sometimes it would be nice to hide it or maybe just to lock it into a certain point so that if you accidently left click during a modelling session it doesn’t immediately jump into your mesh disturbing your zone! hiding it is not a good idea as stated before, frustrated noobs that dont know what it is for would turn it off then spend the rest of their live here crying that the can’t make the spin tool work properly.
locking it to a certain point in space, will ensure it doesn’t get lost and wont (shouldn’t) affect useability.
a little button on the header should be sufficient for that and save opening panels and searching menus each time you need it on or off.
I haven’t visited this thread for a while but I think I have some (hopefully useful) ideas to add to the discussion.
sometimes it would be nice to hide it or maybe just to lock it into a certain point
hiding it is not a good idea as stated before, frustrated noobs that dont know what it is for would turn it off
You are talking about hiding it and turning it off like it is the same thing. However, there is very big difference. Locking it to a “certain point” and hiding it == turning it off. Hiding it and let it behave normally does not turn it off.
locking it to a certain point in space, will ensure it doesn’t get lost and wont (shouldn’t) affect useability
Turning off the cursor will affect useability a lot. Hiding it will not (if you know how to use the cursor). I use cursor often, and do not feel a need to see it all the time, because I know where it is, and even if I forget or not sure, I can just click again to put it where I want it. To me seeing it as useless as seeing mouse cursor in touchscreen.
You mention frustrated noobs, but what about frustrated experienced users? Sure, most people learn to ignore it when they do not need it, but that’s not possible for everyone. When I work on something the cursor often gets in the way, distracting me (it is bad enough for me in normal viewport but when I use patched Blender with stereo 3D visible cursor becomes even more annoying distraction). I tried workarounds like working in render only and script by dairin0d to hide it, but best solution currently is to compile Blender with an option to hide the cursor.
Since checkbox to hide cursor will not be accepted perhaps it would be useful to consider other, not yet rejected, ideas? Currently cursor looks deprecated. Not only it lacks customization, its design is also not so good. Why black crosshair which is almost invisible on dark background/objects? I think it would be better if crosshair was, for example, made of black and red lines (like cursor’s circle is made of white and red lines) - then at least it would look better everywhere. Also, I think the cursor should be 3D object. This would make it more useful in future when multiview branch will be merged to upstream; it would be easy to make it customizable this way and it will be possible to hide it by choosing empty/transparent or no object as cursor - depending on how it is implemented. I do not think that manually assigning transparent/empty object to cursor somewhere in advanced options is something that typical noob could do by accident.
In my humble opinion, the ideas are indeed useful… However, Campbell Barton’s complaint (that Blender is already suffering from too many options) still stands. Also, such a customization feature has a poor significance-to-development-effort ratio, so no one of the developers would probably consider to implement it unless cursor uncustomizability is their pet peeve. Feel free to ask them, however (maybe the UI team?) :rolleyes:
Blender Devs are unfortunately very resistant against the idea of hiding the 3D cursor in any way. No matter how much valid arguments for it gets told. No matter how much users complains about it.
Forget about the UI Team and any useful changing in the UI in the nearer future. It will not happen. The UI “discussion” happens in a closed environment now. Normal users cannot edit or add any entry or thought at the User Interface section at the tracker. The only thing that`s left is to add some stuff to the wiki. Which gets ignored away then. Just look at all the old and never fixed entries there. Very clever solution to stop the storm that was started by Andrew without the need to get in action really.
The developers still prefers to throw in new features instead of fixing years old problems. Old open source disease. That`s why i am very pessimistic about any new UI feature. We will not even see low hanging fruits fixed. Maybe the ones that are already at the ground, if even. What we already see is stuff that makes no sense, like moving the primitives menu from the top to the ground of the 3d window. Now that was a very important UI fix … :rolleyes:
Huh. At the risk of stating the obvious (and, probably, of adding oil to the fire), here’s a bit of recent news:
Ironically, the question of 3D cursor design suddenly resurfaced in the “3D cursor hiding in paint modes” bf-committers discussion.
In response to Antony’s patch that hides the cursor in paint mode, Campbell (ideasman42) pointed out that 3D cursor is actually used there under certain circumstances.
People have suggested making and explicit switch to hide the cursor (and one reminded that “Render Only” switch exists already), to which Campbell objected that users unaware of the feature would get confused if someone sends them a .blend with hidden cursor.
Ton Roosendaal added that (excuse me for paraphrasing) 3D cursor is a core part of the 3D viewport design. A feature this integral to the workflow shouldn’t be made optional. Quoting Ton, “…you will always regret adding options or preference settings to hide weak aspects in design. Just don’t. Fix the design, or live with it.” Can’t say I disagree.
So the discussion seemingly shifted to the “fix the design” part. People noted that at least the cursor design can be improved (since its current form is “really distracting” and “looks like a discarded life ring in a 3D sea”). To quote, “Without the distracting red-white circle we could have simple but elegant cross-hair as cursor (assuming cross-hair visibility is improved)”.
The suggestions so far:
A) adding theme colors for Red&White circle around 3D Cursor;
B) getting rid of the circle altogether, leaving a simple black cross-hair (“like in walk mode”);
C) replacing solid black lines with white-black dots (like in cross-hair of 2D cursor in UV Editor);
D) just adding gray/white lines around the black cross-hair.
However, no indication of whether these ideas are going to be considered in the foreseeable future. As Ton puts it, “We got enough todo :)”
Many UI fixes are going through so it’s not being fair to the UI ‘team’ which as far as I can tell also is doing everything else as well.
The cursor visibility issue is something that most regular users of Blender (Hi Tiles, except you, of course) seem to think is a manifestation of unfamiliarity with object editing and placement procedures, and I would agree whole heartedly. I wouldn’t mind if the cursor were blinking all the time like a text input cursor so I could find it in a busy scene but I suppose that would be overkill.
Making it look anything like an empty (ie removing the red and white circle) is a terrible idea unless of course you never use empties which in my experience a large number of users don’t even know or care about.
What exactly does the 3D cursor do? I’m a new user; though not new to “watching” Blender development. I don’t see what it’s function is in day to day modeling at all; other than to get in the way and clutter up the viewport. I don’t see something like this in other modeling packages (at least not smack in the middle), and they seem to do just fine. So what is it’s function, and why is it in the middle of everything? I hear the argument for not adding more options; but seriously…a single checkbox to hide/unhide the cursor wouldn’t put a strain on the numerous other options, would it? Again, as a new user, I find it an obstruction to the work area.
Go to the first post in this thread and start reading until you get back to here.
Yep; I did that previously Rich. Unless I’m missing something (and it’s possible, as I’m just getting into things), I still come to the same conclusion I outlined above. I remember Tiles from my TrueSpace days, on the defunct Calagari Boards. Neither of us had to deal with such a thing there, nor I in Lightwave. I’m simply adding to other “new users” view on the 3D Cursor. Perhaps as I get on with Blender and learn it, my attitude towards it will change. I still say that adding a single checkbox to hide/unhide the cursor will somehow overburden the options panel, is rather silly and a poor reason for implementing such a feature. If it would seriously effect the usage of many aspects of day to day operations of Blender; then that is a different story altogether.
Resisting a change because it’s “how it always has been” will do nothing but keep more users from arriving at the software; and therefore, more potential donations to fuel more development, and more pro/semi-pro users from adopting it in their pipelines (or as a primary). But, as I said, I’ll have to get into using it more; before I can make a qualified observation. I’m glad it’s being talked about, at least.
The 3D cursor is basically a symbol for a custom pivot point that you can use for your own needs. Something like a Null object with a fadecross at it. You can work with it in various ways. There is stuff like set origin to 3d cursor, which sets the pivot of an object to the coordinates of the 3d cursor. New created objects will appear at the 3d cursor position. And you will use it very often while rigging too.
It has definitely its use in Blender. And nobody questions that part. But it is very often simply in the way. And with very often i mean 99% of the time here. It disturbs heavily at texture painting and sculpting.
The devs are not willing to change that. They show big resistance here. There was even a patch around for it, which gots rejected. Why they want to prevent the user from hiding the 3D cursor so badly will remain the secret of the devs. That’s Blender 
Thanks for the explanation Tiles; I was having a look at the video that JA12 posted, and that is what I got out of it. It’s a shame that the devs are so resistant to change, that can keep more people from using the software. I guess that is one of the differences between commercial and open source; though, to be sure, they also have no shareholders to please…which can be equally as infuriating, as we’ve seen with Adobe and AD. Nice to see you again, by the way. 
How pleased I am to have stumbled across this thread, and your post. I asked if there was a way to hide the 3D Cursor elsewhere in this forum, and so far have not gotten a reply to my question. Guess I just looked in the wrong place.
The poll results show me I’m not crazy or alone. That will be good enough.
Thanks.
Logically, the poll results only show that you’re not alone.
Yes, after I wrote that, I had second thoughts about the wording.
For satisfy all: Option to cursor “show” / “hide”. When is selected “show”: checkbox autohide (and options for hidding speed…)
the 3d cursor is useless in sculpt mode, so far. (Left mouse button is used by brushes anyway)
However, selections are also useless in sculpt mode.
On the n panel check OnlyRender. Simple.
What an interesting thread. The consensus seems to be that no hide-and-disable option will be implemented.
Would it not be possible for some benevolent script-head to write an add-on to do this?
Unlikely, because the cursor and its functions are probably hardcoded in the precompiled part of Blender and the addons are in the runtime compiled part, or to put it another way, the cursor is written in C (or C++) and the addons are in Python.
(This from someone who is not involved in the actual writing of the code, so take it with a grain of salt.)
Feel free to write and submit a patch if you are proficient in C and C++ coding, I’m sure it will get due consideration.
But how can it be fine if Ton says we shouldn’t complicate Blender - If cursor is unnecessary in sculpt mode,
how can you justify its presence there? Isn’t that ‘complication’ by definition?