The work of William Reynish, I think is excellent. I think that with Pablo Vazquez and the rest of the team, we will end up with a Blender who convinces everyone.
Although I make my proposal, I am 98% according to the described one.
A detail with which I disagree with the last redesigns are the Pie Menus. From my point of view if you can not memorize and execute with a gesture, they do not make much sense. On the other hand, if a tool is added, the Pie reorders, and we will start again.
My proposal consists of 8 actions accessible through gestures, the most common ones and the rest through a central menu distributed in grid. Maybe you could compact the menu, and group by functions (create, destroy, deform âŚ) depending on the mode, do not know.
You can also access the Pieâs functions by keyboard.
From my point of view, improving the UI is a priority, either for new or advanced users. Thank you for the work you are doing.
I loved most of the ideas in the original docs - but not one of the new additions are any good.
They are space wasting horrible pie menus. I do use pies, I mean his ones specifically.
Thereâs not one reason why a tool with dozens of subtools should be on a pie, and not on a simple grid.
William, please donât go mad! Your great ideas lose credibility this way! : )
So Iâve mentioned many times that it be great if we could get a Roughness, Metalness and Albido(base color) bake option for cycles and so far only roughness has been added in 2.8 so far and other people maybe didnât understand what I meant or just said it would not be possible.
I found this.
I have read the UI proposals from William Reynish and i agree with him in regards to the many problems Blender has, however some of his solutions are not what i imagine to be useful.
Killing off immediate mode is a big FUCKING NO!
Sticky keys while an worthy addition to Blender cannot replace it.
This would be what we Germans call a âVerschlimmbesserungâ. Making something worse while trying to make it better.
Making it easier for newcomers should NEVER make it worse for proâs.
That is what turns people bitter and hateful, and rightfully so.
There are many great ideas in that proposal, but this is one of the most stupid ones Iâve read in a while.
If any solution makes the workflow of power users slower, than it isnât a solution.
There is a middle way of providing simple, easy and comfortable ways to do it while preserving the more advanced shortcut driven workflow and even polish it to make it actually better.
I seriously hope Blender users push against this idea.
Secondly i donât like the new design at all. It looks like a cheap modern apple app. The rounded corners everywhere make it match perfectly into that eco-system, but i donât use an Apple and i dislike the look. Its a fad and i hope it goes away.
The missing corners are horrible looking and while i share his sentiments about readability, his solution makes Blender look amateurish.
I am aware that this is purely subjective, but i canât help it, its repulsive to me.
The developers are going to work with power users during the Code Quest. They are certainly interested that they are not being slowed down with new solutions in their daily work! Usually those documents serve as a starting point, either for discussions or for prototypes to get a better idea. Based on that, the functionality is improved step by step or thrown away if necessary.
If the idea is really not usable, it wonât be necessary that the Blender users push against it because it would not end up in Blender anyways.
Romanji; Before pushing back against the removal of immediate mode, it helps to know just immediate mode is from a graphics context.
Immediate mode is an ancient drawing method from the earliest days of OpenGL, itâs not shader based (nor does not take advantage of modern hardware and its instructions), and as a result does not benefit all that much from having a powerful GPU. As a result it is fairly un-optimized, meaning the widespread use of this mode in Blender 2.79 is what gives it one of the slowest viewports in the industry (especially in editmode).
If you want a fast viewport that is on par with Maya, every vestige of immediate mode drawing has to go (and before you ask, it should be possible to have a modern variant of things like wireframes).
To be fair, terms are a bit mixed here. Williamâs document overloads the term âimmediate modeâ in reference to Blenderâs hotkey-based workflow and has not relation whatsoever to OpenGL technology. It was probably a poor choice of words, but there you have it.
I think Romanji is referring to another immediate mode. More precisely then one mentioned in the UI proposal (https://developer.blender.org/T54387), which has nothing to do with OpenGL immediate mode.
If I understand the proposal his idea is having both modal and non-modal tools. Every tool would have an active state (modal) so it works from the toolshelf. This is like changing tools in Photoshop. But you can also use them through sticky-keys as well (non-modal).
Examples:
Extrude would have a new active mode so it works with the toolshelf (modal), but also sticky-key access to use it how we currently do (non-modal).
Knife would work like it currently does (modal), but youâd also have a sticky key: Hold K->Knife->Release (non-modal).
It makes a lot of sense and would solve a lot of UI problems. That means it has about a 1% chance of happening.
The proposal was reeplace one by other. But it appear to be a old proposal and is not clear that they will do that. The problems are also commented, that that mode donât allow a lot of configuration for a lot of tools.
first off, thank you Sanne for your answer, because this is not the first time I try to point out this argument here, but is the first time somebody reply.
The They Iâm speaking of donât have among their interest one of the most important aspect of Blender usability, none of them, and this is disconcerting.
I can count into them also all the people chatting here, they all look like children in a toy store, âGadgets!â, âGadgets!â, âWe want new window!â, âWe have a new palette!â⌠they remind me those who spend the night in front of the Apple Store to be the first to buy the new iPhone.
Blender probably has too many sub tool options to go with sticky keys. A great example is world/local/view transforms. Right now I press G twice to get to local axis movement. How would I do this with sticky keys? Hold down G and tap the other keys? e. g. To move 10 units on the local Z I press and hold G, then type L, Z, 10. Might work, but feels very awkward, especially when using snapping or other modifiers.
Immediate mode needs to stay but could use some refinement for consistency, speed, and simplicity. One way to do this would be to group common functions for easier memorization. For example, all modes could be moved to TAB so that Weight paint is TAB+W and sculpt is TAB+S. If the mode switch happened on key release then we could even keep edit mode on straight TAB.
Do you guys have any ideaâs for cleaning up Immediate mode?
hmm, I find most people here are just discussing what they like and dislike about the UI proposal. Some go a bit overboard, but thatâs natural when people are passionate about something. The devs are doing what interests them, like in every open source project. They have their own things they find most important. You canât really tell folks what to do with their free time if they like to spend it on things that are less important to you. IMO, for an open source project Blender is developed with a pretty clear focus.
You canât compare OS projects with a company where one or very few persons tell everybody else what to do. Luckily we have Ton who has an overall vision and keeps things together, but still, heading an OS project is often something like herding cats. What Iâve seen so far how he does things and motivates people, I think heâs doing a great job. Blender isnât and probably never will be as polished as proprietary software, because polishing takes time and people, which most OS projects never have enough of.
What I have seen over the many years Iâm following Blender, it does very well IMO. Although Iâm not getting everything I find most important (for me), Iâm still very grateful for what I get for free.
