I’ve noticed a few things that make me reluctant to use Facer, when compared to WatchMaker Pro…
The lack of control - The lack of ability to customize any face to my exact needs is a bit disappointing. For instance, maybe I like a face, but never use the step counter, so I want to deactivate it, or I want to remove a specific graphic element, but keep the rest of the face in question, for example, a “radar” style face that has blips and a radar sweep, and I want to remove the blips, but keep the sweep, or set the face in such a way that I can toggle the blips on or off. Or perhaps I want to set/add buttons to launch specific apps… All are possible with WatchMaker, but not with Facer…
AM/PM indicators in 24-Hour mode - This is a pretty big one. In 24-Hour mode, there should not be “AM/PM” indicators, as there are distinct numbers for every hour… It seems a rookie oversight to forget such an obvious thing. If anything, since the time display is a global setting, that should just force any face to immediately toggle the AM/PM indicator off, correct?
Day-Of-The-Week setting - It seems the first day of the week is set to “Monday”, with no way to override this/set it to “Sunday”… I live in a region where Sunday is the first day of the week, so it is very confusing to tell what day of the week it is at a glance, with faces that have a days of the week bar displayed. A global setting that overrides which day of the week is set as first could easily fix this.
Import/Export - The ability to import faces in WatchMaker is a major reason I use that app primarily. If there were a way to import my watchmaker faces into Facer, I might be more inclined to use it exclusively, along with the options mentioned above. I have created a face for WatchMaker, but if I have to re-create it for Facer, I’m not sure I’ll bother, since the Facer creator system is very difficult to use, and does not have a phone-based version, where you can then export your completed creation to either the WatchMaker storefront, or Facerepo.
Just some suggestions for improvement, I hope you find them useful.
I tried out watchmaker and found facer at least more user friendy. It takes some time, for sure, to get used to it but at the end you have much more possibilities…
But to your Points:
1.In most cases you can achieve the same, the differences are mainly in the tools the premium designer do have.
When you split your watch face in layers you are able to switch details on and off. It´s a question of your workflow.
You can build in an AM/PM Display in a minute if you want to, so what´s the problem? In Germany we don´t use it and so i don´t need it. But - i build it anyway because i am thinking global.
It´s not the best to begin with monday on Weekdays but you can easily override it. Just add the specific angle when you want to make it in rotational mode. No bid deal.
I love it that others can´t use my designs for their own purposes. Let´s stay unique. We have enough copyright problems these days. Sometimes i need about 40h to develop a nice face. With watchmaker, others can steal it in seconds and some of them present it afterwards as their own work. We do have the inspection mode and if a designer is willing to share his methods and special formulas he invented, you can have your look under the hood. The facer creator isn´t that difficult to use -it only gets difficult if you want to do special things and/or animations (but you can do things you can´t do with watchmaker). I think both programs are nearly the same.
To the phone-based version: I am not willing building watch faces on a phone! Far to difficult in handling and you can´t really see all details. BTW: Free Facer watch faces are normally added automatically to face repo.
The main difference between the two programs is, that one is operating on phones and the other one is pc-based.
Thanks for the reply, I hadn’t thought about the copyright issue before… I assumed any theme you create has some kind of unique PGP-style fingerprint that cannot be removed?
Although, I vastly prefer being able to build on my phone, since that allows me to make changes, and implement new ideas immediately “In-the-field”, vs having to wait until I have access to a PC to create something.
The main approach to the Facer app for me is from the perspective of a user, not a creator, so the AM/PM toggle issue, and day of the week setting are probably things I should have asked the developers… I do not know if they read the forums, so I may need to submit my original post to them directly.
In free faces you can’t build AM.PM toggle so you have another options to tell the user if its day/night or 24hs display. In premium watches is easy to do if you want to. We already asked to Facer a tag that returns what time form the user chose…
The first day of the week is a convention but you can do it as you want. Its just a number in a tag, so you can build your watch with wednesday as first day of the week of you want, in the form you want (day bar, rotational, windowed, etc) only manage the conditionals to match your layout.
And like @GAUSS said, doing a watchface takes time and dedication, if user doesn’t like some features, they can simply choose another face. Premium designers work hard to make them as costumizables as possible.
Greetings
You can ask specific questions directly here in the forum, all active members are very friendly and we all help each others.
And - my tip: Read the docs and have a look at the examples, they are accessible right above in the main screen of the facer creator.
Beside, you can learn a lot when you inspect other watch faces, via the small rocket at the preview screens. In my watch faces the inspection mode is always on.