I agree that accessing a big list of shader balls would be useful to have (as opposed to the tiny dots that pass as material icons in Blender today).
As for just making a material with no object attachment, I can see that being able to fit into the properties panel (ie. having a form of the material context available when no object is selected). Even then, I will agree that being able to shuttle materials and node groups to a standalone library (that can be accessed) later would be of more use than just using the append function all the time.
One of things I like about Cinema 4D is itâs material manager. Being able to manage all the materials for a scene, create materials not attach to an object, delete, replace, filter, see what objects use a material, and more.
So wrote a plugin for this functionality call âSceneXtraâ.
Regnas
(⢠I don't speak English "by default", so... )
6539
Who else thinks the 3 default lights of the 3dview in blender are overkill?
Itâs too bright, canât see things very clearly with this. I usually use only one (or two, tops).
Perhaps they should change the defaults of it.
Agreed. 3 Point lighting is kind of an old outdated lighting system from the days before GI (relatively speaking in the 3D industry). Now that we have HDRI environment lighting it doesnât really make that much sense to have all those extra lights. Mainly we need a key and maybe a rim if you really want to get fancy. The extra fill or kick is way overkill when you have env light.
The more I think about this, maybe this is really just an extension of the Asset manager project currently in development. I donât know much about it but maybe it just needs a mode to only show current scene items?
EDIT: No, I just looked into it and BAM, the asset manager project is something entirely different. It a client/server system for managing assets in projects. Which is pretty cool in and of itself but not at all what I was thinking it was. Iâm thinking of an âAsset Browserâ internal to Blender.
In Blender, materials only need own browser and/or also option to select objects with same material tags (and not first finding or select-and-applying an object with that mat. then selecting with the same)âŚthe goods from c4d
Hey I donât mind having a minority opinion. Still fun thinking about this stuff. If it were only up to me it would actually look more like the following, with no arrows, even less text, expanding out the mode menu, etcâŚ
we also need a manager for image textures, to be able to replace/delete them and to get rid of the tons of duplicates blender creates on copying or appending objects or materials.
(And yet I donât understand how duplicates of images must even exist)
So, I tried the latest Blender 2.8⌠and while I understand this is still WIP I really donât understand whatâs being done with the wireframe mode.
So youâre telling me that this is whatâs going to be the default wireframe mode in Blender? Basically a sort of x-ray with wireframes on top of it? Except not really an x-ray either because you canât see through it to other objects?
How is this supposed to be usable for the purposes that actual wireframe mode is usable for? Itâs completely useless to use other objects as guides or for reference images/blueprints.
So instead of keeping the normal, actually useful option on the Z shortcut, now itâs hidden in a menu and called âHidden Wireâ. Which when activated by itself is completely useless as well⌠because of the backface culling so you need to press Z as well.
So whatever was done with just a shortcut before now needs a menu toggle on top of that⌠each and every time you want to switch to a real wireframe mode, which is something that one does a lot when modeling.
Is this the magical thing thatâs supposed to replace the wireframes that Ton hates so much? Honestly every time that guy says something about modeling (and considering some of the dubious Blender design decisions that still linger to this day) I have to wonder if he actually did any kind of modeling in his life.
Have you seen the weekly progress report video, the drawing can be configured to look almost exactly like 2.79âs wireframes but nicer looking. You can also mix it with other drawing modes such as the object color.
Having said that, it would be nice if there were workbench drawing presets representing what common setups would look like.
someone does not understand that those who usually model in blender do not want fancy pictures in the viewport, but rather a useful and fast wireframe view, full stop.
I donât see where are the settings to change the behavior?
That video shows exactly what Iâve seen in the program. Meaning the need to activate âHidden Wireâ to make it look like before.
Also, âlook almost exactlyâ doesnât sound exactly encouraging.
Thereâs no reason for âHidden Wireâ to not be the default option and keeping the improvements of showing depth which are shown in the video.
Mixing it with other modes doesnât really impress me in any way. Most programs have the option of showing the wireframe on top of the shaded or textured or whatever view. The fact that Blender just got up to date is not really impressive.
but yeah, itâs cool⌠Perhaps a big material preview there would be nice. 
