I like my UI super fast so that new hierarchy animation isn’t an improvement to the UI, for me.
Now I understand people got accustomed to transition everywhere with the iPhone so yeah keep it but as an default option.
When someone asked for an “off” switch in the preferences panel, the unity dev said he’d rather tune it because an option would branch the code, which is extra work to maintain.
How about an alternative to an off switch, something that won’t branch the code? Simply add a hierarchy animation speed float in the settings, or just expose that so we can UnityEditor.hierarchyAnimationSpeed=0f; in our editor code
Love it, put 1.0, hate it, put 0.0, no extra branching.
I’m also not a fan of animated UI in software that I use to do my work in. These new animations slow me down in my workflow.
The only plausible solution is to either remove this feature or add an option to turn it off / adjust the speed. I hardly believe Unity has a different view on that, it’s functionality over bells and whistles. Always.
Don’t yell at them Peter, you know it’ll make the editor guys clam up and delete this thread again. I’m sure hierarchy animation was an oversight or someone was bored that day (if it’s the latter, I could use array members drag and drop).
Until that gets fixed, look at the bright side: when you return to 5.5 after testing 5.6, it feel like you bought a new computer
Curious to know what is it about the animations that’s causing this perception? Is it the fact that the animations make the interface feel less responsive or is there a noticeable performance hit with them you’re seeing? Animations tend to fall into two categories - useful and fluff. The intention behind these was to be useful as a way of maintaining the users position in the tree. Without the animation it’s easy to lose yourself in a complex tree as everything expands/vanishes.
Welcome to all opinions on this and understand how widespread the concern is over the animations.
It’s not a huge deal but it would be nice to have a toggle in the Editor Settings to disable hierarchy animation. I agree it is easier to keep your place when expanding but I think sometimes the snappiness is preferred.
I even voted for a toggle when zoom animation was introduced for the same reasons. Here is a breakdown:
Performance: when the frame rate drops the animation is choppy and might even take longer.
Ping has now animated scroll and takes longer as well.
Functional: When I’m in the “flow” the added latency breaks my flow.
Feel: the UI does feel more sluggish, it’s subjective off course but consider UI as a projection of a physical world with zero latency…
General: recognize the tendency in contemporary UI design to mimick iphone visual language then realize that a pro app and a consumer touch interface are opposite in some key purposes like density of information, responsiveness and marketing goals.
@laurentlavigne - Is this for the animated zoom or does the performance issue here also apply to the Tree View for you? If the Tree View is causing performance issues it’s a much bigger problem as animations should never impact the performance of the app.
To echo the statement I made in another thread, the intent behind these animations is to draw the users attention somewhere and not so much about bringing the mobile world of bubbly animations into professional software. The primary action we wanted to convey here was to draw the users attention to where the action takes place so if they fold out a massive hierarchy they can visually follow it. For a lot of users this is just a helpful affordance but I definitely understand the view on animations making the UI feel a bit less responsive.
In general what are the gut feelings around animations? If we were to use more of them going forward is that ok? Would you want a global toggle to disable editor animations as a whole? Are there animations you foresee being beyond useful and just annoying?
Both - When the fps of the game drops in-editor the animation stutters.
It’s like cars, right? some like mushy steering and wobbly suspensions of an F150, others prefer the tightness of a miata. Me I only like motion where I intend to have motion (good for the flow) so I always turn off animation, even in Maya.
Instead of a boolean you could have a duration property with 0=off (true off, not one frame transition then end), that’s what Maya does, it pleases everyone plus you keep one code path.
Another way you can bring attention to the changing hierarchy is by adding a very subtle animated highlight over the elements that were unfolded/folded 0.1f over would work wonder.
Hmmm… that shouldn’t happen as editor animations are supposed to be frame independent. I’ll raise this as a concern with the team to make sure we’re not missing these cases.
Indeed it’s all a matter of preference which is why I asked about how we should approach this going forward. I’m all for modernising Unity and creating a stronger interaction model but I don’t want it to come at the cost of performance, responsiveness, and user impression. If we were going to add a preference I would prefer it to be a unified one instead of forcing the user to manage 20 preferences to turn off individual animations. My gut feeling is a global toggle like Windows that disables all editor animations but I’d prefer user input here.
Absolutely. Did you want to start a new thread about the Scene view or is there an active discussion I should look at? My teams focus going forward is improving the lives of Unity users as a whole and focusing on artist workflows so I’m all ears for feedback about these things.
