2.8 Active Tools usefulness

How are you guys finding active tools particularly with 3D modeling? Currently my use of them has been basically to actively avoid them with general polygon modeling and to just tolerate them when sculpting.

My two biggest obstacle to embracing this new way of working has been their general modal nature when poly modeling e.g if you are loop cutting you are loop cutting until you change the tool, and the second biggest obstacle for me has been the mapping of selections and actions (LMB) on the exact same mouse button.

In other Blender editors the number of active tools is so small that it’s not worth bothering worrying about them.

In sculpt mode you have the general bad idea of placing tools above brushes. Now sculpt mode is a ton of sculpting tools with most offering only one brush. God-forbid you happen to make a bunch of brushes based on different sculpting tools like draw or clay then switching between brushes is complete PITA.

Overall I am seriously questioning the utility of this whole active tools concept.

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I have been modelling alot latelly, mostly low pol. I don’t think I ever used them, just the old ones, from short cuts or menus.
I tried them a couple of times but they are always a pain to use.
It would be really cool to have this pretty buttons just call the normal tools, because they look nice and sometimes I dont feel like shortcutting… but then I do have to, because the actual menus are so unreachable too.

Does anyone find them useful in any way?

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I think some of the Active Tools are more useful than the old version, such as the Extrude tool. It’s just a bit confusing that there are two versions of a lot of tools now: the old single-keypress version and the Spacebar + that key version. In practice I’m used to the single-keypress old versions of the tools, so I use those most of the time.

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If you’re working with a mouse and are already used to the hotkey-centric workflow, you’re unlikely to find any value in them.
If you’re working with a tablet, however, they’re great. As a concept, that is. They still need a lot of work: more “gizmos”, more convenient ways to alter parameters, etc. Maybe even migrating the default action button, so they don’t interfere with selection.

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As a user who mostly observed and learned Blender as hobby past 12-13+ years i mostly hate keyboard shortcuts and use menu and button based functions, i really hope in future they add even more useful accessible buttons. 2.8 was revolution and really starting to step on bloated Autodesk apps. My mind likes to use structures like visual menus, buttons than shortcuts.

I use Rip Edge, Extrude to Cursor, Draw Curves, Annotate, and Polybuild. For things like extrude it’s still easier to just press E, though.

I think once Destructive Extrude, Blueprints, and other tools start coming down the line, their usefulness will become more clear. Most of the current tools were designed around a hotkey approach and don’t really benefit much from the active tools yet.

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I like to be able to snap 3D Cursor without using Shift S menu or an addon.
But for the rest, I use keymaps.

As you say by their modal nature, they are mostly useful to user using a mouse only for repetitive operations or operators who were already modals.
Their gizmo is allowing user to make operations that were specific to view in any view.
For example, shear or spin gizmos.

I agree. But unless, you are teaching Blender ; you are not forced to follow that move.
You can still use right click to select.

About brushes, they will do something. William agreed that is not normal situation to not be able to directly call a specific brush. I agree that does not work in sculpt and painting modes.
But I have not doubt that will evolve.
I don’t think that is sufficient to question pertinence of concept in other modes for tablet users.

Active tools are not modal, the old tools are. When you hit a shortcut and you are locked up in a tool and not allowed to do anything else, not even navigate, unless you confirm/cancel the action, that’s when you’re using a modal tool.
Active tool is freedom, and one of the best things that happened to 2.8, but unfortunately the UI/UX is the worst ever.

Yes, that’s insane.
The people messing with the UI/UX failed miserably there when they removed the global brush palette and made the brushes behave like tools. That clearly showed they don’t know what they are doing.
I just hope Dobarro’s plan comes to life, to remedy this situation.

I am long time LMB select user even in the 2.4x days. at the moment when it comes to poly modeling with active tools I am just using the selection ones and cycling through them with ‘w’ key

Not using them at all at the moment, as they are just too slow for modelling compared to the shortcut workflow, and switching between them feels inefficient. I get that it might be nice to have them when using a tablet IF you don’t have an easily reachable keyboard, but then if you don’t have a keyboard on hand then you can barely use Blender anyway.

I was excited about 2.80 partly because it was originally termed the workflow release, so I was expecting better visual feedback, gizmos that enable tweaking accurately without needing to resort to menus and having way more information in the viewport. Unfortunately, active tools are very far from this ideal currently.

I am happy that there are new gizmos, but I’d love to see more visual feedback, such as numbers to show offsets and angles when using them, and to not have to use active tools to see them.

The other thing that bugs me is that the redo panel is always minimised in the bottom left corner. I was hoping that some of the features of the redo panel would be moved closer to where the user is working, such as onto gizmos, or temporary popovers that let us tweak settings without needing to dig into the tools panel.

It would be nice to know if there are plans to further develop the active tools and make them better, but it’s hard to care very much while they are less efficient than the keyboard workflow.

Hotkeyed as well. How come you prefer the active tool for this?

I primarily use a tablet and it’s easier to use it than Ctrl+RMB. I only really use it for retopology, though.

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The active tools at the moment try to imitate modal tools in edit mode and therefore are not so efficient …
But their true potential (in new tools) could come to do boolean and similar operations on objects in object mode like CAD applications …
In that case the active tools could be very good.

see the example of Moi3D workflow to get the idea …

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I don’t use them at all, most of them are not finished and that slow down the workflow IMO.

Active tools only really set up the gizmo and some tmp hotkeys, the tool is limited by operations limited to it’s operator. Extrude with E and extrude with active tool using gizmo is the same extrude, activated differently.

The capability of any active tool is limited by the operator and the gizmo group used to access it.

So this comes down to how well the operator is designed as a modal and how well the gizmo group is designed to work with it, not the active tool system.

The active tool system is a success in my eyes, even if some tools are lacking interaction/polish, really complaints should be more directed at them.

To an extent I agree that the active tools are not seeing their full potential, their ability to turn each tool into a mode with its own widgets can become pretty powerful if given enough development.

A good example is the spin tool, being able to visually re-position the pivot if it’s a bit off is a nice timesaver. Being able to bang out a dozen or so singular loopcuts in several places is nice as well. Unfortunately, we do not have widgets and graphics that can do things like modify the path faces take as part of a bridge operation or a knife cut line that can be edited.

These tools are just modals where you don’t exit, you can have the same bahavior without being in an active tool.

I don’t use them at all. But I learned all the keyboard shortcuts a long time ago.

Of course, I need to go back and remap some since 2.8 removed so many shortcuts…

Cycling is not as fast as directly calling the tool.
If you set Tweak as active tool, other select tools are using same shortcuts as in 2.79.

So, I suppose that your problem is that other active tools will not allow you to use tweak tool at same moment.

I am in favor of a split allowing an active select tool while using another kind of operator active tool using a gizmo.
That is the reason why independent object gizmos have been added.
You click on gizmo, operation done is the one related to gizmo. You click anywhere else what is done is a selection.
But that cannot be done with active tools that have no gizmo, yet or will never have one like 3D Cursor placement or Extrusion at Cursor.

In fact, that problem does not occur at all for Right clickers. For them, it is easier to use active tools.

I like the visual representation and the gizmos of the active tools. Why I don’t use them however is that I have to keep pressing the mouse button. Which makes precision modelling or entering values with the keyboard for example too cumbersome.
I really wish there were an option for click to confirm with active tools (instead of confirm on release of the first click).
Or conversely, an option for the modal tools to show the gizmos.

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