I this case I mainly meant the swapped brightness of the green and blue.
The outline is unmodified from the monochrome original. For light backgrounds all white could be replaced by black.
Itâs still far too saturated, Though I did edit again, added a few points of saturation since the last one was a bit too close to white for my liking.
I realise it needs to be âblueâ, but the point is to not go overboard, weâre looking for subtle.
3 Likes
I must say with a dark outline a bright ocean does seem to work better.
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Okay, a few pointsâŚ
I didnât think anyone would actually start this, and youâve proven me wrong.
I didnât think I would actually like this, and youâve proven me wrong.
But I am also coming to the realization that very few of the 500 icons actually need to be colored at all. The most important are the edit component icons, then those in the Properties tabs, maybe a few more in a few more headers. Actually color the ârecordâ button (automatic keyframe Insertion) red. Maybe the Editors menu icons. But then you start getting diminishing returns.
Having color can be (for some people) quite important when the icon is used alone, but becomes a lot less important when it is paired with text, like in pull-down menus.
In the end you could probably color less than 10% of the icons and make 95% of the complaints go away. Anyway, thanks for doing this.
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Absolutely, itâs why thatâs part of the guidelines I wrote up.
The only niggle is I canât just work on 10% of the icons, the outlines need to be all or nothing.
Pull down menus definitely depends on the menu, even though thereâs text. For instance the Add menu probably doesnât need colour, but the âpivot pointâ menu could do with something that makes the center dots stand out.
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Great to see you make an effort on that subject you were so passionate about. Although i am in love with the monochrome set I have to say this looks a lot better than I expected it to be. Keep it up!
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Can you share your guidelines (if you didnât already?)
Theyâre on the first post.
Comparison of more icons with separate light and dark themes:
SVGs
EDIT: I turned down the saturation a bit.
If you really care⌠learn from the most exemplary & most influential icons â traffic signs.
Once youâll get experienced working with Blender (or whatever) youâll see distractions.
âThe last thing you want to do when youâre working is think âlook at that lovely X or Yâ. All you want to do is be told what youâre doing and what tools you have at disposal.â
Traffic signs are:
- Large
- Have enforced negative space
- Have enforced background colour
- Often Have an enforced outline around that background
- Convey ideas so incredibly basic that are not linked to colour
- Do include colour where it counts - Stop signs are red.
- Are not software
- Are not restricted to 14 pixels
- Are not buttons
- Donât sit in a cluster where you have to distinguish 4-5 signs at the same time right next to eachother from your peripheral vision regularly.
These icons purposely donât include bright flashy colours that would be distracting anyway.
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Iâm interested. Particularly with the icons for property tabs. I just cannot get used to them no matter how much I use 2.8
Is there a build with these icons somewhere so we can try them out?
Ahhhhh, itâs alive again!!!
Thank you, I applaud your enthusiasm for embarking on such an extensive endeavour. Results are very promising so far, keep it up! 
As someone else stated, open source is just wonderful. I feel like this is the perfect middle point between the two worlds. I hope it pans out.
Cheers!
Got some more done.
Viewport mainly, also finished another line off. Mesh data dots are more orange now.
Vert/Edge/Face select icons, Hair particle select icons, Origin icons, Proportional editing icons (curves + enable/disable states). Some icons I thought were for tracking but I donât use tracking enough to find them in the interface 
. Oh, fake user aswell.
Afraid not, I keep a windows build on me, but itâs a bit of a chunk to upload frequently. And unfortunately the process for compiling blender + icons is⌠a hassle to setup or walk someone throughâŚ
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Hereâs another side-by-side comparison of both approaches on #424242 and #FFFFFF backgrounds with a monochrome light bulb:
Top: Single icon set
Bottom: Separate light and dark icon sets
I mention in the first post that browsers donât display the icons properly, whatever youâre viewing them with must do the same. It seems some things donât like inkscapeâs âclippingâ groups.
I canât work on the hope that the blender devs would be willing to implement what youâre demonstrating here, espescially since It isnât possible to change the outline with simple filter, no matter what way you do it youâd require multiple icon sheets.
Further, the approach you have there has side effects. It nukes themeability with midtone value colours, much less that the icons for a lighter background contain no themeable white areas at all. I also believe those darker colours would make the icons stick out, becoming more distracting against the white ones that would remain, it wouldnât feel like a cohesive icon set.
Itâs not a terrible idea, but I just donât think itâs going to work well in this case, and it requires more implementation we donât have.
2 Likes
That looks a lot better, indeed. I updated the comparison image I posted earlier accordingly.
Doesnât this hold true when combining any partially colored icon set with theming?
Despite having two sets I believe it would save work because less icons would have to be modified.
Not neccesarily, notice the shading menu quite easily colours the globe red, because itâs bright. (granted the continents and oceans are inverted compared to the normal)
As you may or may not have noticed. The brightness of the globeâs landmass and oceans are switched in the black set to more closely match the original brightness levels. When done correctly this should be less disturbing to the consistency of the whole.
Youâre probably right about the midtones, but I believe this can be remedied by increasing the difference in brightness. As such:
This effect may even be achieved using a shared transparent layer of midtones (for which a slider could some day be implemented to control itâs alpha value?).
How do I replace the icons to test run them? That would make it a lot easier to pick icons to work on as well.
Also, since thereâs two world icons, is this case of the red tint really an issue? Would it maybe be better to leave one of the two monochrome?
Iâd have to add an outline anyway, I could invert that one, but itâd just be for the sake of keeping it like the old icon, Iâd rather keep the two in the same set similar instead.
Layers, youâre talking about using more than one icon sheet again.
As for adding them to blender, first you need to figure out how to, and get blender compiling. Thereâs guides on that you can google. Then you need to add inkscape and blender to your system PATH, then you need to install python and add that. Then you replace the blender_icons.svg, and run the blender_icons_update python script, then build blender.