It seems like everyone’s been chit-chatting about this changing the UI, but does this UI change mean we’re gonna lose the current, windowless interface? Frankly I love the current interface. I’ve tried using max and maya, and I bloody hate them. As far as I’m concerned, they’re a step back from blender. I have trouble understanding when people say it’s too hard to get used to the interface, seeing as I was in love with it after a week or so.
I guess my question really is, if there’s a UI change, is it gonna be into a clunky, max-type interface? or is the current windowless one simply going to be reorganized?
No, I think it means it’s detaching the UI from the core of the program, so the GUI and hotkeys will become customizable. This means that there COULD be Max and Maya like interfaces, which’d be good to attract a new crowd, but blender will still be blender.
i belive they wont change the whole GUI only the UI part… graphically it’ll stay quite the same =) or well what is sure is that ton has sayed, he doesn’t want to change te ui in a way that would alienate the current users (hope i made some sense here…)
There has indeed been plenty of talk about a UI change. Considering Blender and the Blender Foundation’s current position, it’s a normal step to make the UI more accessible to others seeing as it’s one of the major point holding people back from using Blender.
However, many of us love the interface and find it more intuitive and more user friendly than so called "standard UI"s.
I am confident that Blender’s developers will not just copycat the standard UI, which would, in my opinion, ruin one of the initial philosophies of Blender.
The only two remaining options are creating two different UIs between which the user can choose (not likely) or creating a brand new UI which I cannot yet imagine.
One unavoidable step, I think, will be making menu options for all hotkeys and making it possible to map the hotkeys in a different way. In order to work with Blender, you need to know the hotkeys, but working with hotkeys is not everybody’s thing and admittedly, many people like to learn of an application’s features by trying out the options in the menu’s.
Blender has advanced spectacularly, but now that Blender’s capabilities are rivaling, and in some places excelling, those of other packages, the time has indeed come to make Blender more accessible to those who’d like to use Blender but who feel Blender’s interface is not within their grasp.
In conclusion, it will be difficult to both keep the interface as flexible, intuitive and usable as the current one is while making it easier for users of other packages to use it.
The devs have done extraordinary things so far. Let’s not lose the spirit! :yes:
I’m not sure what gave you that idea. There definitley are ideas being tossed around with regards to modifying the current GUI, since its proving inadequate on several fronts. I dont think anyone is considering modifying the underlying concepts though.
Blender users should really refrain from worrying about this sort of thing. All things considered there needs have been very well represented up until this point. Theres not a liklihood that such will change.
One of the Blender best feature is the GUI. Why we need to change it???
I hate the gui like Maya, Max or XSI… Windows that are layered on the work place… joke like MS Windows…
It was something I thought Ton said somewhere that gave me that idea. Maybe it’s changed since then.
EDIT: Actually, by ‘not a GUI change’ I do not mean that it might not be shuffled around a bit, I just mean that I’m pretty sure the the window style and organization system and stuff will stay essentially the same.
That webpage is only a collection of user requests, not developer plans. It seems unlikely to me that the Blender UI would change for the worse. Here’s what Ton said on IRC on the subject yesterday:
The main thing I want is to ensure that the current (power) blender users then can work more efficient and with more pleasure. I dont code for maya users or 3ds users
Just to reassure endi: that page is just a list of requests by (some) users- you can easily add your own “keep current ui unchanged” request. It doesn’t represent the plans of the developers.
I think the developer idea is to improve the ui and remove some of it’s limitations, while keeping blender, not making a clone of some other program. Like having an interface that is more logical and extendable, and with more customization (like hotkeys) and better code, but not something that is a clone of gimp, or max or…whatever.
Has anyone noticed how almost the entire Adobe production suite (Premiere, After FX, Encore, and Photoshop CS3) have moved to a very Blender-like system of non-overlapping windows? That aspect is gaining some recognition in the professional world.
Blender could also learn from the really cool way that Adobe uses for rearranging & sizing those windows, though.
That request page is a bit laughable. It seems more like the rants of a few disgruntled “users” that might do better by just spending their time learning instead of complaining about “problems” that are solved by just a little bit of initiative for learning.
(hope i made some sense here…)
