The whole Active tool system is not helpful at all especially in the Node Editor, everything was well organized & one click drop for nodes but now you have to go through Menus each time. adding more clicks & frustration to find basic nodes.
What bothers me the most is no one has complained about it except me, this needs to be brought back, it was one of the simplest things that i never thought about it’s importance until i started using 2.80.
The active tool system is still not complete nor ready. They seemed to ship just the bare minimum to it.
Honestly, this active tools system in Blender is one of the slowest and useless systems i tried over quite some time. It stays more like a blocking feature to get work done IMHO. Yes, is like goodsend for newbies, but all what really was needed in the end was transparent Zoom and Pan, independently of any tool selected or in use.
Maybe when Campbell complete the rest of the work on their Gizmos, the results will be painless and faster than we have nowadays.
The BF now has over a million dollars a year for development projects, so I hope this means they will start going all the way with these transformative ideas instead of doing the 2.5x approach of simply stopping until some unspecified future release.
Previously, I could understand because resources were tight and they had a long list of development todo items with few devs. Now they have all the devs. they could want and an acknowledgment that people/companies are demanding higher quality development. If they continue the status quo as seen from 2.25 to 2.79, then Ton might need to retract every negative statement he made about Autodesk and the other commercial vendors (because it will be obvious that the BF is not at all interested in being the alternative to the “big and greedy” solutions).
Not just a modal, more like a tool state where gizmos can be called and certain hotkeys can be used to override normal behavior, generally this means LMB will activate the operator when active, but other hotkeys as well, and any number of gizmos so long as you implement the interaction for them.
I try to understand the issue with active tools. Trying myself, for me they do good job.
For me, active tools change user experience. Using them feels less ‘hacky’. Do other blenderers consider it important too?
Take Smooth tool. For me feels much more intuitive then “smooth vertices”. No need to tweak “Smoothing” or “Repeat” property widgets, no need to have these Properties accessible. Smooth tool uses mouse movements in a more clever way then “smooth vertices” does.
Imo, thats an important aspect of the Active Tools. Much of the fuctionality could be done with old Blender tools.
I guess, its not the key point.
Most active tools do a good job to keep you not distracted from your workflow.
I kinda dislike the active tool stuff, especially the UI.
There are 3(!) places in the UI where these active tools sits, but the actual useful properties of the tool are still in the stupidly named “last operator” panel, which ONLY exists in the UI as this retarded, crippled panel in the lower corner, which you can’t move. WTH BF?
Unify the system, or at least put it in the appropriate places, it is one of those “special” things only Blender does and it infuriates me.
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No, never used them. Very sad they are pretty much abandoned.
It’s obviously not Blender official, but I’ve had the redo panel set to a hotkey for years.
(screen.redo_last) brings the expanded menu right to your cursor. I don’t muck with the dedicated viewport menu anymore and it feels great.
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