Welcome to the Shade 10 Preview! This is the first in a series of articles introducing you to the new features and updates in Mirye Shade 10. Shade 10E beta 1 is now available under a closed beta – anyone who purchased Shade 9 qualifies to participate, both in the beta and also to get a free upgrade to Shade 10. This first article introduces you to some of the changes in the Shade 10 main workspace – the Figure Window.
Shade has always had one of the least cluttered interfaces of all 3D applications – and Shade users like that! With Shade, you aren’t shuttled between workspaces or pushing away dozens of panels or navigating menus five levels deep. With Shade 10, your workspace is still entirely unburdened – several new additions plus several small interface tweaks makes it easier to find the tools you need and less cluttered than any previous version of Shade.
The Shade 9 Figure Window let you grab your four viewports by the edges or at the intersection for live resizing. The Shade 10 Figure Window lets you customize workspace in many more ways.
You still have your four viewports – but now each one of them is independently customizable. Say goodbye to hard coded viewports!
Yes, you still have your top, front, right side and perspective views when you first start up. Now each viewport has a control bar and each has two new menu items on them: the View Menu and Display Menu.
Shade 10 View Menu
The new View Menu is where you can select what each port displays from any of eight different types: Perspective, Top, Bottom, Right Side, Left Side, Front, Back and UV. UV lets you jump right in to view your UV map if you are working with polygon meshes.
Shade 10 Display Menu
Now lets move on over to the right where we find the Display Menu. The first thing you can customize for each view is your display mode – from wireframe to full texture preview – with or without wireframes. There are a few other display controls in this menu, including lighting options for when you are modeling.
Do some mousing around with your mouse wheel. Your mouse wheel is finally usable in Shade for zooming! But mouse zoom is fairly smart, too – if your main view is set to perspective, it won’t zoom unless you select it or you switch one of your other view ports to perspective.
