cool I’ll be waiting
after some emails back and forths with Roberto Roch, I’ve worked on the 3d viewport to have better contrast and to see details in sculpt meshes better from the get go (w/o matcaps)
so here are the 2 directional lights, a yellow and blue pretty subtle.
and here’s the from above fill light to give some specularity (can’t boost this up to much though since it’s gonna make intense specs in hard edge models, like anything boxmodeled with larger quads will glare to much)
also, I had to ditch the dark 3d view background, in long sessions, everything bright in the scene started to scream to much. I’ve gone with the overall GUI background color, but a bit darker. (eye dropped the timeline darker part to have at least some design continuity and not … stand out so much.
here are some general pics.
general overview of interface, and various meshes in 3dview and 3dview background color.
face and vertex normals, actually unchanged, bright colors.
here’s quite the change, I found it actually useful to make selected vertices a different color than white. (face and edges are still white when selected) tried around and liked this color.
also a bright change, the face dot has become green (face normal is also green) when selected but the face is still white and edges are white as usual. Just think it’s easier to see if certain faces are selected.
that’s that. gonna tweak some more and release tonight or tomorrow if my internet works at home.
updates for Softblend 1.9
- checkboxes are now white/brighter and the item (check sign) is black
- list items have a slight alpha, and selected has more alpha. (as seen in render layers in pic above)
- render layers (move to layer also) have now the dull light blue color as selection, and a outline to help out visually separation between toggle items.
Softblend 1.9 is coming soon, going through entire theme, next focus is curves again,
also worth mentioning I’ve darken the panel texts and titles.
giving f-curve and dopesheet source-list some luvin’
for all you waiting for 1.9 it’s gonna be good, I might even make i 2.0
some stuff that will be included (to the extent I can bundle it)
- all my compositing images (I have virtually every res, saved as a b/w plate), shapes, and gradients (b/w, RGB, 400-700nm <- visual spectra)
- tons of sculpting brushes
3) mat caps (e-mailed the author if I can distribute it with Softblend) to the extent I can bundle them - last but not least, I’ve been gathering basemeshes from the net and have now about 10 really good ones, converted to .blend files and named the meshes to make sense if you append into your sculpting projects.
in pursuit of a really good skin shader for sculpting, also eyes both humans and aliens.
sofar this rocks, but it’s waaaaay to low-res.
Very nice! 
Cool look so waxy.
That skin shader’s looking great! Can’t wait to try it. 
the fake SSS sculpt litsphere is by another 3d artists, gonna see if I can distribute it with Softblend,
and also if he can give me a more hires, he’s distributing it as a .LMZ zbrush material.
I think it’s OK to distribute the basemeshes as long as I add somehwere where I got them etc,
when we will see the new version of softblend
this weekend. I promise. I’ve been touching up some colors, doing minor fixes.
but the major stuf going to be to see (compiling blender as we speak) if Cycles in trunk will bring some GUI changes, new icons, new fonttype etc …
then just final tweak on interface colors.
but besides that I will distribute basemeshes with a text datablock containing credit to the rightful creator. I mean it’s not 100% necessary but I dont wanna be a bastard.
I’ll also pack in my own plates and shapes and textures I’ve created for compositing.
like all formats I’ve ever stumble upon. for example.
res_plate_1280x768_WXGA_5-3_black.jpg
tells you it’s a resolution template, width and height in pixels, it’s name WXGA in this case, and it’s aspect ratio. then the backdrop color.
good for just compositing work, or bringing in a clean black/white image instead of mix 1.0 a rendered image with black or white etc. just to get a clean plate.
I got some basic fill shapes like triangle, quad, circle — I’m missing a node that does this. just create an shape — I mean a basic shape anything more advanced like octagons or something shapeless blob like you could do in 3d view and render with no light and get the alpha channel.
but these are good for instant graphics.
also I’m gonna bundle my gradient textures.
All linear gradient, angular or radial gradient in black and white or RGB values, and also on in the Electromagentic spectrum 700nm to 400nm (from visible part of infra red, to visible part of ultra violet)
it’s hard to explain but it can be used in refractions etc. it’s just a nice gradient 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
but I’m kinda torn about lit spheres, for sculpt. can’t find any with really good copyright or lack of there-of.
I think we — the blender community — should start making our own and share. I mean a huge repository, I’ve made kinda an eye attemp, and also a black emerald or, alien eye lit sphere.
human eye — with env. texture.
alien eye - with env. texture
thanks aermartin this is my favorite theme
you’re welcome, nice to hear! I will definitively keep on updating it — since I’m using it as my theme to.
updated to 2.0, it’s a pretty big download file because of the base meshes and my compositing images. 2.1 will be only theme again, unless I add litsphers.
thanks martin
hi big fan of softblend since… well since you started it
@gabrielaca you’re welcome! I will continue to make it more soften for the eyes, low contrast and tweak where I find necessary. one thing that’s hardcoded is that bright red color in NLA editor.
I hope they make it themable soon, Ton even tweeted about it once. That it should avail. via python so we can theme it. Thinks it’s Joshua the animation guy that’s sitting on the code ^^