I am not a UI/UX designer but a 3d Artist/Technical Artist. I would like to ask about some input on one of my creations: a tool for working with UV's in Autodesk Maya.
My general problem is that I have a somewhat clutted "cockpit"-like UI due to a lot of functionality in said creation. I have a lot of icons that are heavily used, but at the same time I want to hide them or restructure my design. How should I approach this kind of problem?
My second problem - which is directly linked to this main problem - is that many users fail to notice useful functions. I don't know how many times I've pointed my finger and said: "Here, this button does exactly what you are looking for!" followed by an "ahaaa" -reply.
What I've done myself so far is to implement right-click functionality on many buttons, so instead of having one button for flipping UV-shells along X, and one along Y, I have one single button (with right/left click performing either flip X or flip Y). I've also done some extensive organisation, placing icons under multiple frameLayout -categories to the left hand side. Although this has helped some, my problems remain.
How would you approach a situation like this where you need a lot of buttons, but at the same time have to combat the clutter?