Questions and thoughts about 3Dview shading

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

I have a lot of questions about Shading in the 3D view, besides, i’d like this to turn into a discussion topic:

I think the viewing modes should go like this (from lowest to highest):
Bounding box
wireframe
matcap (It is less controllable then solid, so it should be under it)
shaded (more recognisable word then solid, as i find solid to have no sense)
plain texture (No lights, just texture)
Texture and light (Simple shading, responsive to the lights in the scene + texture)
Full shading (It’s GLSL with a more understandable name, full shading and trexture + shadows)

I don’t think the user should be searching for these modes in the N panel, they can be just there in the easy to find spot, where he expects them to be. I remember at 2.49, it took me forever to finally find how to turn on full shading. It took me quite a while to find it in 2.5 too. I don’t want any more new users getting into this again.
Can someone argument why this is a bad idea, why wasn’t it made like this in the first place?

Am i correct that “Display only Render objects” and “Outline selected” checkboxes in the N panel are completely useless? Do you find any use to them?
What’s the point of not showing the outline of a selected object?
I also think, that “All object origins”, “Relationship lines”, and “All edges” should be moved to the preferences instead. Can someone prove otherwise? I see no point for them being hidden like this.
Also, the shading menu should dissapear completely because of my shading mode list suggestion… no?
Next, does “textured solid” make any sense to you? Isn’t that what “textured mode” is for in the first place?

Next,
Can someone explain how do “Multitexture” and “Texture Face” work? On the default scene, if i turn on “textured” i get a shaded view, that responds to the lights of the scene. That’s neat.
But they don’t display any textures if i add a texture to the material, which makes it confusing. Why doesn’t it? Isn’t that what “Textured mode” is for (Displaying the scene with textured materials)?
Besides, if i unwrap the default cube, the object turns white and looses all the shading… how do i get the shading back and what’s the purpose of loosing the shading in the first place? Is it a bug?
Then i noticed that if i open an image in the UV editor, the cube gets textured… What’s the purpose of that? What are the advantages of displaying the texture on the model from the UV editor instead of displaying the materials diffuse texture? This makes no sense to me.
Next, what is the difference between multitexture and texture face? I didn’t see a single difference.

P.S. Can someone make a build for Windows that has the matcap mode in it? I want to try it out. I am not sure, but i think it’s in the Sculpt branch since 30459.

Thank you for your time.

2

Am i correct that “Display only Render objects” and “Outline selected” checkboxes in the N panel are completely useless? Do you find any use to them?

Selecting Display only Rendered objects removes lights, cameras from the view with a sigle selection to make the overall 3d view clearer in a complex scene.

What’s the point of not showing the outline of a selected object?
I also think, that “All object origins”, “Relationship lines”, and “All edges” should be moved to the preferences instead. Can someone prove otherwise? I see no point for them being hidden like this.

They are 3d view display options so seem logical to be in the 3d view display settings. Why do you say they are hidden here when they would be hidden in the user preferences and less convenient to get to.

Also, the shading menu should dissapear completely because of my shading mode list suggestion… no?
Next, does “textured solid” make any sense to you? Isn’t that what “textured mode” is for in the first place?

3

Yeah sure, but the same can be done in the outliner or with the layers. There’s no point in having a third way of doing it imho. Actually having only one is enough. If only the outliner had folders, the layer system would become totally useless.
maybe the outliner could have some quick display buttons like “Hide objects that are not rendered, show only lights (Better word then lamp, as they are not necessarily lamps) and etc.”. And they would hide the object by closing the eye, which is logical and better then mysteriously hiding objects even though the outliner displays them as visible.

How often do you need to get there?
Isn’t it like, turn on blender, set the settings you want, and save as default to use in all of your future projects? That’s how all of the preferences work in blender.

The grid is a different thing, as it depends on the actuall scene you are working on.

4

Dude, that’s a lot of questions…

My theory on where stuff is located in blender goes a bit like this, ‘It took me quite a while to find it…the first time’. No matter what you do blender is going to have a high learning curve so ‘I don’t want any more new users getting into this again’ isn’t that helpful methinks.

I’m also pretty sure the N-panel is ‘The Preferences’ so having all that stuff there makes sense as opposed to having a separate panel in the properties window for all the different window types.

I do agree that some of the default material/texture behavior is a bit wonky, took me a week or so to figure out that my model turned white because I accidentally went into texture paint mode and a uv layer was automatically assigned which overrode the material settings.

5

Firstly, sorry for the lot of questions, i should have numbered them… But i was just going with the flow…
Blender does have a high learning curve. That’s true.
But imagine this, for about a year i didn’t even know GLSL existed.
If it was a Shading mode, i would have found it on the first day. That’s basically what users do on the first day with a 3d program - Trying to manipulate the view, move, rotate, scale, change the shading mode, add more primitives…
I thought it was impossible to view your materials at work in the 3Dview…
Only later I saw a youtube video with GLSL turned on, i was amazed and confused. :spin:
GLSL is definately a shading mode and i don’t think it should be seperated from the other shading modes. What is this, discrimination?

So now we have two places for preferences, eh?
That’s bad design imho.
If you want a preference, you search in the preferences, if you want to edit the object position, you go to the object properties, if you want to edit the grid of this scene, you go to the scene properties. I find this to be common sense.
I also think that the N panel could be exploded, and all the settings could easyly go to the properties tabs, the T panel and the preferences. (Not sure about ‘background image’ though)

For some time i thought that the textured mode is just broken, or my computer doesn’t support it for some weird reason, so i never actually used it.
Blender shouldn’t give this impression to anyone :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Am i correct that “Display only Render objects” and “Outline selected” checkboxes in the N panel are completely useless? Do you find any use to them?
What’s the point of not showing the outline of a selected object?

Its really nice to not display outlines, object origin dots, the 3d cursor, and the grid floor while sculpting - these things only get in the way. The display ‘only render’ checkbox is one of the most useful checkboxes in the whole n panel for me.

7

Yes, it’s good when they are hidden, but it’s even better when the centers and the cursor gets hidden AUTOMATICALLY when you enter sculpt mode. Hows about that?
The outline already hides by default.
The grid might still be usefull in sculpt mode and you can turn it off easily.

8

Or three places…

(Global preferences) ctrl+alt+U, (context sensitive per-window preferences) N-key, and the properties sub-window.

I’m sure if you made up a proper proposal they would give it some thought but one thing I know about UI design is no matter what you do someone is going to come along and say “That’s bad design imho”… No matter what…

9

Yes, ofcource.
There’s allways someone that doesn’t like the GUI.
Even when the GUI changed from 2.49 to 2.5, a lot of people disliked it. That was weird to me. But it’s expected, those were mainly the close minded die hard old users.
Imho, 2.49 GUI was TERRIBLE in a lot of ways, and 2.5 - ROCKS. But i still stuff that i think are flaws.

Now, about that “(Global preferences) ctrl+alt+U, (context sensitive per-window preferences) N-key, and the properties sub-window.”
I only suggested moving “All object origins”, “Relationship lines”, and “All edges” to the preferences.
In what case would you want one window to display “Relationship lines” lines, and the other - not to. Or, one Window display “All edges” and the other one not to? I can’t really think of any situation where this would be useful. Do you? That’s why i think these should be global settings, that you would like to reuse in all your projects.
And btw, the PROPERTIES subwindow is the one holding context sensitive stuff.

Now, I am not a guy that thinks that something should be done just because i said so.
It’s allways the best when it is how MOST people want, and I’m just shouting out my ideas and hoping to get some agreement from others. But if most people want it to be the way it is now - I’m perfectly fine with that, because i learned the way it is. And because i did, i know what would have made it simpler for me. Blender was always my favourite 3D package, no matter how bad the GUI ever was.

About propossals…
I never wrote an actual proposal. I don’t know much about it.
Wouldn’t a proposal mean that i would have to code it myself?
I wish i could code, but i can’t… Atleast not for blender… i never tried…

10

well, I guess I can’t complain with that! not sure how the grid could still be useful though

11

+100

It’s great to clean up the viewport with just a single click.

12

For example, if you sculpt a character, its good to know where the ground is, so you can put his feet on the ground… Or if you sculpt a dragon that is laying on the floor, its good to know where the floor is, so you can make sure that he is perfectly flat on that ground.

That’s just few examples where that’s useful.

Oh, and jeepster, thanks for the details on the Sintel dragons. :smiley:

And yes, as i said, cleaning up the viewport with one click - awesome. But way better if they hide with the Outliner eye thing instead as it would reduce some confusion!

13

Just make some pretty pictures showing your idea and add some text to further explain if you need to.

Simple really.

Then, if it’s a good idea, someone might come along and implement it.

Your current idea isn’t really about coding new features but about organizing current ones so isn’t much of a problem to ‘fix’…but you have to convince the blender GUI gurus that your idea is better than theirs.