I still use the 2.49 version myself, I know that the 2.5X versions is good, but one day.
Just to make it clear again so we don’t have to be in an endless debate about icons. Again no one is suggesting that all these things should become default. Bottom line is, you don’t have to participate. The default will never change. The default will never change. The default will never change. Just give users the power to change whatever they want in their UI. It’s not anybody else’s business. You will always have the default. If you abhor icons, you don’t have to have them.
Keyword is OPTION - option to change the default to suit your personal workflow, which is nobody else’s business. Point is, nothing is being taken away from you guys. None, nada, zero, nil.
I must say I am quite satisfied with Blender.
I agree on the modeling tools rendering Blender to be more basic than advanced
compared to Modo and others.
The toolbar is in my point also too big, to clumpy, and a space waster.
Tools icons are really needed - but someone has to make them!
I think it is also common sense that one person should mainly do it to keep it consisten
like the general button redesign Blender got.
I have quite high hopes for BMesh hopefully resulting in a restart of modeling tools
for Blender. The animation and UI was a big job to finish. Now they work on Cycles
and the modeling core. Also two very big jobs I think.
I’m not against the use of an icon based tool bar, just the use of icons which ‘could’ be of very different styles.
I think it would be better to pick a talented individual who wouldn’t mind doing an icon set and, if need be having a small round of funding if they weren’t willing to do it for free. I just think that would be a better option if this tool bar were to be included as a user selectable option that comes with Blender.
At least that way it would go with the rest of the interface and I don’t think anyone would have a problem with pushing for it to be included, as opposed to being an add-on or something which isn’t ‘official’ and is just thought of as an after thought.
Daniel
well it would be cool if the person who made the 2.5 icons could do that for the modeling tool bar as well
but what do you do when you add custom tools, well you would need a generic icon with text rendering.
at the end I hardly use the tool shelf at all, I use the space bar. I wish the tool options would be a floating
panel because I use them often like for subdivision values.
Not all the tools need icon, if you want to add for instance Mirror then you add a button with the sign “Mirror” I guess. And I believe making toolshelf horizontal would be a good solution (floating panels would be also really helpful).
I don’t get the opposition to icons. First of all, if you’re using shortcuts and never use buttons of texts that occupy too much interface space, then why in heaven not just let them be reduced to small icons? What exactly is the harm when you don’t use them anyway?
Truth is, all 3d apps use a combination of icons and text in their interfaces. 3ds max, Maya, C4D, Modo, XSI, etc. The only known 3d app that is riddled with icons is TrueSpace.
I don’t really understand why some users want a horizontal toolbar, I think the present arrangement is better. Most of us use widescreen displays - vertical toolbar and panels help you conserve on the precious vertical space.
Additionally, I don’t agree the Toolshelf wastes space, but I guess it depends how you have it arranged. It’s not that much trouble to press T to toggle it on/off, and there’s Ctrl-Up/DownArrow to maximise the view.
In short, don’t fix what ain’t broke.
Here is the whole mistake.
Widescreen means wide window but it does not mean wide area for an editor.
Did you try to use UVediting screen with opened vertical toolbars?
I think it is a good example when horizontal toolbars are better.
Horizontal Properties could be helpfull, here.
Creating screens has no more interest if you always have to maximize/minimize editors.
The issue has nothing to do with the 3d view. It’s about unnecessary scrolling. And you don’t turn the Tool shelf on and off. It has to stay on all the time to access the tool options at the bottom of the shelf. Reducing the sizes of the tools via icons might eliminate the need to scroll down.
@rozmiarek
+1 + a lot actually.
A year ago, I was complaining for similar issues. But I became a troll… never mind it’s a forum after all.
“Sadly I have a feeling that the opinion of users who try to do professional work with Blender doesn’t matter.”
This is sad and possibly true.
Add this, 2.49b shrinkwrap modifier works better than the 2.5x latest versions. We’re talking about retopology, right?
I’ll say it once again - I’m a real Blender fan and I do my best to convince people that Blender is worth their time. But I don’t understand why the new version is slower than 2.49b and we are stuck with semi-complete modelling tools. Yes, there are some great features like material index node, soldify modifier or Dope Sheet, but 3d application is supposed to let us model in first place. I read Blender’s release schedule and it seems like there’s no bmesh for the next 6 months.
Work about 2.5 UI design began in 2007. Guidelines were made two or three years, ago.
Professional users waited to have 2.5 alphas to express themselves about UI.
So, I undestand it was not easy for devs to take into account critics about UI basis.
It was equal to reconsider one or two years of work already done.
And it was obvious for them that years were still needed to restore most of 2.49 functionality.
I understand that region improvements and horizontal panels have to wait next UI refactoring.
But I hope that for blender 2.8 or 2.9 or 3 series, UI debates will be real discussions about basis.
For 2.5, it was a work of a group of devs who collected thousands of specific users improvements ideas.
It excluded users of general rules discussions.
For retopo, Avocado GSoC was dedicated to it. But things never happens as we want.
I can understand that devs were hoping to stabilize Bmesh quickly and were not thinking it will be problematic for a short time period to create GSOC branches based on Bmesh.
My opinion is that pertinent professional voice was not audible at crucial times of development.
But the work to redo blender was really massive and interest a lot of newbies who interfered.
And sometimes, professional voice of people who uses other software and did not know every good aspect of blender 2.4X was non-appropriate.
Devs made a lot of efforts to clarify things during 2.5 development. A dedicated mailing list, new blenderstorm, new p.b.o and bugtracker.
I just hope everybody will continue to use these newly created tools to expose clearly things for 2.6X development.
Development seems a bit chaotic and I have no idea what’s the status of every element of Blender. It’s hard to say whether the things I pointed are features, bugs or something that will be rewritten anyway (so it’s left as it is now).
It is really chaotic because new devs were attracted by new blender and were coming with new patch and new features.
But now, the 2.6X release cycle starts by defining what will be in next release.
It is better than 2.5X development.
But I totally agree it is hard to know what is priority status of missing features.
I will note though that in 2.49, the panels were filling up with options to the point where they were no longer of equal length and thus sometimes you would have to move the UI down to get to those options at the bottom. As a result, simply having an option to pop the panels back into a horizontal row wouldn’t be the full solution, we’d need some API enhancements that would allow a good way to make a good horizontal layout where the panels can expand horizontally rather than downward (so you wouldn’t have to scroll down).
About chaotic development, the devs. have worked on a new, stricter, release paradigm for the 2.6x series which should make the release cycle feel more controlled, this being combined with the code review tool which is designed to minimize breakage by targeting any need for numerous code changes and fixes done to branches and large patches before they actually get commited to trunk, and so far seems to be a good system.
Waiting for 2.6 then. What else can we do?
Patience, when massive changes take place. They didn’t in 2.5 whatever you claim. This is clear when looking at cycles or bmesh development (these gonna change everything, indicating how wrong UI was) . Only an almost silly 2.5 UI, with Large Letters Everywhere. “of bad taste” this expression, one year ago was enough for some users to call me troll. You can still call me troll if you like.
Why all these? Because blender 2.49b is dead, that’s why.
Lets forget about UI for a minute; with or without Cycles, camera tracking and all BGE improvements - Blender is slower than 2.49b, Blender cannot be concerned as a good modelling software and some of solutions made in 2.5x series (first use tool then decide how do you want to use it) are absurd. Hope this issues will one day be removed and we should not just get use to them…
The problem is in the current development of Blender. Blender becomes something like “all in one” creation suite in these days. From modeling/animation through compositing/video editing to VFX/ Game engine. Which is: 1) Great. You have all what you need in one package, 2) Very problematic. Few developers, big area of problems/ upgrades for coding and solving. Ultimately, this means that you every day compare every one Blender’s tool with similar narrowly targeted tools (modeling with Modo, sculpting with Z-Brush, compositing with Fusion etc.) and this is also a potential cause of your frustration. If you need some basic tools, Blender will serve well but at the moment if you need some sophisticated tools (which are probably not needed by typical Blender user) than you have a problem. People like me who are using Blender mainly for modeling/compositing must be a little bit confused by the development (resignation on the development) of Blender like 3D modeling tool. I know, a lot of work with 2.5x, B-mesh is planning but on the other hand Sintel didn’t bring much /fail, incomprehensible slowdown of work with Blender 2.5x and development in general. There are a few things (cycles, B-mesh …) that make me believe it will be just a better in the future. That’s my opinion.
rozmiarek, why not produce a blend file that can be opened in both 2.49 and 2.5 that demonstrates slowness/regressions and submit a bug report? It could be something simple to fix.
1920 horizontal vs 1080 (or 1200) vertical… The space argument doesn’t hold. Not even for wild uv editor stories. That scales for all resolutions. If however you are saying your prefer horizontal panels that is understandable. It is halfway in already. Could be fixed and end this debate forever.
Michalis – Change the font size, and be sure to let them know that you would like horizontal panels fixed as well.
@michalis
What could be done with the 2.5 UI to make it more robust for all users, including you? Use it for a few weeks. Ignore it being slow (unless you are working on that bug report).
Things like:
Icons on the toolbar
Collapsible Tool Shelf options
Removeable Tool Shelf options
Uv unwrap Method before the actual unwrap
Floating panels
horizontal panels need fixing
These are good options for everyone, and not already in the ui like changing shortcuts or font sizes.
@michalis[/B]
Looking in the commit logs, Campbell actually has commited some recent changes to the UI code to make it a bit faster (which includes more use of vertex arrays which are not only faster, but is supported by older hardware while not affecting the look).
So you should be able to notice a faster, snappier UI if you download a fairly recent build for your system.