Hi, nice mockup. Catchy at the first look, resembles Zbrush/3d coat/Blender, but hard to judge without seeing it in action/at different scale/zoom levels and in details of other contexts.
There was few UI redesigns/updates in Houdini already and from what I can see it is continuous process. While we do get some new look/style and useful features, it also means we did lost some old (useful) ones.
Few objections for your design mockup:
Camera selector at the bottom:
- Different from almost every other DCC, makes switching difficult (especially for users who use multiple DCCs)
- Long distant from other elements. It's one of the most important feature when working on shot work if I'm looking from correct camera and if it's locked or not (there is lock icon next to "sun?" icon. There is 3d viewport in left top corner, but Perspective and No Camera in bottom right.
Floating toolbar icons in viewport:
- I like the floating icon concept (to see more of the viewport behind)
- But I'm willing to sacrifice that if it means any performance degradation.
- Layout/grouping of the icons make no sense.
- Without colors it's hard to navigate what icon is what
- Two columns of icons with sub-menus. How/where do they open? This is problematic when left button's submenu covers right button and vice versa. I already have the same problem with current (new) nested multi column layout in tab menu.
- I would like to see the floating viewport buttons/toolbars semi-transaprent when not on hover (we have it kind in new HUDs but these are far from ideal, and I'm afraid there are at the limits of existing Qt designs).
Maybe that's the future of the viewport GUI buttons/toolbars: to have custom buttons in floating HUD layout and user could pin them wherever they like?
Transparent toolbars:
- I thought you have transparent toolbars, but from node editor it's clear that they are not. That would be nice to have to complement floating buttons in viewport.
Lack of colors:
- While it monochrome design with very few accents looks "stylish" the usability is somehow lower (unless you are colorblind).
- Although, I would like to have an option to toggle colors on/off to this kind of style (monochrome with single/limited accent colors) when I prefer not to be distracted. (Similar way how we can switch dark/light theme/ viewport background).
- I'm curious how much you can "skin" Houdini already to this look. (As we can already adjust most of the colors, not sure if we can easily swap icons too). Would release your icon set?
- The accent is quite strong (intense) to my taste. It takes too much attention (highlighted buttons/toggles burns into my eyes, when I'm trying to focus on the content of the viepwort - Try to zoom out and squint and focus on pig -> the orange buttons sparkle and drag attention away of pig).
Lack of colored icons:
- Why single tone icons looks "stylish", differentiation only by shape is not enough. Good "bad" example is new Maya: its new toolbar icons have same color for similar type (polygons are all orange icons, when you switch to nurbs tab you get all blue icons). I have hard time to find the correct icon in that list of same colored icons each time. (It's objectively slower.)
- E.g. Softimage XSI had a lot of elements with text labels only, and it had imho one of the best UI designs - very clear what the button does, very clear what context you are in. Buttons where in static, predictable locations.
- In Houdini I like to enable coloring of the tabs based on context -> I can quickly we what panes is in what context.
Diamond shaped keyframes on timeline:
- Takes too much space. Cannot see any benefit. Makes harder to stack multiple keys next to each other.
Lack of icons in tab menu:
- Make's harder to differentiate the nodes/categories in tab menu
- Alphabetical order vs context order… (I have already reservation to current redesigned tab menu in Houdini 20/20.5)
Dark nodes:
- Swap the contrast focus on disable/inactive nodes - brings more attention to disabled/inactive/bypassed nodes than to active ones.
- Vertical round corner flag strips - visually takes smaller area than slanted flat ones that makes it psychologically harder to point and click to activate them (even if the clickable area is could be same)
Shapeless nodes
- There is option to enable "simplified shape" in Houdini already.
- Shape (and node color) has important feature to differentiate areas in node graph, it also allows customization.
- It helps to navigate graph at zoomed out levels.
Buttons instead of ring menu:
- Worse design in different scale/zoom level.
- Mistakable with badges
Context label next to node name:
- All nodes in context have same type, and the context name is already displayed in the network editor.
- Displaying node context type is superfluous clutter.
Lack of colored icons on nodes:
- In the design, you need more space for the same node to show the icon.
- Same as in "Lack of colored icons", it's harder to navigate only by shape. Color/texture/details are important indicator.
- It might look good on paper (b/w) print. I can image in to have colorless icons as "simplified shape" option. But I'm not sure how much I would actually use it in real day to day work.
Parameter pane:
- (Slow) animation is used for hiding latency issues (e.g. http reponse, loading level in game (downloading data)) or ongoing progress. There is no need for that in for displaying the controller. It's also not much connected to the cog icon (there is no transformation to justify the need for animation). So it only adds artificial delay to day to day workflow that cost time (and production money).
- Offset (gap) from the edge is waste of space.
- The font color is smaller? It's harder to read the values. The gap between fields/rows is huge.
How do you collapse/hide toolbars?
What is the "uv" badge/label next to the "uvproject1" node?
Why is the alembic cache node light gray?
Why is the "vellumsolver1" label green?
Did you put node colors on the icon+label instead of the node?
Why the wire color changed after "vellumpostprocess1" ?
How do you signal "disabled" buttons?
I would like to see:
Parameters pane semi-transaprent when not on hover.
I don't like the "modern take" that skeuomorphism is bad and everything has to be flat design with lack of color.
That's not design, that's art style. Design has to be functional in first place, otherwise it's not an design but an artistic expression.
The lack of gradients/color accents in some part of GUI has good reason: e.g. to avoid perception shift when evaluating picture, but applying it blindly everywhere we could easily go back to terminal and call it win.