The flickering I fixed. The border selection problem I’m aware of. I’ll have to see if I can do something about it later.
I just uploaded a new Bratwurst build with a bunch of the UI bugs that people reported to me fixed.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4205810/Blender/Blender-Bratwurst.zip
This includes the spurious dragging bug and the flickering buttons bug. Please let me know if any problems persist.
Hi! Thank you for your work! I’ve found one not bug, but issue:
In the layers panel (at the bottom of viewport) layer 1 is selected, others are deselected.
- If I start selecting other layers, first clicking on layer 1, nothing happens.
- If I start selecting e.g. from layer 2, layers I need become selected - OK. But the layer 1 becomes deselected.
I mean, we need a possibility not only to make multiple selection, but to extend selection from already selected element.
Hope, you understood))
Hi Vino. Great work so far, glad the UI is getting much needed tweaks finally.
I can’t get your dropbox builds to work (Win) but I found a bratwurst half-cooked on graphicall I was able to test a few things.
First of all, can you include a list of all the current upgrades in future builds? Maybe as a text file packed in or something. With a project like yours it’s hard to keep track of all the disconnected changes. Would make it easier for us testers to faithfully test your work.
Anyways, here is what I able to find so far.
-Menus seem much more snappy, thank you! That was a fix, right?
-List-expand with ctrl-scroll not jittery anymore. Not a feature I knew about or anticipate using much but nice to know.
-Close window when slide-collapse to minimum, great!
-Pane Columns: Been asking for a while to add a simple modifier key to collapse all of them. Now we have it and it works great, thanks! But…I change my mind. After trying it out, here is what I’m feeling:
-I rarely need to look at two panes open at the same time. If you reverse the default action so that non-clicked panes always close, and I use ctrl to open/close panes without affecting the others, then my keyboard hand remains free. This is also more consistent with the popular standard of using the control key to toggle individual selections without changing previous selections. It also means standard mouse use of the N panel will almost never require scrolling.
If the audience is split over this, maybe add a config toggle in user prefs?
Umm…can’t find or think of any other features.
thanks again!
On a separate topic, what are the odds you can do something with the outliner?
As the only resource for overall resource management, it still needs a lot of work.
For example, why do the rows allow their own selection if I click outside of the text/icon area? This was a puzzling hassle for the longest time and still feels like an unfinished hack.
I can’t find any use for this mode of selection and I’d prefer that clicking anywhere in a row acts as if I clicked on the content of the row.
I can think of a number of other features to add but it really needs an overhaul rather than a bunch of tweaks. I find the current modal drag-to-parent method rather maddening.
And here’s a real brain-twister: why is left-click for selection in the viewport but right-click everywhere else? Even with it’s own paradigm it isn’t consistent! Mind you, I’m used to blender but I can see why newusers would be super-frustrated (:mad::mad::mad:) and walk away.
I think one of Blender’s biggest weaknesses is trying to satisfy everybody, except we all tend to come from three different OS camps, each with their own version of ‘common sense’. Maybe what Blender really needs is three overall modes of operation, one for each OS. Now THERE’S a nasty project.:evilgrin:
I can guess and say it’s so you can run operators on selected outliner items outside of outliner content. Just because no ops use this (then again, maybe they do) doesn’t mean it’s bad design, the outliner spans multiple scenes so needs to be able to operate on stuff that isn’t in the active selected scene. In fact I fixed a bug (in D’n’D (un?)parenting) so it can work on scenes that aren’t currently active.
I can think of a number of other features to add but it really needs an overhaul rather than a bunch of tweaks. I find the current modal drag-to-parent method rather maddening.
I can say with 99.999% certainty that nobody is going to overhaul the outliner anytime soon…probably isn’t even on page 23 of someone’s todo list.
What you could do is start a thread on a wish-list for the outliner (minus the overhaul part). I was looking for one a couple weeks ago but couldn’t find anything so just messed with the drag & drop stuff for a couple days instead – which hopefully resulted in a less-maddening drag-to-parent implementation.
And here’s a real brain-twister: why is left-click for selection in the viewport but right-click everywhere else? Even with it’s own paradigm it isn’t consistent! Mind you, I’m used to blender but I can see why newusers would be super-frustrated (:mad::mad::mad:) and walk away.
Yes indeed, it wouldn’t be ‘proper’ feature request without at least one Noobie Red Herring:rolleyes:…
!but I think if you change to LMB select it does not change it across the board, it works in some areas and not others…I think a few users complained about this before…I really don’t know…don’t use it, and too late to test…gotta work in the morning.
Yeah, it messes up in some cases. Timeline you right click to change frames (reverses basically). You can’t do bone selection in weight paint mode (right click changes to 3D cursor instead). Most things work okay though.
Got it, I’ll check it out today and see what I can do.
Great, thanks for helping!
For now, anything that’s crossed out on my list here is done. I’ll see if I can compile it into a feature list once I’m done, although it won’t be a feature list for the entire Bratwurst branch, only my stuff. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Vino/GSoC_2012
What’s your problem with my Bratwurst build? Do you get an error message? Anything I can do to help?
Not sure what you’re talking about with the pane columns. I don’t remember adding any code to that other than to fix animations for the T and N panels. Do you mean the Ctrl-click that DingTo added to the trunk? That wasn’t me.
It seems to work fine to me to hold shift down before dragging to add to the list of toggled buttons without resetting.
Not sure what you mean. Selecting the content on a line doesn’t seem to indicate anything different than selecting the whole row, at least to me. But I get what you mean about selecting content across multiple scenes. It won’t let you! Did not know that. Also seems weird. I should be able to select an object in the Outliner without the scene in the 3DView changing, methinks. Albeit that’s probably another UI behavior argument waiting in the wings…
Any comments about ‘snap to grid’ suggestion? I’ve seen it come up before, although not rabidly. It usually generates ‘you can do something like that with incremental’, but it really isn’t the same. I use lots of CAD-like programs that snap to a default grid just to force the layout clean. (usually things like schematic layouts and such)
Hi Vino,
I don’t know if you still take ideas, but it would be great to have the option to choose the snaping point with the mouse, and not only between active/nearest/center/median. A sort of new option “nearest from mouse” that would take the nearest vertex/edge/face from your mouse when you press G. A preview of the point that will be taken would be then usefull to ensure we take the wanted part.
Hope you understand what i mean 
Anyway good luck with your GSoC
Hi matali. That’s not really in my area, I’m doing user interface issues related to buttons and list boxes and dropdowns. The 3D view isn’t in the scope.
That said, this week I did merge in a bunch of changes that I wrote before this GSoC that give the manipulators mouseover highlighting and a bit of extra control detail. There’s also a bunch of bug fixes. Here’s the build:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4205810/Blender/Blender-Bratwurst.zip
The new manipulator is really nice. I typically only use it while animating, but it might be usable enough now to leave on more often.
I liked the highlighting, but I found those box things very weird. Perhaps they just take some getting used to. Any chance you could show the manipulator while transforming? That would be great because then as an option you could see things like degrees, inches, meters, etc… while transforming.
The way the manipulator works is great.
But The whole thing is bigger and obscuring more things.
I suggest instead of using those big squares on arrows, just make two arrows light up when you hold your mouse between them or something.
Also what I noticed - The distance from mouse that performs the highlighting is different then the distance at which you grabs the handles. basically, you can grab an arrow without it being highlighted at first.
is that a big deal the whole point was to know which handle was selected and not to select the wrong one by mistake, I think it still solves this problem.
Good thing it’s not working the other way around. That would be annoying…
Ideally, the highlighting distance and grab distance should be the same. No biggie for me, though, the way it works now.
Jonathan, isn’t seeing the whole manipulator while transforming a bit of a hindrance for displaying the information you wish to see ? It seems to me that a simplified view would be more adequate. You know, something like only the used axes for grabs, with display of the transformation as a highlight/different color on them, pie chart for rotations… scaling could show the starting point as a ghost or the growth…
Great job Vino.