Pie menus is definitely a good reason to stick to 2.79 
But then when you consider a lot of good things that 2.8+ has, you accept that Pie Menus are just a bad thing that you have to learn to deal with.
PS: I have read that by doing an advanced Keymap configuration course for Blender, after about two years of study you may finally be able to get rid of Pie menus…
Zeauro, really no idea why you spend all this time trying to convince me that what doesn’t work in the new blender is something totally different from what I am saying. Please stop, it’s really not needed. I’m around Blender since 2005 or 2006, I think version 2.24? And I’ve seen plenty of developement in software, being an old person. Add: I’m not a lazy person. I still can learn and I love to learn. And I’m pretty fast at it. I’m not writing for the sake of it: the new workflow is way slower than the older. It’s a fact. And it’s SO evident. Mouse clicks are slower than shortcuts. Scrolling is slower than clicking.
These are simple facts.
The need to customize keys (which I don’t feel, honestly) is just a proof that something went terribly wrong in the decisions taken by the planners.
So, please: are you happy with the new blender? I am happy for you. But really: please ignore me. Or, at least, stop pretending to explain what I want. You aren’t nailing it. Thanks for the effort btw
It’s not just 1, 2, 3. It’s also shift + 1, 2, 3, ctrl + 1, 2, 3, and ctrl+shift+1, 2, 3. And there are a few defaults missing like converting selection to loops and rings which are prime candidates for alt combos.
If you don’t feel a need to customize keys, how is that wrong? The thing is, nobody can nail a good default key layout for everyone. If some keys don’t work for you, you remap them, that’s how it should be.
Couldn’t agree more. All these universal and industry key maps is such a waste of time. Sure you must have a default set of hotkeys for the Blender that makes more sense but after that everyone should make their own defaults based on their preferences.
I believe the time and energy would be much better spent on a great hotkeys manager. Current one is pretty weak and down right painful to use the more complex your own hotkeys setup become.
Yes, that’s very true. Current hotkey editor is okay-ish only if you’re a techie and don’t mind getting knee-deep into internals, but it’s not at all user-friendly. That they added the right-click “Add shortcut” to most functions is a boon, of course, but the thing doesn’t work unversally, occasionally “some assembly required” ©. When that happens, good luck finding why the key isn’t working, unless you already know your way around all those keymaps (which if you do, you didn’t need that right-click thing in the first place, but if you don’t, well…).
That is not what I tried to do.
I was just defending pie-menus. You are pretending that is an awful UI thing.
That is not true.
That is appreciated by many professionals in many applications for a good reason.
There is a limited amount of keys on a keyboard.
Using radial menus, is a way to expand amount of possible calls with same amount of keys used.
Seriously, you just have to type “pie” in Name filter of Keymap tab.
Then, untick corresponding checkboxes to deactivate them.
I wish there was a filter to display edited custom keymaps.
Currently, keymap editor is not great at all.
But that is mainly because it did not evolve enough.
You need to know a part of API to be able to customize it, efficiently.
That is rough for any type of beginners.
It is even more frustrating in 2.79. API was not as clean as in 2.8.
That is not a proof. It was already a need for many people before 2.8.
I have an azerty keyboard. 2.7 keymap is made for a qwerty one.
The same way, you are saying that pie-menus is a no go. Many people were saying that right click select was a no go for them.
The planners made an Industry Compatible keymap with the intention to make it the default one.
We succeeded to convince them to make an alternative keymap that is in-between 2.7 and Industry keymap.
The result is what came up from hundreds of people exposing their preferences and months of discussion.
The process could have been less democratic.
I am not sure that result would have been more appreciated.
One by one? Why not just a global option to disable all Pie Menus and bring back list menus with the same shortcut?
But okay, let’s say you have to do it one by one. You filter with “Pie” And then what? Is it that easy/intuitive to configure it to show normal list menu with the same shortcut for a novice user?
Related to this thread I am referring to how tedious it is to globally replace Pie menus whit list menu in one step. Difficulty customizing the Keymap is simply an extra complexity to get rid of Pie Menu.
Yes of course, 100% agree: nothing is good for everyone.
This said, there are changes which improve a thing, and changes which make a thing worser.
Eg: What were the devs thinking when they removed the A toggle to select/deselect all?
Super fast to use, super easy to learn.
What did they code instead? The easier select/deselect all - now - has the same shortcut to select all (A), but you have to press it twice to deselect (and you know it doesn’t work with the lag in the blender interface: you will never know if blender registered the double press until the UI updates and most of the times you have to undo/redo things). How is this a good decision? Is it faster? Is it smarter?
Customizing should come into play when you need a particular task more often than usual. Then you should need to customize things. But select/deselect all isn’t some rare occurrence. Developers doubled the time taken to do such a common thing. Is this a change for the better? Please…
you can change selection/deselection to how it was in 2.79
I’ve no idea what were they thinking, but, first of all, the toggle wasn’t removed:
…and secondly, this, again, mostly speaks to your personal preference and your personal needs. You do realize that, with that setting (i.e. 2.7x style), to select everything if you already have a selection you have to press A twice. Same problem as you’re describing, only going in the opposite direction.
Whereas the actual change that they made was quite logical - one hotkey for select all (A), the other to deselect all (Alt+A). No discrimination, no double presses for either action. Not to mention that another way of deselecting everything was also added (click in empty space).
I know that old habits die hard, but it’s important to stay objective. There literally was no loss with that change, in fact there was net gain.
Those arguments about how one way works better than the other are almost always dependent on the person, it’s not as if one key is better than the other.
For some, once you get the hang of it, it’s like learning to ride a bike, the more you have practiced, the harder its to change that habit, it becomes second nature we dont notice a double or single tap, the correct action happens by instinct before we notice, and if they change that default way, it feels freakishly wrong, almost as if they had messed with our nervous system map instead.
Just imagine if one day, randomly all keyboards in the planet had some keys swapped, thats how it feels for those who have practiced for that long.
But as I said, the amount of set back a key map change causes is kinda proportional to how much you “speed run” blender.
Let’s try again:
to select all
In 2.79 I press A.
In the case I have other things selected, I press A twice (deselect all/select all).
Not happening every time, let’s say 50% of times, I have to press 1 key. And 50% of times I have to press 2 times the same key. But 100% of times I will deselect all pressing the same key.
In 2.8*:
I have to press once to select all, and - 100% of times, needed or not - I have to press a different combo or twice the key.
Do you see a gain? I don’t.
This one is key: I don’t give a … about habits.
I am saying that the new blender workflow is slower (and for me this means it’s worser) than the old one. Because it has more mouse movements and more clicks, more scrolling etcetera.
To close this, I hope you won’t mind, the OP asked who still uses the old blender and why.
I do use blender 2.78 and I do it because it is a faster/better software - to me - than the new blender.
As simple as this. No habits involved, no hate towards developers who I don’t even know, best whishes for the new course, and congratulations because it is already a big success.
Not my cup of tea, for speed of work reasons.
Some operations in 2.9x do require more clicks, but this is more than offset by 2.9x having significantly more advanced tools for things like modeling.
Take hard surface modeling for instance, a lot of hard surface shaping is now just a combination of booleans, loopcuts, extrude manifold, auto-merge/auto split, and join vertices. A few of these tools are either non-existent or less advanced in 2.79, so slower methods must be used.
Cycles meanwhile makes a lot of shading effects far easier thanks to nodes such as white noise and AO color. In addition, a lot of time you ‘save’ in 2.79 is offset by long render times because of the lack of optimizations like adaptive sampling and Embree. Eevee previews meanwhile make tweaking procedural textures a fast process.
This doesn’t even factor in the advances in scene management, such as named collections and now reusable assets that can have attributes overridden. Time saved early on in a project in 2.79 can easily be lost because of limitations or because of the lack of certain features.
Using 2.79. It was claimed Eevee would functionally replace internal in every way, but it doesn’t do baking. 2.8 has some amazing features, loved using eevee and seeing shader nodes updating and being visible in real time but I pretty much dislike everything else.
Agreed! Bunch of UI parts move depending on what you click which is horrible for muscle memory clicks, and despite choosing right click to select left click and drag still selects, which in some cases causes me to deselect without noticing. I also find myself constantly selecting the wrong vert/edge in 2.8, no idea if there was a change here. Preferred having some color in my icons too. I feel like I’m covering so much more screen space for every task with 2.8. It’s really been a horrible experience and I’m so disappointed something I use for hours every day has gone in this direction.
What kind of logic is this? It depends what you use, and new tools do not mean others have to be made worse. Hate the new collections system by the way.
No. You only have to enable a preference and get your beloved behavior back. Anyone else who doesn’t want to click twice for anything will use A/Alt+A.
I do. As you don’t have to press either key twice to get desired effect. I.e. it automagically suits more workflows.
You’ve chosen a poor example to demonstrate your position, is all.
I get that the baking situation is a step back, but not being entirely backwards compatible?
If you look at all of the industry apps, the Blender devs. have actually done more to preserve information in older .blend files than Autodesk and many of the other vendors. In fact, the BF went as far as to place a complete moratorium on file breakage from 2.59 to 2.79. 2.8 and beyond is considered exciting because state-of-the-art features are now allowed to actually replace old and outdated technology. At the same time, users are pressing the BF to get the new features right because of the idea of another 5-10 years of mandated backwards compatibility.
Case in point, some files made late in the Blender 1.xx era (during the NaN days) could be opened in releases as late as Blender 2.6x. This is made possible due to an old and effective code design decision known as do_version.
Yeah I agree, perhaps should have taken that out of the quote, I am not at all bothered about backwards compatibility.
What about ctrl + TAB in edit mode to switch between vertices, edges and faces?
Come on, I have promised myself to not use a word, and I won’t, but you keep defending a bad design telling that it can be edited by the user.
(removed un-needed parts, to keep things educated).
Anyways, thanks for the efforts guys, you must love 2.8 a lot and I appreciate it. Have fun, won’t reply anymore because I don’t like threads going on and on on the same few points. I got your point, I hope you got mine, peace and love.
What about ctrl+tab? It’s now 1, 2 and 3, and their combos. Are you going to seriously tell me that pressing ctrl+tab 1 is faster than just pressing 1?