I mean I didn’t really use it before 2.8 either, save for the properties panel and some few addons that were placed there…
I just feel like everything in there is totally useless as I know all the hotkeys and I feel the tools are far more useful that way.
Also, I feel it sad that the sidebar tools are an entirely separate set of tools (that do the same things) as the hotkey tools. Feels like something you’d find in 3DSpoopheadautodesk and not in Blender.
Also the properties for those sidebar tools appear in the active tool panel but the hotkey tools do not??? How does that make sense?
Anyhow. Feels like a totally unnessesary split to have them be a seperate set of tools with options elswhere.
I do understand the need for such a sidebar, even though the implementation is 3dspoopy like.
Anyhow, is there a way to customize the t panel so that it can actually be useful to me?
Also how many of you still perform animal sacrifice to Autodesk?
Yes, it’s kind of hit or miss as what’s important enough to be in the toolbar. I pretty much ignore it as well except for that random time I hit “W” a few times, I only use the spin tool from the toolbar and some addons (very few) add icons to the toolbar.
I do like though that the tools in the toolbar are starting to get a bit more interactive. But, I do wish that all the tools had a bit more interactivity (like Max) in the viewport with the toolsets in a way that wouldn’t need to tools options in their current three possible locations. Maybe, it can be argued that then there will be 4!
I don’t find default tools in toolbar more useless than in 2.7.
I mostly use hotkeys. But I like to use it for annotate tools and brushes in paint and sculpt modes.
In practice, using an active tool may be efficient if you plane to make repetitive actions.
An active tool is a modal tool. So, you don’t have to repress hotkey, at each iteration needed.
You just make a left click. So, that can expand keymap and speed up things for a Right Click Select user. There are too much tools to build a keymap configuration, easy to remember, that takes them all into account.
For example, Shift Ctrl Alt S to shear followed by an axis. I stopped that.
Shear Gizmo is really more pleasant to use.
Same feeling with Spin Gizmo. It can be used whatever your angle of view is.
But active tool may be changed by using floating toolbar or alt taping.
So, toolbar is no more the only way to access them.
Toolbar was restricted to Active tool new concept, by safety.
Devs were entering the unknown with that and did not want to complexify toolbar too much to avoid confusion about novelty.
But William said that toolbar restriction to active tool was probably too restrictive, other stuff could migrate to it and it should be customizable like rest of UI.
My conclusion is that it does not hurt to have it closed, now. (N sidebar has tabs, now, to handle a lot of things.)
In future, it should become more flexible.
