SA Dasher & SA Dancer keycap sets (Completed)

[SL89]

Also beware completionist agendas, some people will keep adding requests well beyond the scope of the original intent. Don't let this get too huge. As I suggested before use hack'd by geeks as a good jumping off point. It's complete but not too huge.

[Muirium]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the tips, 7bit!

Careful now. The master wants you to repeat his mistakes. No one ever makes everything quite as complicated as him. "TKLBASE" is a great way to sow confusion, as are all the other picky overlapping kits of his. He'll have you use a PM bot as your interface with the world next.

I like what you're doing already. It'll work nicely. And please, for the love of gods, INCLUDE A 6.25u SPACEBAR with the standard kit*. People will hunt you down and clock you for ruining their purchases when they discover this is missing. 6.25u is right for 90% of uses. And most people never read anything either. Choose your defaults wisely.


*If you don't know what I mean by a standard kit, then you need to make one. Customers want to click buy. Only some of us are the fools who go deep catalogue through all the options. The default kit is absolutely crucial.

[niomosy]

A good default kit is very helpful. It made Troubled Minds easier to navigate; I needed the base kit (which was a TKL base) and the numpad in order to cover a full sized keyboard. The only other thing I needed to worry about from there was novelties or extra kits if I wanted to be ready for putting it on some alternative layout board - Ergodox, Plank, etc.

[Parjánya]

Even if people don't plan to use a 6.25 spacebar, it's a nice thing to have if you ever want to use it in a more kosher keyboard, or sell it for people who do use them...

[zslane]

As you can see from all the kit renders I've done, the base kit comes with a 6.25u spacebar. My "btw" comment was regarding extra spacebars, as their own kits.

Am I hearing some push-back against changing the label from TKLBASE to TKL?

Are there objections to changing WIN to SUPER?

Are there objections to anything else shown in the complete set render? I'm content with the current kit compositions right now. I know there is no international support aside from the basic ISO (UK-style) kit, but other than that, does the set meet with general approval?

[SL89]

I think SUPER fits the vibe more so for this Heritage colorway.

[benburton]

I'm a fan of SUPER as well.

[niomosy]

I'm not attached to either Win or Super so either way works for me. Both are entertaining in their own right outside of OS associations.

TKLBASE vs TKL seems more a labeling discussion than anything. All I'm really interested in is knowing what sets to buy to fill a full-size keyboard. Honestly, I hadn't realized there was a difference until 7bit mentioned it.

[cods]

FWIW, I'll buy both Dasher and Dancer, TKLBase + Specialty.
Very nice.

[zslane]

Here are a couple of new renders of SA Dasher on a white keyboard. These will probably be the last renders I do until after Christmas when I get down to really experimenting with new lighting setups.

dasher_keyboard_ansi_09.jpg (392.03 KiB) Viewed 6189 times

dasher_keyboard_ansi_10.jpg (363.78 KiB) Viewed 6189 times

[zslane]

So I'd like to set aside discussion of kit composition for now and focus on something else: modifier legends.

One thing that bugs me about most SA sets out there is the inconsistency in the fonts used for the modifier keys. This is primarily due to the fact that words like "SCROLL" don't fit on a 1u keycap unless the narrow version of Gorton Modified is used. So the narrow font is used for some legends but not others.

I'm thinking of using the narrow font for all modifier keys and would like to get feedback on this idea. Below is a render of what the legends would look like if they all used the same font.

dasher_legends_cu_01.jpg (350.31 KiB) Viewed 6215 times

Using this approach, the "SHIFT" legend looks especially small, and in fact, I'm not even sure SP has a corrected SHIFT legend in the narrow font (I'd have to ask). However, I like the uniformity of the legends. And besides, does anyone really needs wider SHIFT legends to tell them where the Shift keys are?

Also, where do opinions fall with regard to ESC vs. ESCAPE, and INS vs. INSERT, etc.? My feeling is that either is fine as long as the motif is consistent across the whole set. So, assuming consistency, is there a strong preference for abbreviated legends over full words, or vice versa?

[7bit]

Thereexits 3 sizes: BIGASS, normal and condensed. I've forbidden SP to use the BIGASS variant. You can recognise BIGASS font by the circular O and the larger gaps between letters.

However, if you don't want the condensed font to be used, just cut down the legends. I can give you a list of legends that are too large. I can't do 3d (yet) but I've got a a tool kit that makes sure the text fits and knows when condensed text should be used.

[zslane]

I like the idea of using all condensed legends (for the modifiers). I'm not sure how the community feels, though.

[7bit]

The legends are smaller, even on the large keys. Might not look so well.


Alternatively, use
DEL (DELETE), ESC (ESCAPE), SCRLK (SCROLL LOCK), RENM (RENAME), SRC (SEARCH), SEL (SELECT), LNCH (LAUNCH)

On up to 1.25 units key:
CMD (COMMAND)

That's about all.

[Hypersphere]

The mock-up looks okay to me, although sometimes when I have seen keycap sets in real life, the legends on some keys look too cluttered, and they could have benefited from using abbreviations.

On another aspect, no doubt color symmetry has been mentioned before, but I hope that there will be extra options to have the Backtick/Tilde and Backslash/Pipe keys the same color as the modifiers. It would also be nice to have options for swapping Backspace and Backslash and swapping CapsLock and Left Ctrl. Finally, it would be good have a Fn key for the bottom-row modifiers.

BTW, I received my very first keycap set in the sculpted SA profile with spherical tops. It is the SA Carbon set. I am not thrilled with the orange keys, but the orange on dark brown modifiers doesn't look bad. The cream alphas look great, however. The main reason I got the set is so that I could try out the SA profile and spherical tops. I must say, I am really enjoying it. I have the set on a Novatouch, which seems ideally suited to the SA profile. I now realize that the main reason I had trouble typing on the Granite set was not the spherical tops, but the flat DSA profile (Muirium -- you were right!). With this set, I actually like the feel of ABS, whereas I didn't like ABS at all on other key sets. In any event, I have become an instant convert to SA profile, and I am glad that there is a more tasteful colorway than SA Carbon on the horizon in the form of the SA Dasher/Dancer sets.

[ramnes]

I came here just to say that your renders are really impressive, zslane. I don't like the color scheme but those renders almost make me want the set. Is that your everyday job or just a hobby?

[zslane]

@Hypersphere: take a look at the complete set render on the previous page and tell me if you see anything missing. I believe all the keycaps you mention are covered, but it is possible I missed something.

@ramnes: Thanks! It used to be my day job but nowadays I deal exclusively with the technical side of visual fx, not the artistic. Consequently, my lighting skills are a bit rusty, and besides that I never used Houdini to generate photoreal renders before, so it's been a bit of a learning experience.

[Hypersphere]

@zslane: Thanks for being so polite about referring me to the full renders, when in fact I was just too lazy to scroll through the entire thread. Now that I have taken a look, it appears to me that you have covered everything -- at least the bits I was concerned about. Great renders, BTW.

[zslane]

The legends are smaller, even on the large keys. Might not look so well.


Alternatively, use
DEL (DELETE), ESC (ESCAPE), SCRLK (SCROLL LOCK), RENM (RENAME), SRC (SEARCH), SEL (SELECT), LNCH (LAUNCH)

On up to 1.25 units key:
CMD (COMMAND)

That's about all.

I kind of feel that once you go down the abbreviation path, you sort of have to go all the way or else the inconsistency looks odd, especially to all the OCD sufferers out there. Do we really want to mix ESC and DEL with PRINT and PAUSE and PAGE DOWN? Shouldn't it be PRNT, PAUS, and PG DN? Those looks really strange to me.

[Hypersphere]

I don't mind a mix of full and abbreviated legends. Abbreviated legends are especially fine on smaller keys in order to balance the "white space".

[niomosy]

The abbreviation mix shouldn't be a problem. That seems to be a common route to go on SA sets.

[cswanic]

I absolutely LOVE the large font on the alpha keys. To me a keyset is two parts (1 part perfect color way; you've picked an awesome complimentary color scheme and 1 part perfect font; the large font is my fav). Now the modifiers always seem to be chosen as either narrow or condensed. I'm thinking it has more to do with the designer's desire to have a fully labeled key. I find symbols to be confusing so I generally oppose the idea. I think the chosen font needs to be large enough, that's as far as I will describe it. Narrow and condensed seem too packed especially when choosing the SA spherical profile cap. Plus, you have a chosen soft color for the modifiers (great choice I might add) which when combined with the fine white line of the font, seems it needs to have a bolder element to compliment the chosen alpha color.

[zslane]

I've tweaked the keycap geometry a little and tweaked the legends a little too. Here is the latest Dasher complete set render and the first Dancer complete set render:

SA Dasher complete set

dasher_complete_set_wood_bkgd_03.jpg (992.81 KiB) Viewed 6110 times

SA Dancer complete set

dancer_complete_set_wood_bkgd_01.jpg (986.78 KiB) Viewed 6110 times

A note to those interested in buying both sets: only order the ARROWS kit once. If you are buying both TKL kits then all the possible arrow color/row combinations are provided with just one ARROWS kit. The one to get depends on which color of row 3 arrows you can accept extras of. When buying both complete sets in this way, I believe you will end up with only ten "unintended" duplicated keycaps.

[niomosy]

The renders look great. Both sets are solid. How's the new computer working out for renders?

[dR.Ugz]

I'd like to say that it's good thing I'm not wearing sweatpants while traveling on public transit. ;D these sets look awesome!
I'm wondering if there's any word on on a date yet? And have you thought about adding some windowed Caps and Scroll lock keys?

[zslane]

The new computer is great. Render times are much faster. Having four 3.7GHz Xeon cores and 64GB of RAM really helps...

The next step is to pick up a good HDR library or two and play with new lighting environments for the keyboard renders. I might also make a TKL keyboard from the existing keyboard geometry I modelled. And I suspect there will be pressure to have renders of 60%ers too, but that's lower on my priority list. If anyone knows of any good (free) models of boards like the Poker or HHKB (not the keys, just the board+case), let me know. It would save me a lot of time.

I'm not opposed to windowed Lock keys per se, but I'm usually hesitant to add caps to the base kit that only a tiny number of users would make use of. Nevertheless, I could inquire about the cost of windowed keycaps for the Lock keyaps when getting cost quotes from SP (or, rather, whomever runs the GB could inquire).

[yannickg]

Me wants!

[sero]

Awesome renders as usual zslane! I can't wait to place my order. By the way, I found an interesting photo in my saved files the other day. I think this was posted on reddit about a year ago. It is a photo of the Round 4 SPH set that has been color shifted to look like a Dasher set. I can't remember who posted this, but I give credit to them. I'm sure they are a DT user as well. This is exactly the look I will be going for with this SA Dasher set.

[niomosy]

Glad to hear the new rig is working out well. That's a solid setup.

[LeandreN]

Awesome renders as usual zslane! I can't wait to place my order. By the way, I found an interesting photo in my saved files the other day. I think this was posted on reddit about a year ago. It is a photo of the Round 4 SPH set that has been color shifted to look like a Dasher set. I can't remember who posted this, but I give credit to them. I'm sure they are a DT user as well. This is exactly the look I will be going for with this SA Dasher set.

I don't know if this is a render or real, but as an ISO Norway user.

Holy shit.

EDIT: color modified, nice