I, like many people, use blender for a multitude of purposes. I use it for modeling, sculpting, game prototyping, rendering and even video filtering (to name only a few).
When I wanted to sculpt something, for example, I used to spend a few min importing and setting up my custom brushes, setting up the scene and linking to my base mesh collection. I now have this saved as a .blend file on my desktop.
I also have one set up with a basic character with generic controls for when I want to prototype. Another with my favorite render settings (and standard lighting) for rendering, another set up for modeling with references and another with some of my favorite node setups for quickly processing video.
What this means is that I have a few icons on my desktop taking up space instead of one. It’s a work around for a feature which I feel would be simple to implement but I don’t think has been mentioned thus far; multiple default scenes.
Rather than opening blender and having the default cube setup jump out at you (or whatever default setup you chose to make) a dialogue could come up similar to the one you see on launching Microsoft Word that prompts you to choose weather you are letter writing, web page designing, writing a book etc…
These default setups should be completely customizable so an environment artist could choose between the scenes in his current project quickly, an animator could directly navigate to the character he needs to tweak, a level designer could choose a theme that has all the groups linked in already or someone like me wouldn’t have to clutter their desktop / go through a laborious, oft repeated, setup at the start of a day’s blending.
I know it’s hardly a pressing feature and there are perfectly valid work arounds like the multiple Icons or keeping the blends in a folder on the desktop but I think it would be a nice simple feature to implement that would make life just a little bit easier for blender users.
ctrl+u or save default settings in the file menu… You can save the layouts, or scenes that you need. You aren’t bound to the default cube. A menu asking “what you want to do?” only works for newbies, and only when they really know what they want to do.
also, on the top header, there is a menu that says SR:2 - Model
you can change that to other layouts, and even add new layouts and save them all with ctrl u
Put your .blend files into a folder where they are out of your way. Then open blender and open those scenes one by one that way they are under File>>Open Recent.
Now, whenever you want to work on something open blender and choose File>>Open recent.
Next to the screen lay outs you’ll see “Scene” you can either add duplicate or completley new scenes.
If you want to create a sculp scene and save it as a scene just click new and then set it up and hit CTRL+ U, that way you can load diffrent scenes inside blender from one .blend file.
It’s not so much a “what do you need to do” layout as it is just quick access to common setups you (as in you personally - fully customizable & even removable) use. I am aware of the ctrl+U but I would prefer to be able to have a few default layouts and choose them at the start.
The thing is it’s not just layouts I’m talking about. I also want to have a specific set of assets loaded on launch (Lighting, textures, brushes etc). Layouts are just different ways of viewing the same contents.
This would almost work but there are a few problems. Materials and Brushes are constant across scenes as is draw type. Not only that but I have often had trouble removing textures/brushes/materials from a file once they are created. This means that when I save an animation (for example) It would contain all my brushes, materials etc even if I delete the extra scenes
Good Idea, I’ll switch over to doing this. It looks like no one else is interested in a start menu like this. I still think an optional one should be added though.
this is actually quite a good idea, have you thought of ways that it could be implemented? I was thinking that some kind of welcome screen could be made where you would have the choice, a bit like when you load netbeans up or something…
Something iv been wondering about recently, is there any point developing new features at the moment when 2.50 has not been finalized yet? As surely all the code would have to be rewritten, When do you think 2.50 will be released or maybe a better question is when can I start developing code without having to rewrite it when the official release is out?
mandoragon,
you can see in my Pimped Blender (see my sig)
how many UI layouts can be used & linked to scenes if named the same.
it runs 18 layouts & 49 scenes.
a bit much, but it functions well.
Currently I don’t think it is worth adding new features. (they are stopped anyway)
rather to find/use better ways to set up what there is now, then learn from these experiences,
for the future.
There is one thing that should be fixed, the ability to easily delete objects, materials and espeically textures from .blend files. It’s very annoying when you remove a texture from use too find that blender has loaded the texture name and slot when you load blender, although the texture may not be loaded into blender it keeps the name and the datablock.
I know that you can unlink materials and then reload the blend, but there has to be a better, more real-time way of deleting data from inside blender.
Edit: This is not a complete fix, but it could work. Why not create a library.blend file and fill this file with planes assigned with all of the textures/ mats you need, all the brushes that you’ve made and all of the other things like base meshes etc. Then when you create a new file just append what you need and there you have it
Not a bad idea. It would definitely work as far as not having multiple .blends but in terms of quickly accessing a default using Zanos’s recently used method is a bit faster.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who’d like a welcome screen! made me feel a lot better
You can use the command line arguments at startup to run a python script so I’m sure a start menu could be created for this.
However I’m much too lazy to try that just now.
However…
You can accomplish (quick and dirty like) what you originally ask for via an OS “batch file”. In my case it’s Windows but it can be done in any OS. Heck in *NIX OSs it can be easily made into a dynamic sort of setup. Anyway here is a Windows batch that demonstrates the concept:
@echo off
set blenderexe="C:\Blender Foundation\Blender\blender.exe"
CLS
:MENU
echo.
echo Select Blender file to load
echo.
echo 0. EXIT
echo 1. Default setup A
echo 2. Default setup B
echo 3. Default setup C
echo.
set choice=
set /p choice= Enter option...
echo.
if not '%choice%'=='' set choice=%choice:~0,1%
if '%choice%'=='0' goto End
if '%choice%'=='1' %blenderexe% default_setup_a.blend
if '%choice%'=='2' %blenderexe% default_setup_b.blend
if '%choice%'=='3' %blenderexe% default_setup_c.blend
goto MENU
:END
set choice=
EXIT
