I love the ui, I just want it on objects I can collapse into smaller objects, and move around
(same panels just more flexible)
Think vive interface.
I agree. The Outliner is my single biggest and most obvious gripe with Blender compared to Maya and MODO.
Definitely YES, mostly because of Bad Tab panels, Operator panel is not good and I think Operator should be part of History like Maya for example in modifier or object tab, T and P panels are seems space consuming, Changing Editor Type on Panel is very GOOD in Blender.
A GOOD SUGGESTION:
Every Editor Type should support MULTI-TAB support (Horizontal or Vertical Tabs) so for example we can pin P panel of 3d view to new Tab On Properties panel so we can have more space or better organized panel. however I saw multi tab as new feature on Blender 2.8, but I do not know how efficient it would be.
BeerBaron expected poll results from a discussion thread without a properly defined OP? Who would have thought that he’s not satisfied with the results from his “poll”.
The Foundry have apparently just had a webinar concerning their 3d painting & texturing program Mari.
Were - among other things - they showed a sneak peek of the next Mari release.
This is from a article on cgchannel, about that webinar :
And Woodford is Rory Woodford, Foundry product manager.
I literally said I’m fine with the results, even with the answers from people that aren’t answering the actual question. You’re assuming people actually read the OP, which is doubtful.
I’ve explained the intention behind the question several times. It is properly defined, you just don’t like the question. You want certainty. You don’t want to commit to something in the face of uncertainty. It makes you uncomfortable. That’s the whole point behind the question, though.
It’s also the right question to ask before asking any more specific questions. If people didn’t want any major UI revamp, without even knowing what it is, it would be pointless to work out a specific proposal.
As is pointed out. And perhaps the intention ? The terms of the poll are just too vague. What exactly does drastic mean and what are the changes?
I’m quite nervous of vague polls that people can project their own pet grievances of the moment on to. Especially these days. So many of us are trying to cope with the fallout from another vague poll right now where I am.
But truly open debate is very healthy and one of the aspects I most grew to love about the Blender ecosystem and community. Everyone is mostly very committed and just wants whats best after all. Anyway this is my contribution. Sorry it’s a bit of a long post. But hey it’s the weekend.
If new design work means building on the strengths of what is already there then I think that’s good and there will always be ways to improve things. If it means a total surface level revamp to try to mimic the look and behavior of Max or Maya then I don’t think that would ultimately be very beneficial in Blenders case. Also I would worry that this could become a distraction that could take vital resources away from other more pressing areas.
I’ve only seriously been working with Blender for about three years. But already for me, Blender is not Max or Maya or Modo. It’s always been it’s own thing. I feel whatever changes and advances the interface makes should be an open community wide discussion. But I feel Blender should be developed foremost towards the existing user base. I don’t think it should need to undergo radical and possibly disruptive change in an attempt to make it feel more familiar in some way to something else.
Blender already had a very radical interface redesign in 2.5 which attracted a lot of new users at the time Sintel came out. This was also the time I got into it. Initially I bought a beginners book and started by getting down learning to model. I was using Max full time then in the studio I was at. I adopted Blender as my main modeler alongside it. This is how I was able to become quickly familiar with it. I came to enjoy the interface and found it very fast and efficient. But I’ve never got the impression since then that Blenders interface was static or set in stone but rather a constantly and continuing, evolving work in progress.
So I have to agree with several of the others from an industry background who say they came to enjoy the Blender workflow. Perhaps we are in the Max, Maya Modo etc… veteran minority here ? But I personally found I picked it up very quickly at the start. I found it appealing the fresh way Blender seemed to approach so many things. The right click select is the debate that never ends. Perhaps this will change. Perhaps I just got used to it and would find it better the other way around. But once grasped it does seem to work well within the context at the program.
This whole discussion is getting stirred up again exactly as it did when Andrew Price came up with his first proposal. To his great credit he did go out and get honest feedback and take on and listen to many critical and differing opinions. One feature that came out of those debates was that a good interface is a true extension of a software’s core design and functionality. Not just a cosmetic surface feature that is bolted on top.
I do feel that there are so many things that feel quite beautiful and elegant to me about Blenders design direction. I find it so fluid and fast to use. And also very easy on the hands, arms shoulders and back. I’m interested to know if this was a part of the design decisions in the past ?
I did a little speed modeling demo to a couple of people interested to learning Blender at the studio I’ve currently been at. They were amazed how fast and fluidly I could work with it.
I also used to teach 3D graphics and animation as a visiting lecturer for a large media and art collage in London. I know how hard it can be to explain 3D software to total beginners. I think a big part of teaching work is that you find yourself frequently questioning how things are done and why. It ideally should encourage an open and questioning mind as you find you are always seeing things anew through the students eyes.
Recently I’ve started teaching Blender to friends and colleagues. In particular I’ve been encouraging them not to fight it but to get used to it’s way of doing things. I just got a fine artist painter sculptor friend to pick it up as an extension of his real world work. He loves it and I don’t really think he found the interface difficult to grasp. He had no previous experience of any 3D software however.
I think there are always obviously room for improvements. Many areas can be rough or possibly repeat themselves. Once you come to work with something day to day it can become difficult sometimes to see the annoying details because you just are so used to it and thinking only of the work. But all I can say right now that Blender does let me focus on working with minimal distraction. For me it’s already an … ( Artists ) … 3D tool.
I love it. I want to see it get better. I have some of my own grievances and pet peeves. But I like the direction it’s going and ideally really want to see it build naturally and holistically on what is already there.
I’ve written on here before in these sorts of debates, that part of my initial reasoning to learn the default Blender interface was an experience from a few years back. This was when I needed to learn Softimage in a very short period of time. I used the Maya default option. This would have been ok if I was just dipping into it but I was animating hugely complex rigs and scenes everyday for months and months. I felt like I was fighting with Softimage and wanting it to be Maya all the time. And it made asking for any quick help or tips from colleagues very difficult as they couldn’t jump in and quickly show me practically.
So in that case at least. I think the initial ease I experienced at the start was an illusion.
I would encourage anyone first getting into Blender to try not to fight with it. Try to get used to the default first and see how it works for you before radically changing any settings. Then later start to customize and change settings within that context. Move to a Maya key map or another interface design then possibly. But see it always in a context of how Blender is set up to work. This is how I’ve brought people I know into using Blender and how I came to know and use it myself. I came to enjoy the Blender set up and made minimal changes but I understand this is entirely a subjective personal experience and might not be this way for everyone.
But I think that just from past experiences, if you compare too much or wish for it to be something else it will always be frustrating. It will always never be as good as the thing you would like it to mimic.
But I don’t mean that it’s not also not good to debate and point out ways it could be better.
I think one big mistake and danger of getting into these debates is to start thinking that your way is the right way or that there is one right way set in stone. A standard or that oft over used phrase when it comes to software in particular. Industry standard. All of us can easily fall into this. I’m sure I might be doing it now here, even though I’m trying hard not to.
Nothing should be set absolutely in stone and inflexible and dogmatic positions should be avoided but when passions run high it can be difficult for things to get out of hand.
Everyone works slightly differently. Work alongside any group of people on the same project for a length of time and you find everyone has different habits, setups and things that work for them. But you are all pushing together for the same goals. This is how it should be. We are all individuals. I think that the best design for any system or tool should always take this into account and always provide room for flexibility and compromise.
I think whatever changes come to Blenders design should come from open discussion and most especially be open to new ways. This seems to be a big part of the thought and design process up till now and it’s leading into interesting directions. But I don’t think it should be trying to deliberately mimic Max or Maya. Especially just to seem on a surface level possibly, to be more orthodox or familiar.
Blender supposedly used to have one of the worst interfaces anywhere. I never knew it then so can’t comment. But I do think what is there now is a great direction to build on and since I become a user and got fully involved it seems to be improving and evolving steadily through a thoughtful and careful process of discussion and debate. Not to mention all the hard work from so many incredibly talented developers and artists.
Anyway, all the best to everyone.
I voted “yes”. You can’t improve something without changing it.
That said, UI design is hard. Really, really hard. IMHO, coming up with a trully good UI is probably the hardest part about developing software, and in many cases, the most neglected one as well. If you just take a graphic designer, let him whip up wireframes in photoshop and then give them to a programmer to hack into codes you’re not building a good UI - because you completely ignored the “user” part. It’s as if you had a “food designer” write down a recipe for a dish, then let a cook prepare it and finally expect it the customer to like it - without anyone ever tasting it beforehand. How do you know what you invented is good if nobody ever tested it?
Just like any other aspect in software, usability needs to be tested. Very few projects have the luxury of doing that. Note that having a feedback form of some sort is no replacement for testing, as others have pointed out long ago: “Ninety-five percent of the stumbling blocks are found by watching the body language of the users. Watch for squinting eyes, hunched shoulders, shaking heads, and deep, heart-felt sighs. When a user hits a snag, he will assume it is “on account of he is not too bright”: he will not report it;”
I agree wholeheartedly with what you’re saying here, skw, and yup. I worked on UI design with a small team for one of the first online banking apps (we’re still not sure if it was the very first or not). These were pre-browser-based UIs that ran on PC and Nintendo (yup; you read that right, a Nintendo banking cartridge in 1996). Anyway, our target audience was people who’d never used a computer for banking… or much of anything else, come to that.
Needless to say, there was a ton of back-n-forth before the UI design was settled. Even then, I often wondered if the end users, having talked to our team so many times, hadn’t had their thinking skewed over to our design department’s paradigm. Because by the time consensus was reached, they were no longer novices. We really should have dumped them as a test group and got all fresh people as we closed in on the final design, but we didn’t. The client—a large credit union—didn’t want to spend the money. Opportunity missed AFAIC.
Along with end-user documentation (as opposed to technical documentation).
And so will the software engineer (assume the user is dumb). That’s why so many of these debates center on whether or not to dumb down the UI which, in itself, would be dumb.
Quite, frankly, no one gets the UI right for 3D creation, not Blender, not Maya, not 3DS Max, Lightwave, Modo… nobody. And it all comes down to one thing:
Artists and engineers don’t think the same way.
In fact, artists and software engineers use completely different hemispheres of the brain… most of the time. What Blender needs is a right-brain UI instead of the left-brain UI (in most places, but not all, I’ll add here) that it has.
Bforartists, which I tried, gets some things right, but not all. Adding easy-to-find tool shelves with icons is a great idea. It drives right into the artist’s wheelhouse. But the shortcut keys shouldn’t be removed. Nor should they mimic what’s found in Maya, et al. They didn’t get Transform/Rotate/Scale right, either. There’s nothing wrong with ‘R’ for ‘rotate’ and ‘S’ for ‘scale.’ The only one of those three I’d change in Blender is ‘G’ for ‘translate.’ I’d make it ‘T’ for ‘translate,’ but that’s the least of Blender’s problems, to be honest.
What Blender needs is a paradigm shift from engineer thinking to artist thinking. Sure, you can train an artist to think like an engineer, but he/she won’t like the process. He’ll be fighting not just the UI but his own hard-wired way of thinking the entire time.
I’m a trained artist. I’ve got a degree in fine arts, in fact. And I was first introduced to computers in art college, so I’m quite familiar with the fine line between engineer thinking and artist thinking. I also know that when I put on my artist’s hat, I put my engineering hat in the closet… and vice versa.
And it’s not that, as an artist, I suddenly become a complete moron. I don’t need Blender’s interface ‘dumbed down.’ What I need is for it to allow me to continue thinking like an artist while I work.
In a broad sense, what Blender needs to do is allow me to use my observations of everyday life as a jumping off point. As part of my studies as an artist, I learned filmmaking, so the terminology and paradigm for that end of things should echo the world of filmmakers. I did classes in 2D hand-drawn animation, so the animation side should echo that.
While we’re on the subject of the real world, how about sliders/numerical entry fields that also echo real values from the real world? For instance, why does the Sun Lamp not have a default that… well… imitates the sun? What’s that ‘1’ setting for? No one ever uses it at ‘1.’ And what does ‘1’ mean in that context? In Cycles, a ‘3’ makes far more sense. Why not have it default to ‘3?’ Or better still, why not have settings like:
- high noon,
- mid-afternoon,
- mid-morning,
- dawn, and
- sunset?
While we’re at it, why isn’t there a ‘moon’ light with phases?
Everybody knows these terms. They’re from the real world. No one has to guess at what they mean or learn them from scratch while wondering what the settings mean.
The same could be done for the Spot Lamp. It could have incandescent, LED, quartz, etc. with wattage settings… and color temperature without digging down into the node editor to find the Blackbody node.
And when it ventures into areas artists are not familiar with, it should echo the real world or the profession closest to that part of Blender. I shouldn’t have to learn how things work in the real world or a real job and then learn the Blender way on top of that… which often would be incomprehensible to someone in that profession… which is why Blender has such a small (compared to what it could be) user base.
People who love Blender’s interface the way it is fall into two camps: those who think like engineers and those who’ve worked with Blender from an early age. Some even started using Blender before they were out of grade school, so for them, it feels as natural as riding a bike. (I won’t go into the whole psychology of learning and how it changes as people age, but suffice to say: grade school kids absorb things at a phenomenal rate.) And frankly, I don’t think those people—the ones who cut their teeth on Blender in 5th grade—understand what the rest of us are talking about. They learned Blender’s engineer-think approach at Ton’s knee… so to speak… 
So, they have a huge advantage over the rest of us who came to Blender relatively late in life… read: after the age of sixteen.
I’m not down on Blender. It’s not unusable and it’s not unlearnable. I’d just like it if I didn’t have to build everything from scratch—fighting unfamiliar and often made-up terminology/value settings every step of the way—every time I venture off the beaten path. (And as artists, if we aren’t venturing off the beaten path now and again, what’s the point of life?) And I’d like it if every time I opened a file dialog that it remembered which folder/directory I was in last time I opened that dialog. It’s not a hard bit of programming, but because it’s not sexy, every time I add (for instance) another Image Texture node, I get dumped back into Documents… and I don’t put any art in documents; it’s already crowded with crap because every application thinks that’s where everybody puts all their stuff.
Anyway, to sum up:
- dialogs that remember where I was last time,
- an artist’s paradigm for creating art,
- icons on tool shelves (that still have keyboard shortcuts),
- reflect the real world and real professions, and
- sensible scales for sliders.
That’s it.
I really think that with its successful open source community driven nature, and so many insiteful and thoughtful opinions.
Blender could easily end up with one of the best interface solutions out there.
Possibly, but not necessarily. The conditions that make for successful open source projects overall often aren’t necessarily the conditions that make for the most successful UI designs.
Hmm, I don’t know about that my yellow friend. Further, they would have had to read the OP in order to participate in your “poll”. But you forget that this is the internet. You assumed people would actually read the OP as you dictated it in your head which is doubtful. words and sentences can have many similar but different meanings without the context of human delivery.
You say you a lot as if you mean me and not a royal-you. I suppose you’d be right on some level as I am largely indifferent. I trust the developers will make the right choice regardless of how I would vote in a “poll”.
I trust that you understand that you would have been more satisfied if you had simply defined your question better.
Lastly, it doesn’t matter what some people here think. This is far too small a sample size to have any bearing. It also isn’t up to them and if they don’t like change they can go back to 2.4. Screw em. You can not have progress without change. I trust the developers can go in a progressive direction and so I support change, though I am fairly satisfied with the UI now and so I don’t care all that much.
The actual blender UI is perfect, only need few updates. When people talk about revamp the UI only want revamp for him, not for the rest of users. Blender have thousands of users, not a hundred, and it’s really bothering that the users that always talk about make blender “different” are the same users with not portfolio and that the only thing that they made is stay in this forum all day instead of make things with blender.
And it’s really boring see polls like this to push BF.
Some people are referring to the 2.4x to 2.5x change as a “radical re-design”, but I don’t think it is. Try opening Blender 2.49. Structurally, the UI is essentially the same. The interactions are mostly unchanged. Most of the shortcuts still work. It’s a facelift. Do we just need another facelift? If so, let’s just add a fancy button panel at the top and create a dark default theme. Problem solved.
How?
People sure have lot of opinions, even thoughtful and insightful ones. They’re just not all the same opinion. What’s the decision-making process here?
Just to give an example of the reality of this process: The one thing that actually came out of the UI discussions fanned by Andrew Price was the vertical tabs. There were good arguments and bad arguments for and against them. Walls of text were written, walls of text were torn down. The end result still is what we have today. I doubt those discussions and opinions had much of an effect on its design. At the end of the day, there’s a coder who has type the stuff in and call it a day.
I’ll get my coat. 
Seriously though I think discussions are normally a good thing. But I take your point about my remark and it was made too quickly in the moment. And I’ve also seen how this subject has gone in some endless heated circles in tne past.
At least in most aspects. Blenders future is one of the things I hope most of us can be a little less worried about. For now at least.
I think the UI is great and I don´t want any fundamental change. Tweaks, iterations or a facelift are fine and welcome of course but the fundamental UI is, IMO, the best I´ve encountered in any 3D program so far. Very intuitive and efficient.
I migrated from 3ds Max to Blender a while back after 15 of more years of being a 3ds Max user and never looked back. After a short learning phase with Blender everything seemed to elegantly click into place and I have been very pleased with the UI.
I went through other learning phases with other 3d apps before (Maya, Houdini, for example) and none of them appeard to be as elegant as Blenders.
Hey well said !
I totally agree .
Similar to what I was trying to say in my wall of text post ( Slow Saturday ) that I think was much, much, much, too long and convoluted.
Just build on what is already there. It’s working well and works for Blender. Just needs more polish and development.
I also came from many years with Max. Maya too. Blender in it’s 2.5 form is a breath of fresh air to me
in so many ways.
Ok, fair point. And I made a quick off the cuff, slightly idealistic remark in the moment that I’m a bit regretting
But I do really like the direction Blender has been going with it’s UI up till now. Somethings obviously been working.
There is a lot of beauty and simplicity in the interface so far. And Blender is far more than just a 3D app too. I think it probably will always require a somewhat unique interface in many ways. Right now I love the way it works broadly consistently across so many different areas.
I recently introduced Blender to two friends who are just using it mainly as a video editor.
And the thing they tell me they like the best about it … It’s direct functional simplicity. At least for the work they have been doing.
Surely whats most beneficial is to keep all that’s good about it rather than a huge face lift. Especially not an attempt to mimic something else. I feel, let it stay it’s own thing. Hold a steady course. Its working well. Just improve and polish the user experience as much as possible along the way.
@rontarrant - I think you’re starting with the wrong premise:
First, the whole right-brain/left-brain thing has been overblown in pop science media and isn’t what it is often claimed to be (yes, I have “Drawing on the right side of the brain” in my bookshelf too). Second, there are plenty of Blender users that are engineers of all sorts, 3D is not only for artists. Third, I very much disagree with the premise that engineers and artists have a fundamentally different way of thinking. I would argue that to become a good engineer, you need to have a creative side too, and equally, the execution of good art often requires similar approaches as engineering. Of course, few of us master both disciplines equally to the level of Da Vinci, but he is a great example that they are complimentary and not opposing skills.
Obligatory anecdotal evidence: the majority of good engineers that I know have an interest in arts and play at least one musical instrument.
And it’s not that, as an artist, I suddenly become a complete moron. I don’t need Blender’s interface ‘dumbed down.’ What I need is for it to allow me to continue thinking like an artist while I work.
Now the not needing anything “dumbed down” part I agree with. It is a common misconception that making things easier for the novice inevitably makes things harder for the pro - that is wrong. MacOS X got that part right, it is making things easy for the inexperienced user (if I had to buy a computer for my grandma, it would be a Mac), but at the same time it’s not putting any road blocks in the way of pros (I see many, many engineers with MacBook Pros all the time).
In a broad sense, what Blender needs to do is allow me to use my observations of everyday life as a jumping off point. As part of my studies as an artist, I learned filmmaking, so the terminology and paradigm for that end of things should echo the world of filmmakers. I did classes in 2D hand-drawn animation, so the animation side should echo that.
Be careful, because then you may ask for the faster horse instead of a car. There are many restrictions in real film and drawn animation that just don’t apply to the digital world. It’s better to embrace the digital advantage than trying emulate the physical world.
Things get especially bad when software applies concepts only half-way: in the film world, you have the exposure triangle of aperture, shutter and ISO. In the rendering world, there is no ISO and motion blur (shutter) and depth of field (aperture) are independent of exposure. More than once have I read from users who were changing aperture and shutter but didn’t see the exposure of the render change as they expected. The problem there is not that the renderer isn’t emulating film close enough, but that calling those parameters shutter and aperture is misleading the users that come from film, while at the same time being non-descriptive to users new to film (for them, they should be named depth of field and motion blur, since that’s the only thing they typically affect).
Calling the parameter that controls motion blur strength “shutter speed” is as bad as using in image of a 3,5" floppy disk for the “save” button - nobody has a floppy drive any more and there is no shutter in your renderer. They seem obvious to those with legacy knowledge, but to anyone else, they are meaningless at best.
People who love Blender’s interface the way it is fall into two camps: those who think like engineers and those who’ve worked with Blender from an early age.
That is a “no true scotsman” argument.
I’m not down on Blender. It’s not unusable and it’s not unlearnable. I’d just like it if I didn’t have to build everything from scratch—fighting unfamiliar and often made-up terminology/value settings every step of the way—every time I venture off the beaten path.
Unfamiliar to whom - you? What terminology is made-up?
Regarding the “Engineer vs. Artist”:
A big part of using Blender is engineering. Blender is not merely a machine on which to tweak the knobs to get a result to one’s liking. It’s a set of tools with which to solve (often unique) problems.
There are aspects like sculpting or painting that are closer to traditional art and their non-digital analogues, but that subset is not the crucial part.
As skw points out, engineering is very much a creative process. An API is a human interface, just like a GUI. It should be well-designed. Also, just like with GUI, there is endless debate in programming over aesthetics and superficialities, like language syntax and code formatting. We’re not that different, after all.
The left-brain/right-brain thing is bullshit.
Watch this. It turns out that recognizing what the floppy icon was originally meant to depict is not the important part. People generally know it means “to save”, even if they’ve never seen a floppy, because they recognize the symbol and have learned that association.
Imagine we’d still be using floppies, if you didn’t know the floppy icon was associated with saving, knowing about floppies would do little to tell you what a button with a floppy icon might do. You need to learn the association either way.