Cycles settings summary

[lsscpp]

Hello everyone.
I’m making this little addon to save myself many clicks.
It’s a simple panel that collects the render settings I use the most, all in one place.
Easy to see, easy to reach and use.
I already found it useful in the project I’ve been working in the last few days.
I’ll post the script here very soon, but before that, I’d like to take suggestion on how to improve/tweak it.

So far it looks like this:

[lsscpp]

Minor tweaks:

[lsscpp]

And now a new entry.
In the 3dViewport N-panel, a handful of object option that I find annoying to search in the properties panel:

Top to bottom:
Object Id / Active material Id
Object Color / Active material Color
3 Object view-helpers
Viewport style
Cycles visibility flags
Vertex groups
UvMaps

[lsscpp]

Dedicated options for Cameras and empties will follow…

I’m thinking of other panels like these two.
There are some areas in blender that I spend time on.
The next candidate will be probably shader editor…

[lsscpp]

So here is the first iteration of this tiny addon.
I named it “UI Summaries”. If you think it is too akward feel free to suggest a better name.

What it does:
It creates a panel named “Cycles Settings Summary” in the Property window > Render, with a bunch of buttons, checkmarks and sliders that I find useful to have all together in one place, to reduce seeking and clicking through panels. I tried to keep it compact but at the same time readable. I also tried to group and sort the setting following my workflow.
With a similar logic, the addon creates a panel named “Object Summary” in the 3D viewport N-panel, in the Item category, where you can find a selection of options and settings for objects, lights, empties and cameras. Same purpose same criteria as the previous panel.

I share the script here free for everyone. Hopefully someone can find this useful.
I’m open for bugfixing and for suggestions. Keep in mind that this is aimed only at saving some clicks. I just wanted the panels to be compact & handy, not overcrowded with every single option. For that we can go through the standard UI.

K_CyclesBiasPanel.py (13.6 KB)

[lsscpp]

Little upgrade: Avoid error when deleting an object (selected object becomes null and the script returned red error in status bar), added an icon next to camera name (3d sidebar panel) to enter “Lock Camera to View” mode
edit: and yes, changed the filename

K_UI_Summaries.py (14.5 KB)

[lsscpp]

I am using this addon daily, and see that I rarely use some of the commands/sliders. So I decided to cut them away and clean the interface further more.
Also, being steadily working with Blender 2.9 lately, I added some of the new stuff like adaptive sampling and denoising settings.
Here’s the brand new version:

K_UI_Summaries.py (17.2 KB)
(beware: it’s 2.9x only!)

Here’re the new screenshots:

Main panel:

notice the sub-panel at the bottom, here is it opened:

and the sidebar panel:

You now have a more prominent Lockview always available, no need to select camera, and you also have the Orbit Pivot toggle (otherwise buried into preferences>navigation) which I find useful to have at hand.
Cheers

[pitibonom]

this looks very interresting !

Thanks a lot for sharing this @lsscpp

I’d have a question for you as you seem quite easy with blender UI:

Is there a simple way of adding a button in blender existing UI ?
More precisely under the UV list of the mesh tab of the properties window ?

Thanks and happy blending !

[lsscpp]

Hello pitibonom
I’m still in the process of learning python, in the very few spare time I can dedicate to it.
But I actually made progresses, and have a largely upgraded version of this script, that grow up to be a ‘real’ addon, with added features like cleaning-up duplicated materials, further rendering settings, preferences etc…
When I’ll feel it is ready to be shared, be sure I’ll do.
I never coded, except some Basic when I was a kid (and some Lingo: macromedia Director native language, sigh!). So at the time I made this first script my coding workflow was:

• copy-paste pieces of existing UI code
• see the (inevitable) error message
• hunt for the code line where the error showed up and try to figure out

Now I feel a bit more comfortable. Trial and errors was my path, but I wouldn’t suggest it!
But now stop sharing this…

Regarding your question, it should not be more difficult than adding a line of code, but it depends also on what that button is.
What do you have in mind?

[pitibonom]

Thanks @lsscpp for your kind answer

my path was also trial & error since the age of 11 ( in the 80’s ) and be sure self-teaching is the best way of learning ( though not the fastest ). So keep up walking your path

My current problem is not language ( it is never btw ) but blender API. Even if y feel python is a strange non-typed & non-formal language i’m okay with it’s structure, but the blender API is really awfullty documented ( needing much work and rethought ) and i struggle finding info/examples on the blender internals ( the name of the variables & classes used in blender ).

As an example of almost perfect doc i’d mention unity3D API doc wich is IMHO as much impressive and wide as unity by itself. You can code lots of things in few minutes with U3D as the API doc is just perfect. With blender it is another story

I saw many examples of addons registering/uregistering things even if noone knows what it is for, making new UI windows etc… but none for what i want to do

What i want is pretty simple ( simplicity is the supreme sophistication ):
Add a button under the… wait; lemme do a quick image composition

Here it is: the button under the UV layers list, called ‘select this UV for all selection’.

I see what has to do this button on click:

• get the selected UV for the active obj in UVname
• forall O in selected obj
  • if exists O.UVname
    select O.UVname
  • endif
• endfor

This is pretty simple and is a real MUST HAVE complement for multi-object edition ( i guess devs forgot to add this mandatory feature ) as when you have to select UV for 100 objects before unwrapping them all in one texture, you understand that stupidly waste time with select/click is deeply counter-productive

So my problem is to find the UV panel of the ‘data’ panel of the properties window, and add a button at the bottom thet do what i need when clicked.

Of course i could edit the source. This would be the quick dirty wayforbidding share.
What i’d like is a lil piece of python that could be easily loaded by anyone, run and be operative without writing code…

In blender inside-examples the code ‘Layout demo’ gives me some clue and adds a panel in one tab of the properties.
The tab i want to add my button to is the ‘data’ one.
But how to access the UV panel ?

Here’s the lil piece of code for existing UI reference i got :

class LayoutDemoPanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the scene context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "Layout Demo"
    bl_idname = "SCENE_PT_layout"
    bl_space_type = 'PROPERTIES'
    bl_region_type = 'WINDOW'
    bl_context = "data"
..........

Any idea ?

Thanks a lot and happy blending !