visible if they apply, so if the object is in a hierarchy the hierarchy icon is always visible, no switching between "info modes" needed, if there is a mesh on the object the mesh icon is visible (forgot to add the Mesh icon in the mockup), etc. All the other text for more info will be shown in the bottom infobox when an object is selected

In addition to that icons are clickable too. It really speeds things up having the most used functionality just one double click away instead of having to right click and search through a long list of options (which is also great for more fine control).

Double clicking on these icons would do:

• Hierarchy icon = Select all children.
• Template icon = Apply changes to all replicas ( Maybe a bit too dangerous? ).
• Replica icon = Sync this replica with template.
• Timeline icon = Open timeline.
• Plugin icon = The same should happen as if you double click that object in the Project Bar.
• Mesh icon = Toggle between edit/stop edit mesh.
• Object name = Rename object.

I'm sure I forgot something, but I think it gets the idea across.

Show all relevant icons at the same time,

split the icons between left and right side of the object,

double click on icons has functionality,

additional info text goes in the bottom infobox.

6. Allow to drag and drop an Instance from the Instance Bar to the Layout to copy this instance

Right now we can drag and drop ObjectTypes from Project View to the Layout to create an instance of this ObjectType but we can't do the same with the Instance Bar

It would be amazing if we could just Drag and Drop instance from this new bar to the Layout to create a copy of this instance. (currently, drag and dropping instances from the Instance Bar to the Layout does nothing)

Ideally, the created instance should be exactly the same as the original instance (same common props like size, same variables values etc...). If the original instance was a Template Source or Replica, then it creates a Replica of this Template.

Exactly as it works when copy pasting an instance in the Layout.

It would allow cool workflows such as easily set-up "Templates Palette" in a top folder of the Instance Bar to then easily build levels of Replicas by just drag and dropping stuff (especially with the "Show Template infos" option enabled)

(the user could put "Template Palette" instances on a "Template Palette" Global Layer)

03: Allow move instances layer in the context menu

It would be very convenient if we can move the instances to another layer in the Instance bar.

04: Allow dragging instances into folders in any state

Currently, only instances on visible, unlocked layers can be dragged into folders, which is inconvenient. I think it should have more freedom of operation.

It is a really cool feature, I will definetly use it often! My layouts are biiig :D

Though, I wish one could click on an object on the layout and in addition to "Find all references" option there will be "Show in the instance bar" one.

It's nice to find objects trough the instance bar, but I wish it could be done the other way around too.