UV Editor interface proposal!!

Hi

I made a proposal the last week for the UV Editor. The proposal was made with the help and opinion of other artist that use blender, some old users and others new comers and all people that I’ve asked are really happy with the proposal. I showed the proposal to developers and Pablo told me about to show to community to see if people like it.

The basic idea of this proposal is not to break the actual Blender workflows, only a improvement in the way that the interface is ordered to make better groups in tabs. Making easier for newcomers and don’t destroy old users “user experience”. Trying to avoid big changes for developers.

THe main change is move all tools to specific tabs and divide the tabs by step in the UV workflow. So we have five tabs with Unwrap Tools, layout&pack tools, grease pencil, Sculpt and bake (because the idea is to move the bake from properties to UV editor where have more logic). Also the changes in the interface search to add some features that actualy are hard to use and understand by new users (UVmap size, UV index)

This is the idea




Here you have a explanation about the changes.



In the document of the email you can read the basic ideas on which proposal was based

1 Like

It looks to be an excellent proposal. UVeditor UI needs love.
Tabs are needed for UV addons.

The only negative point I can see is : rows with more than 2 buttons.
It works on a mock-up with large columns. But on a translated UI with narrow columns with an UVEditor minimized inside a screen with other editors, it may fail.
I already may have difficulties to read names in sliders of GP Brushes. Probably, curve button could be above slider instead of next to it.
Or slider template could be redone to set 3 buttons on same line slider on another one.

Could you show and example of what you mean?

I like it—it’s more organized and simple to use.

It needs the Live Unwrap option somewhere, unless I’m just not seeing it.

I like your proposal.
In my opinion they should separate the render view from the image editor.

I though about it. In reality I think that UVEditor/Paint/image viewer must be different things. But I understand that it is better for developers to have all in the same area. And I didn’t want to make a proposal with a change so big. But it’s true that is a point.

Something like that :

Curve Widgets are used elsewhere. They probably deserve their own icon.

With a width like that the interface give a lot of problems actually, N-shelf cut the half of words and the T-shelf is very noisy. I understand that someone can use it, but the interface won’t work in that case and to solve the problems for that case will create a worst GUI for most users, specially for new users.

I agree uv editor needs some love they already improved it little bit in 2.79 by adding some tools in shelf but its just not enough, main functions should work like they do in 3d editor like resetting 3d cursor to 0.0 space with shift+c etc.

Good proposal btw

I was not proposing a default width for column. I am simply explaining that a grouping on 2 rows is better for a group of 4 elements.

You succeeded to remove a complete panel of 3 curve widgets. Of course, 3 lines takes more vertical space than no line.
But removing Brush Curves panel is already a great improvement. The 3 lines are not the big problem.

The problem is to keep current 2.79 panels to edit and sculpt GP strokes that also have been vertically shortened by increasing columns width (which is also increased by use of Tabs).
In 2.8, Grease Pencil in 3D View have modes that are avoiding a too long toolshelf.
Grease Pencil in 2D view in 2.8 may try to keep ability to draw, edit and sculpt at same time.

But instead of pressing Enable Editing button to add panels below ones relatives to GP drawing, there could be a new tab dedicated to that.

I’m sure about that, I didn’t add all the tools that I know. But because I preferred talk about actual native tools and the interface. Because I could add better pack tool, quality,…

It’s true that is the bigger tab with more widgets and maybe that we need is a specific area for grease pencil 2D or a edit mode in the 2D view. The idea of the tabs is group all tools of similar use.

I like it a lot!

I would love to see a baking panel in the UV editor. I hate to have to have 3 windows open just to access the baking options.

And I like the rest of the proposal as well.

did you put it in rightclickselect?

Nop, Like I told I send directly the message to the mail list of developers. But I could do it.

Actually my view on this is that the UV editing should be migrated to the 3D view as another object edit mode and the editing tools could be shared between mesh editing and UV editing. Alas for that to happen there needs to be someone interested in actually doing that work.

Another side effect would be a much emptier image editor view with space for real image/texture editor, although again, would require someone willing and interested in doing that development work.

The biggest takeaway here is that this shows how the tabs are underutilized at the moment. The proposal also shows that the tabs, in the way they are done now, are not as good as they could be.

Having the tabs as icons would be a major improvement (I would also add that the tabs then have tooltips that display the name of the category). We could use the icon-based tabs for every toolbar in editors where the number of tools is more than can fit in one section.

Overall, I can see great use in this proposal.

Yeah, I though about it, also in a animated “tab” that allow to read the name when you put the moouse over the icon. But I’d rather not present anything so complicated. Like I told the idea is to improve the UV Editor without asking developer for something hard.

Hi DcVertice, thank you for this concept.
I have some suggestions.
This is not the final concept? Because I see the same “Selection tools” in Unwrap and Layout tabs.
And my opinion is Unwrap and Layout tabs need to combine. Because it have similar tools for editing UVs (weld, stitch, remove dubles, minimize stretch, rotate ±90, mirror, align). This tools need to be placed on one tab. After that this buttons need to be organized AND Separated on Basics and Advanced.
What I mean “Separated on Basics and Advanced”. Buttons like Unvrap, Translate, Rotate, Scale, Border select, Circle select, and other basic operations need to group (if its possible). Advanced user can colapse this tools panel, and this basic tools (which he uses with hotkeys) will not disturb him.

About the order of location of the tabs:

  1. Unwrap+Layout
  2. UV Sculpt
  3. Bake
  4. GP

sorry for my english