There is a known issue of MAX 2016 UI working with 4K monitors –
FONT IS VERY SMALL
because of that all standard max rollout controls are scaled to match small font size. all… except rollout itself.
so all UIs designed for previous versions of max are tinny and not aligned very well.
perfectly aligned in 2016 interfaces are too wide for old version.
does anyone have an idea how to solve this issue?
it means – how to get good UI for all versions of max with support of 4K monitors?
why can't we do just smth like:
UIFontSize = 10
fn defFontB fName fSize = (dotNetObject "System.Drawing.Font" fName fSize ((dotNetClass "System.Drawing.FontStyle").bold))
anyForm.Font = (defFontB "Verdana" UIFontSize)
and just change UIFontSize depending on monitor resolution
I wonder if Max 2017 will offer any hope with this when we see it next week… the early leaked screenshots show and entirely new UI… there must have been a reason from them to do this… could Hi DPI be a reason?
From what I’ve seen, the UI buttons seem to have been remade, and a few things moved around, but nothing to indicate it’s an ‘entirely new UI’. I would love to see a brand new UI made from scratch though, one that could be fully customized button-by-button & rollout-by-rollout (like ZBrush), and could be scaled with ease (like Blender).
It’s a new UI tech, it is cleverly implemented to not render the previous mix of techs completely useless, that means plugins can be recompiled without a shitload of adaption effort. Its just the first step though, Maya had one complete release only dedicated on the UI tech replacement ( i think it was Maya 2010 ), and they even had to postbone the shift for one year in the last minute,as they could’nt solve all the issues.
The whole community is doing Max 2017 and the Max devs a huge injustice and disservice, just because of some people grabbed the demo versions and started to shout about, but are not even able to recognize the progress that happened.
2017 UI is Qt based.
3ds Max has more than thousands of dialogs, rollouts and whatever.
You can not convert everything in one release.
As spacefrog pointed out, it need to be multi version effort unless you are willing to give up any new features for one or two release for Qt conversion.
the problem is pretty bad. for a long time of MAX development i’ve met first time the situation where i have to adjust UI for a specific version
ps. (not really the first, but the previous one was not the same bad)
Oh I didn’t realize it was Qt based like Maya now. That’s great news
It’s still an amalgamation of technologies, it looks like QT is the future thankfully… I think this release will mainly be about the under-the-hood technology and hopefully in the future we can expect to see more docking technology and complete re-works of modules.
I’m not sure if this helps, but I’ve used font scaling in my .net gui to counteract the system-wide font scaling. I.e. when a user changes the font scale in windows through the control panel ( http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU//index.html?guid=GUID-0CAA47B5-6FDA-4402-8E37-1EDBBA077444 )
--get the windows font scaling
local lbl = dotNetObject "System.Windows.Forms.Label"
local graphics = lbl.CreateGraphics()
local fontScaling = 96.0/graphics.dpiX
--create a font and use this in your .net controls
local fam = dotnetObject "system.drawing.FontFamily" "Segoe UI" --GenericMonospace,GenericSansSerif
local sty = (dotnetClass "system.drawing.FontStyle").bold --Bold,Regular
myFont = dotnetObject "system.drawing.font" fam (fontScaling * 16) sty
--Use the font with the scaling
local theLabel = dotNetObject "System.Windows.Forms.Label"
theLabel.font = parentStruct.guiConstants.labelFont
Perhaps this can also be used to work with 4k monitors.
the problem is that max always uses small ‘system’ font for built-in UI. instead of .net controls it doesn’t adapt to a changing of screen resolution.
The screens shown here look pretty bad, if that is the case, but I don’t have a 4K monitor to test it. I could achieve similar results by scaling the UI fonts from Windows though.
Does the problem also happen if you use fixed position and size for all the controls?
Next week is an official announcement/preview?
If so, what’s the word on actual release date?
NAB is next week, so they’ll most likely announce it there. It’s normally available straight away or within 48 hours.