Just saw the proposed opening splash for the 2.5+ series of Blender.
Not sure if many people have seen it (or if its working with the 2.5 builds out there at the moment) but I thought Id post it here for people like me who haven’t seen it yet!
Certainly looks very cool and pro, I especially like the stuff below the picture, the links section is handy (instead of previous versions going to the help bar up the top to find any links) and the recent documents saves a lot of time, rather than going File>RecentFiles etc etc.
The Hotkeys drop down is definitely something the many Max/Maya users will appreciate, it would make transitioning to Blender much better.
Looking good! I hope this is somthing that the 2.5 releases are finalized with
Too many buttons for my taste, and the X in the top right corner is unnecessary, you move the mouse outside the splash should close it. But open recent is useful, and I guess the hotkey sets are useful to steal users from other software.
That is awesome! Very professional looking and informative for newbies I think. Love the Hotkey setup idea. I suppose they would make the pic change as well if you are connected to the net? And it’s optional as well I see. So if you don’t like to have it you can disable it.
I’m not sure if this is going to be in or not…I thought it was a sorta old proposal…don’t get me wrong, I hope it is in there…I just think it is too soon…I never liked that the splash auto magically closes itself, or that it is visible at startup.
Lets cross our fingers though.
It certainly is not bad, but a bit cluttered for my taste… Maybe you could move the “Open exisiting file” button below the recent files and make it a link too. The hotkeys and the “show this window on startup”-checkbox should both be placed in the user preferences. Accessibility for users of different packages is good, but I see no reason why these seldomly used actions should be placed in the startup screen.
Another thing that bothers me is the close button. The automagical close-when-move was really handy. Of course that is not an option anymore, but maybe the splash screen could just fade away when the mouse is moved out of the splash screen.
Thats exactly how I felt. Makes the older versions of Blender seem much younger and less professional. This lets you get right back to where you were at when you last left Blender, or surfing the net for information/updates.
As was pointed out in another thread, all the people who don’t want Blender to change its color scheme, key-mapping etc. and jumped up and down and screamed about it would be happy (well, one excuse to be unhappy would be removed). All they have to do would be to hit the Classic Blender button and off they go.
Also, its great for noobs who can have immediate access to tuts and the manual.
Maya and other 3D app users can immediately get the interface looking like something more approximate to ‘home’ for them so they can get up and running faster.
This new splash screen looks really snazzy, but i don’t think Blender has all the operators in place to be able to simulate Max or Maya properly… But it’s nice to see that the devs are thinking about this!
you know that kinda sound kool maybe it could be connected to the header image on here so when the devs change the header image it becomes the new spash screen image
