Documentation Enhancements
Something new for MAXON in Release 11 is the inclusion of some mini tutorials and videos that briefly show how many of the new enhancements work. This is very welcome and an excellent idea. Just a pity that there weren´t that many apart from the ones our very own 3DKiwi did, which were the BodyPaint 3D R4 and new Doodle tool enhancements.
Example of Mini Tutorial - Click Play |
The help / documentation system in Release 11 is the same system as introduce in Release 10 but is now a little bit more refined. There are now next page and previous page buttons. Many images in the documentation have a Magnifying glass icon that indicates the image can be clicked on to display a full size version. Tags can be right clicked and a new Show Help option is available so finding help on tags is easier than before.
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Documentation Enhancements |
What I would like to see is a better search or an advanced search system. I often know what module I´m looking for help in so I don´t need results for the same word in every module. Another thing that I find a little annoying is the font size used in the help is a little small. There should be an option to increase or decrease the font size.
Tip: You can manually change the font size by editing the wickie.css file in the help\files folder. Look out for body { font-size: 11px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: #fff } Change 11px to something like 12px or 13px. The text will be much easier to read.
One thing that I would urge MAXON to do is to run the documentation through a spell checker as there are quote a few spelling mistakes especially in the new R11 content.
QuickTime videos and sound files (currently only on MacOS) can be played in the Content Browser. I am not sure what the issue here is with PC support. I´m on a PC and my image browser (ACDSee) plays Quicktime files and plays sound files.
One problem that needs addressing is the time it takes for the Content Browser to load. As soon as you start adding your own content the loading times first time around can take a while. Subsequent loading times however are usually instant. One thing that I found is how drab looking the Content Browser Icons are. The Release 9 Content Browser Icons were much more appealing as per the image here.
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Content Browser Icons - Release 11 compared to Release 9 |