Everything That Can Be Seen Can Be Applied.

The user interface of Realsoft 3D is dynamic and context sensitive. For example, select a NURBS object and the tool bars show you the NURBS tool set. Select a SDS object and you have a SDS modeler at your finger tips. Select a skeleton and inverse kinematics and other skeleton specific tools show up automatically. Toolbars, key bindings and menus all show you the right tools at the right time.

For ease of use, only the tools applicable to the current operation are shown. In other words, the user cannot see functions which cannot be applied. For example, when the user selects a sphere object, only sphere specific tools are shown. When the sphere is deleted, the sphere specific interface is also closed. If you can't apply it, you can't see it. This way the interface always remains compact and surprisingly simple.

Select a curve and the toolbar shows you the NURBS specific tools that can be applied to the curve.

Compass Menus

Compass menu is a special menu system which allows you to quickly activate tools by dragging the mouse to one of the eight directions.

There are also two distances: near and far. For example, drag the mouse to 'far-east' to switch to the 'back view'. Select 'near-north' to rotate the view up 90 degrees.

Also compass menus are context sensitive. Select a SDS object and the compass makes the SDS modeling tools available for you.

The big idea is that selecting tools from compass menus is something your muscles can 'learn'.

Unified Tools 

All tools that share similar characteristics have been unified. For example, the rectangle geometry tool allows creation of all kind of rectangular objects such as parallel texture maps, 3D painted squares, etc. This principle has greatly contributed to reducing the amount of functions in the program and making it user friendly.
 

Drag&Drop 

Drag&Drop is supported thoroughly. Object properties, grids and post effects, to name a few examples, can all be defined through an efficient and easy-to-use drag&drop interface.
 

Object Handles 

The intuitive Object Handle Interface allows you to rotate, move and scale objects easily simply by dragging the appropriate handle through the View window.
 

The coordinate system handle translates and scales the object. The three circles rotate the object about any of its axes.   Objects also provide a number of 'object specific' handles through which the user can control object specific properties. For example, face handles of subdivision surfaces allow you to move on normal, extrude, bevel, rotate, scale and move on edge simply by dragging with the mouse while holding down a key modifier.

In addition to geometric objects, all kinds of objects can be managed using the select window. Materials, grids, rendering settings, special effects, etc. can be selected from the Select Window using a consistent interface.

For example, to select a grid, simply drag&drop the grid into a View window. Or, to activate the depth-of-field effect, drag&drop it into the View window.

Advanced GUI Development System 

Realsoft 3D introduces a very powerful and advanced GUI development system. You can create any kinds of targeted and customized 3D applications by drag&dropping the desired tools and other GUI controls into the application. Menus, icons, tabs, toolbars, strings, fonts, background colors and other elements can be defined this way by the end user.