Herbert123
that is a very true point and I think many dont understand this. Maya’s menus are massive but so are the amount of tools it has to give access to!
The non floating panels I think got very elegantly solved by the tool bard and property window overlay which is transparent.
@3dLuver
Blenders Outliner is interesting. It is a powerful tool.
Playing with the Outliner since some time.
< … >
( removed by me. A misstake. Probably I was confused?
It was about using the outliner to find specific keyboard shortcuts. The UI itself reveals many of them. Going with the mouse cursor over a button, it shows up.
)
One could browse for shortcuts in the outliner, without searching for a specific OP. Its structured.
@cekuhnen
In my workflow — using the 3D-Window — I try to keep the working area as large as possible. Opening both, the N and the T, could shrinken it and leads (for me) to distractions. Hiding and revealing them (with keyboard) works well.
I like your idea with the icons. But, there would be add-ons without Icons and others with icons. Mixing Text with Icons. Could be good, could also be randomly, distracting. Blender might need more icons?
Currently icons are hardcoded into an image. ( blender_icons.png )
What about themes for icons?
Basing on many svg files inside a local Blender Config directory, which are merged automatically (because of their “correct” names) to an icon image file in the correct order.
Knowledge is power, and if you choose not to empower yourself to make a difference, don’t be surprised if you end up constantly disappointed.
That’s very true, however if people actually knew what it takes to make the changes they desire, they probably wouldn’t perform them. I’m not sure what motivated the OP to open one of these threads, seeing that the only specific issues he came up with was some unexpected vertex group behaviour and the general feeling that the UI was too cluttered. That’s the real purpose of these threads, we all get to talk about our feelings. We’re all generally dissatisfied with things, there are alot of things that we would like to have, but we can’t provide them for ourselves, nor do we have anything to offer in return for them. Well, in the real world, that means we’re not getting them, period.
Of course, fully user-customizable UI would be great. I’m fairly sure it could be done with the existing API to a decent degree. I could do it myself, but then again I could think of 100 things to do that are more interesting. I simply don’t care for it enough, so why should I expect anyone else to care? What do I have to offer that would make anyone care? Ask yourself that question.
Zalamander …
he came up with was some unexpected vertex group behaviour and the general feeling that the UI was too cluttered
My local Xorg-Driver problems I have had with my old GFX-Card had nothing to do with my decision to start this thread.
( I have a new GFX card, it works now. )
Repeating myself.
If you don’t care enough to change it, then it must not bother you all that much.
The thing that I love the most about blender is how open it is. It is mindbogglingly easy to modify blender’s ui. That was one of the big bullet points in the 2.5 refresh. you can right-click on almost every UI element and edit the source code. Within blender. You can add or (even easier) delete buttons at will, recompile the script and the UI will update.
I’ll acknowledge that python scripting is a skill that takes a little bit of effort to develop. But you don’t need a doctorate in computer science to edit lines of well documented, relatively accessible code. There are so many tutorials and resources available for anybody, of any skill level. Every person on this thread is more than capable of modifying existing UI scripts with 15 minutes of research online.
This program is meant to be user serviceable. You can create many features (especially UI features), by yourself, without touching any C code (the doctorate in Computer Science might come in handy there… but even then, this is open source! those feelings of helplessness are completely legitimate with any piece of software sold by autodesk or adobe, but I digress)
This is all of our hobbies and/or professions. We are here because we care about the software. If it bothers you enough to write 25 lines of a forum post, why not write 25 lines of python? Don’t cut yourself short, if you can use blender, you can do basic coding.
To me, it looks like you are using a thought-terminating chliché …
If you don’t care enough to change it, then it must not bother you all that much.
There were some good ideas around, maybe there would be another good ideas. There is no good suppressing further ideas. Thats the reason I opened this therad: its about sharing and gathering ideas. It nearly turned into a fight of ideologies. Thats not what I wanted to happen.
I think, Blender is not an achievment of scattered people who push their individual ideas into an application. It is a whole, and it develops as a whole. The part I am interested in (at the moment) is the question whether the Outliner can be used to manage layers. Sadly, you wont get far with Python.
— Edit —
Now its a day after I started this posting. (the next morning).
Reading again this thread. There were some misstakes I made.
It was a misstake, that I did not specify, that I mainly refered to its visual appearance. I upset and felt provocated during the discussions. I felt being stigmatisised, being condemned and being expelled. My upset pushed me into some errors in reasoning. There are some embarassing ones, too. I corrected it.
I tried not to give others those feelings myself. In some cases it was difficult, I am not sure I achieved it always.
It wont get better if I continue to participate on this thread I started.
Opening the mouth on this topic only leads to more contempt and fighting.
I doubt, that there is any chance at all to develop and share thoughts about Blenders UI in this forum.
There wont be an exchange of thoughts.
ok, we do have a layer manager in contrib python addons, it’s been there a while, whilst it does clutter the ui, it’s a very usable feature. named layers & layer groups are great. As setting up layers is something you should do as early as possible, it’s good to have a plan & name early, to save opening & closing too often. That said, sure, it would be great to have a layer manager in the outliner, that is if you like the outliner & also if & when someone bothers to code it. In fact I like the layer manager in the ui so I don’t need to bother with the outliner, but that’s my opinion & I would rather make use of good working code, than to let it lay waste. I’ve been hearing for years we should have a layer manager in the outliner, I look forward to someone coding that one day. As far as coding for blenders UI goes, addons are your friend.
Quoted for agreement. I tried a while back, as did others, to get some ideas and experiments going. It only took a few aggressive voices before the whole thing became so confused and frustrating that everyone just gave up.
Meta
the layer manager still lacks compared to other applications that use layers.
The problem is probably Blenders limit to 20 layers.
But I am not sure how they an change this when the layers are so far integrated with render features in BI
and Render Layer passes.
In my last project the limit of Layers was hard to manage scenes with plenty of assets in it.
And quoting you for agreement. There is such a large range of uses, experience, habit, and opinion here that trying to find anything close to consensus on UI is almost impossible. Any proposed change is always simultaneously an improvement and a harmful assault.
I’m sorry if the first sentence in my post came off as “though-terminating”. Hopefully the rest of the post was a bit more encouraging. I was trying to remind people that they have a lot more control than they think. and in the context of a thread where people were wanting a more streamlined user interface, I tried to show people that they could very easily change that. I’m sorry that I didn’t address your specific UI request.
Though, on layers in the outliner, have you considered using groups as a sort of pseudo-layer? there is a very nice groups mode in the outliner where you can disable/enable visibility/selectability/renderability. You can name the groups whatever you want, have as many as you want, and even have one object in multiple groups. I know this probably wasn’t what you had in mind, but it could potentially be a viable workaround.
I really was trying to empower people. I think that people just assume that they can’t do something because they aren’t a coder. I didn’t mean to come off as a troll by implying that people are capable of making a difference by themselves.
I don’t want to terminate thoughts, that is why I want people to be able to explore and prototype their ideas. “if you want a feature so much, why don’t you code it?” isn’t a rhetorical question. it’s also ok to have a reason why not. but if the only reason is that you assume you can’t, that’s not going to get you very far.
@Sterling.
Hi.
I think, you made a similar misstake like me. I started with this general words “One of Blenders weakest points is its User Interface”. After it, very few people refered to the core idea. Most people debated about something different.
(Core Idea behind this … it was about limiting distraction in Blenders UI)
If one gets aware of such a misstake, it is already too late in many cases.
As far as coding for blenders UI goes, addons are your friend.
It is not about adding something to the ui, but to make the UI leave something out. But I believe you know what I mean. You wrote …
I actually went through many addons sometime ago & coded that the addon panels be closed by default to reduce clutter
Having a startup file with every panel closed, thats my default. The moment I open a new window, there will be open panels again, I might have to scroll to a button. Distraction.
You gave me an idea.
Automatic collapsing of panels.
User Preferences might help.
With the outliner I searched for a user preference, something like “collapse/close panels by default — Checked or Unchecked”.
There is no preference item with the string “collapse”, no preference item with “close”. Searching for “panel”, there is no option for closing a panel by default.
I think about a “collapse panels by default” option. If a panel left open during save, it would be open if you reopen the file. But, the moment, you open a new 3D-editor or a properties-editor, every panel in the new editor should be closed.
@evilkillerfiggi
Thank you.
And that is disappointing. I thought the work you guys were doing was important and making things easier to understand for new users. I wonder sometimes if the aggressive voices are just those unwilling to change, yet benefit from all the changes made going from 2.49 to 2.5+.
Many commercial packages (XSI, Maya, 3DSMax, etc) have a user-friendly and expert mode. Blender has just the one user-centric mode. We don’t want user-friendliness at the expense of functionality and efficiency.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci
We don’t want user-friendliness at the expense of functionality and efficiency.
Its a slogan for a walkout?
If people start to wear little pngs with slogans in their signature … I think I would go nuts.
There is no reason why user friendliness has to be at the expense of functionality. Or Efficiency.
Unless, user friendliness turns out to be a bug itself, which has to be corrected.
(( Edit ))
The quotes you gave are very good. They touch the same principle.
It was Heinrich Tessenow I quoted. Now I found the original quote.
I find the Blender UI to be logical, easy to use and flexible for customization. I wouldn’t want to see too many changes.
Yes, I really enjoy the discussions around this stuff. As long as you can give an intelligent argument for or against a particular thing it can be very enlightening and can lead to real improvements.
But I have no patience for the people who see no equivalency between all the changes that made Blender what it is today and all the changes that will occur in the future to make it even better. It is like they believe that, by magic, Blender became perfect just before they learned it and so any change will have to worsen it.
Some people even say they are against changes before even knowing what those changes are… LOL
Yeah, like when we got the search function on the space bar. And the vertical tool bars and n panel, those were very good changes and yet we get this whole “I don’t see the need to change it”. Jiminy Cricket, go back to use the original releases back when it was 1.** and try things again - see if you don’t appreciate changes.
Besides, Blender needs to have the same holographic display like Jarvis on Iron Man (wishful thinking)
In my opinion, Blender’s user interface is very good. I’ve used Maya before but found Blender easier to use. Blender’s keyboard shortcuts are logical. The interface is incredibly customizable and user friendly(once you get the hang of it). It can definitely keep on improving but it is still very good.
Calling Blender’s interface logical seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Intuitive = logical in my book and it is hard to consider Blender’s unique UI intuitive. Thats not to say its bad, but its layout and control scheme are far from perfect. I believe its hotkey reliance is a weakness rather than a strength. You have to be a keyboard contortionist in order to get around the interface and interact fully with whats taking place. That is further compounded by the fact that each mouse sensitive window will have its own mini interface with a set of hotkeys as well. The hand has to travel way too much for it to be quick and easy. Over time the strain is increased.
So arguably, anything that offers a break the keyboard acrobatics is a good thing in my mind. Not everyone prefers such heavy keyboard based workflows, and this is especially important when working on a wacom tablet or cintiq. So with Ton pushing the pie menus, I think that is a step in the right direction. Its quite possible to allow multiple means to access any given menu or function, so we shouldnt try to prevent one from coming to fruition in order to maintain or imply the original means is the best means.
In addition to pie menus, I think the interface needs to be far more organized. There is just way to much scrolling taking place, and the more addons you add the more scrolling has to take place. Many similar elements are split between the left and right side of the screen, rather than be consolidated into similar categories. In order to find some basic toggles, one has to dig around looking for where its stashed away under, where as it would be better served being in a viewport based pulldown menu instead.
Ultimately I think we have a serious problem in that there is a group of individuals who actively and agressively fight to keep any UI discussion down and that any discussion regarding changes to the UI, even if it doesnt impact them or can be avoided, is some how an attack on their personal preferences. The UI should be a welcome subject along with feature sets and over all improvements.