Is the mute channel function unclear?

[chucky]

It seems a few people are tripping up on the mute feature.
Although it's all explained in the manual ( I assume ) it may be easy to miss , when looking at the UI.
I've been caught a couple of times ( not badly) but I can see that it might be annoying for confusing for some.
What do you think, is the dot clear enough or could the mute be more obvious?
Keeping in mind precious UI space.

[Greenlaw]

I like the dot but it could be bigger. Personally, the international 'no' symbol (slashed circle) would make more sense.

A lock symbol wouldn't make sense to me. A lock should lock the layer (which I wish we could do natively,) not mute it.

[Greenlaw]

I mentioned this before but what would be useful to me is the option to have the renderer ignore mute settings. This would prevent users from submitting 'bad' renders because they forgot to disable the mutes. (I don't think I'm the only one who keeps doing that.)

I think I recently mentioned a variation that may have been better, but I'll have to look that up.

[synthsin75]

Yeah, I wouldn't want something that took up more UI space.

And I don't really think the icon is the problem, since there's no way to indicate when a channel has been muted in an action while you're on the mainline, or even when you're just on a different layer. It's not like a generic warning would help much, since it wouldn't tell you which specific layers/actions/channels are muted. And trying to make a comprehensive warning with all that info might be annoying for those who have already learned the software.

I always just make note layers to remind myself what I've muted.

Granted, new users always manage to hit some option they didn't know what it did and causes them trouble later. That's just part of learning, IMO. Maybe the problem is that it's too easy to accidentally mute a channel while clicking the channel icon to select all its keys? If so, I wouldn't want to make it harder to access, but maybe it should be to the left of the channel icon or something.



I would agree with needing an option to have the render ignore mute settings, Dennis, especially if it included options to selectively apply to render, preview, and export separately.

[hayasidist]

The trap I fell into was that I'd accidently muted a channel in a smartbone action, but muted channels aren't muted in an action (I hope that will soon be 'used not to be muted in an action') --> the animation runs in the action, but not in mainline -- made even more confusing because the muted channel didn't appear in mainline (the only place the object was animated was in the action): IOW there was *nothing* in mainline to show that the channel was a) there and b) muted. So with that "fix" it will be more obvious that channels are muted - i.e. the "something else" is that muted channels are always muted whether scrubbing the timeline in mainline or actions.

I can see why it would be good not to have channels muted in rendering - and right now I can't think of a practical situation where you might need to have something rendered with less that all of its animation switched on - but things such as muting colour changes because you need a mask (??) might be useful, so my own vote for that would be to make it a layer comp option - IOW if you just "render" then all channels are animated (mute is ignored) but if you have a layer comp option to "render with muted channels muted" that, IMO, ought to cover all eventualities.

I agree with the desire to minimise use of real estate in the timeline; so I think I'd go for a UI redesign - Mute / Unmute becomes a right-click option on the channel -- lose the dot entirely -- and grey out the channel icon when muted.

[synthsin75]

I agree with the desire to minimise use of real estate in the timeline; so I think I'd go for a UI redesign - Mute / Unmute becomes a right-click option on the channel -- lose the dot entirely -- and grey out the channel icon when muted.

When I need muting, I seem to use it a lot...lot of muting/unmuting. So I'd rather it not add to my clicks by being a right-click command.