The asset browser is still not ready to replace the Pose Library

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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And here is why:

  1. You can’t activate poses without entering pose mode. This is especially annoying when fixing weight paints.

  2. You have to right click delete every. single. pose. you want to delete.

  3. You can’t reorder your poses period, it’s just locked to alphabetical order. It was really handy to use empty poses with names like
    -------Hand poses-------
    To sort your poses neatly which brings me to my next point.

  4. The lack of list view make large amount of poses really annoying to work with. You either have to sacrifice a quarter of your screen to get a decent amount of poses available to you or take the L and buy another monitor just so you can finally see the same amount of poses you used to be able to in a side panel.

  5. Why in the world do I have to make the pose a Keyframe before I can save it to the Asset library? Its a massive waste of time.

The new asset library is a great tool for Animations but is lacking as a Pose library.

The ability to make rapid changes is just gone with the asset browser.
Just want to quickly add a pose? You need to select all bones then add to Asset Library, old Pose Library? Just press +.
Want to update a pose? Delete old pose from asset browser, clean up orphans, select bones, add new pose with same name, old Pose Library? Just press + and select replace.
Want to apply a pose so you can test deformations? You need to go into pose mode open, Asset browser click on pose, get out of pose mode before you can get back to work.
Where as with the old Pose Library click on rig from either the viewport or Outliner scroll down in properties and apply.

I really hope the Devs reconsider replacing the old pose library at least not in this state.
As much as I love the new Asset browser it still is not ready to completely replace the old Pose library.

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2

I absolutely agree.

I’m generally not a big fan of the asset browser being forced so strongly onto everyone. With brushes, animation, shaders, nodes and the likes all requiring a different approach the asset browser just seems way too clunky to work for everything.

Many times a list is all that’s needed, poses are a perfect example. I don’t see professionals happily dragging thumbnails into the viewport. I might be wrong, but more often than not I’ve seen animators choosing simpler approaches which just feel more efficient and convenient.

Might be worth posting your thoughts to devtalk as well, even though common users seem to be persona non grata over there, some of the forums still seem to be active and getting some developer attention.

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I agree it is kind of a downgrade in some ways. Especially that you have to make a new action every time you add a pose. Plus the interface gets very cluttered when you have your 3d window, your bone buttons, your asset browser and your action editor all at once as opposed you just your 3d window and bone buttons.

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At least you’re able to delete poses, I’ve been unable to delete or update existing poses in this asset browser. Clicking the “edit” button does nothing. Right-clicking does nothing (no pop-up or anything else with options). And I accidentally made a bunch of copies of poses trying to use this thing and I can’t get rid of them.

Who was this made for again?

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I agree. The asset browser pose system makes me sad.

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I tried many times, but found it impossible to work with asset browser poses.

Please devs,consider reverting “grayout” of old pose browser for curent lts. And text too, word (legacy) is more than enough

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I really miss the old pose library

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Well. It was definitely removed for 3.5.
They started to work on an usability pass/redesign of new pose library.

But the goal is still to force user to use Asset Browser for pose creation and edition.

Currently, only few improvements have been brought to asset browser context menu.
Panel added in sidebar by pose library addon should be replaced by Asset Shelf region that should show catalogs (that are currently ignored in sidebar).

Advantage of old pose library was that was not needed to place your mouse pointer into an asset shelf to browse poses or to create them.
I hope that when Asset Shelf will be in place, we could have shortcuts to directly call its content and a context menu in Viewport to make some editing.

But chances that we could have abilities similar to old pose library, this year, are low.
There was a workshop about animation in October that announced several years of experimentation to revamp animation workflow.

  • 2023: Build prototypes, prioritising the Rig Explainer, Rig Profiler & performance, 3D Onion Skinning, and Rigging/Constraint Nodes. A few different prototypes are built, to explore different solutions. These should then be implemented in a way that compartmentalises those aspects that depend on the current implementation of Armatures, Actions, etc.
  • 2024: With the new insights, reconsider the current Armatures, Actions, and Objects to allow multi-object animation, better data handling, layering of animation data, etc. Speed things up, work on more improvements.
  • 2025: More usable cool stuff.

So, we are probably stuck with design of new pose library for one year, at least.

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And in the meantime, what is going to be the final point of the new pose library? To work exactly as the classic one?

Though without any doubt, the new system will be much well written and wrapped up in a nice package. However the point if it makes sense in terms of what is trending right now…

Now we talk about AI assisted posing, or physics based animations. Long gone the days of where you would move a rig and carefully set it in place to it won’t penetrate the touching surfaces.

In other terms we need more robust workflows, rather than perfect designs! :slight_smile:

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That is normal to be unsatisfied by an underachieved design.
You need 3 editors to be able to use it.
3D Viewport with an unrevealed sidebar, Asset Browser and an action editor.

And current default Animation workspace has no asset browser, sidebar of viewport is hidden and Dope Sheet is in Dope Sheet mode.
UI does not help at all to discover how to use new pose library.
There should be another animation workspace available in a new 3D Animation template, in official release, reflecting state of expected workflow.

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As far as I have understood so far, trying my own customizations here and there (shortcuts, panels, etc). That everything in a UI is related to workflows (ergonomics).

Say in some example, you could have a 100% perfect and tidy UI design, but then it would be 0% practical in terms of usefulness. All shortcuts would be all over the keyboard, all menus would be all over the place.

Once you figure out a workflow, you bring every chunk from here and there and wrap it up into a new streamlined process, where everything is within a hand’s reach and everything makes sense from point A to B.

In some ways I have noticed that Blender, wants to remain workflow-neutral, so it won’t dictacte to the average user how to use the software. This is a very fair approach (and economic in terms of R&D), but is unfair for the software because it kinda holds it back to primitivism and won’t allow it to flourish.

I hope that Blender will have to take the next steps, with more awareness than before. All eyes are on Blender right now and the days of selecting with right click are gone. There is no room for second-guessing. :slight_smile:

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Workflow is not a synonym of ergonomics.

But ergonomics is limiting potential of having different workflows.

The fact that Left click select is a default, does not mean that days of right click select are gone.
Anybody can use a different keymap than default keymap.
In terms of workflow, what is different is role attributed to right click.

That is rather a question of right click menu versus right click select than a question of left click select versus right click select.

And if under a precised context, right click menu is useless, using right click to select may be a pertinent choice.

That is not because old defaults are not common to most of similar application that they did not have their use. In some cases, their use became obsolete because step they occupied in workflow is no more necessary or another one more powerful or efficient replaced it and is called differently.
Some changes have just be done to be more standard. But old shortcut is still pertinent.

Right mouse button is on a mouse or a stylus. An object moved in space.
That is not delirious to assign to it a task relative to a gesture.
The pertinence to assign to it a menu, is mainly to be able to do a maximum of things with one hand.
But if you are a user using a five-buttons mouse or if you are not annoyed by pressing W or Spacebar of a keyboard to call the menu, that is just an preference of ergonomics without any incidence on workflow.
You are not blocked by that in your workflow in ability to do such or such step. You are not loosing speed.

Case of pose library is different.
Old pose library had shortcuts to create and browse poses in viewport, that did not care of where was mouse pointer. Only context imposed was to be in pose mode.

New pose library is imposing to user to move mouse to asset browser widget, action editor or asset browser to create and browse poses. There is an obvious lost of speed to create a pose asset.
That is not the case about the choice of pose.
New pose library is giving a lot better visual feedback of what pose name means.
User should gain speed to directly click on pertinent pose asset icon instead of browsing poses.
Professional animators were already using addons to have a better visual feedback of pose.
In context of a serious animation that will take weeks or months to be made, that is an obvious upgrade to have what new pose library + asset browser workflow is giving.

But for the hobbyist, the generalist that do very short animations, and did not want to loose time to create a rigid pose library, but was just using old pose library shortcuts to create quick markers of animation : there is a lost of flexibility.
Now, there is a complexity that is validated for a workflow put in place for a serious animation work.
But the complexity may seem too important for people who just want quick pose markers.

Here, there is a real opposition of workflows between users, that will not be invested the same way, in animation.
That is not a question of primitive workflow versus civilized workflow.
That is really a question of quick individually made short animation against a long detailed big scale production.

New pose library could satisfy the barbarians with few adaptations of ergonomics asked in original post. :stuck_out_tongue:

  • Shortcuts for easy creation/deletion of a pose asset in 3D Viewport.
    Pose Assets are created in pose mode. There is no reason to limit creation of pose to one editor as long as this restriction exists. Pose mode in 3D Viewport is more valid than asset browser or action editor to create such asset. It is where armature is posed.
    A pose asset is an action. As is, It can be unmarked and delete in action editor.
    3D Viewport is a less valid space to delete actions. But that would not hurt to have an operator to delete last activated pose asset from 3D Viewport. People do not ask for more.
  • Ability to display pose assets just as a list of names, in Asset Browser or properties, to free space.

Point 1 is currently satisfied by using an asset browser that is handling weight paint mode, with locking of modes disabled.
Point 3 is supported by catalogs in asset browser.

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I have heard it mentioned here that developers don’t come here much or at all.

Not sure about the best place for it. But if there are suggestions I think this might be the place to frequent:

They are also reworking the entire Blender animation tools and approach.

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As far as I have understood, based on my own coding adventures. Say for example you have a set of features like this 9 5 3 7 2 0 1 4 6 , then depending on the use case, once you settle for an approach into doing things in a certain way, you end up with something like this 012 345 679. As of having an approach to do something that goes from Point-A to Point-B, in some other terms think of doing things in the right order.

How ergonomics sticks into the picture now, is about trimming down the excess steps and result into something like this 0... 3.. 6.... So kinda the bottom line, is that the more you remove the excess steps and freedom on doing things with either way, you end up into following one streamlined process.

This correct 100% as I stated in the previous example, because the more you end up with a streamlined process, the more you gain in ergonomics and efficiency, but on the contrary you loose variability.

15

If you see features as nodes, you can create several paths to go from A to B.

Of course, most efficient path passing through less nodes is the only one that is interesting someone that just want to produce B from A.

But if someone wants to be able to create, C, D, E, …, Z from A, having a perfect balance of minimum features to learn to obtain a maximum of results is what is expected.
An improvement of ergonomics does not necessary mean a lost of variability.
Efficiency is also relative to variety of tasks, included in your workflow.
If you make a task faster but loose ability to accomplish another one that is as essential, you are not more efficient.

Imagine that, in order to restrict amount of a path to retain, a direct A to B is impossible.
To go from A to B, you have to pass by C or D, first.
Some people are preferring one option because they are using it frequently to obtain another result, or by using that option, they are collecting an info that is making sense for a step after B.
Forcing to use C instead of D is not improving ergonomics. It is just forcing a workflow to detriment of another one.
Automating A to B could be an improvement of speed. But C or D could still have a use to obtain other results.

It is like having highways and secondary roads in your network. Building an highway does not mean that entirety of old road have to disappear. Most of time, only the part that is common is removed and the rest stays as secondary road to continue to access cities (nodes).
Having just a network of highways does not make sense.

It is possible to improve ergonomics for user, by adding high speed paths, next to paths to less frequented nodes. But of course, increasing amount of paths to maintain has a cost for developer.

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holy moly i cannot believe how bad the new pose asset library is, and seemingly getting worse?

case in point, i saw in 3.5 beta they updated the UX so there’s no longer a button to add poses to the pose library in the 3d view properties panel. how this is an ‘improvement’ is baffling to me.

it appears the workflow is go into the action editor to add a pose, go to the asset library to remove or rename a pose, and go to the 3d view window to apply a pose with any degree of granularity (flipping/blending).

the fact that those 3 core actions for working with poses are spread out across 3 separate editors is unbelievable. i can’t think of any other way to put it. does… anyone like this??

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17

That can make sense, but it probably goes down to how you use poses.
On project I’ve worked on, the pose library is build by the lead animators at the beginning of the project, it can be basic cycles ( run , walk) facial expression , hand poses.
Layout departement can also get their set of poses that are slightly different.

Once that’s done, generally we don’t go back to them and they are used through the whole project.

In that workflow creating the poses and using them are two very different actions, so it can make sense to have the “apply pose” part very simple and accessible without too many options, and the creation part maybe a bit more involved for more power users.
but TBH I didn’t tried current poselib system yet :smiley:

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18

imo obscuring the creation and management of poses the way they have still feels user hostile and needlessly rigid.

also if the system was designed for departments to go in and prepare a library ahead of time, why is a pose library isolated to a ‘current file’? for every new scene file in a project, is someone going in, importing all the poses from another file and re-marking them as assets?

with the old pose library, you could create a bunch of poses on a master file, and when you linked that rig into a new scene, the library was there, linked and uneditable with only the option of applying poses.

Screenshot 2023-02-17 at 12.12.24 PM

the new pose library is just bad. i will die on this hill. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, I just tested it in 3.5, I think they did great !
The poselib UI is really cool, with the possibilities to paste flipped, blend between poses … Super cool !

From my understanding, once the poses are created in one “poselibs” blend file you add that to the asset browser libraries and they are available everywhere.

From there I guess you need to use tags to retreive poses for a specific character.

I don’t see a lot of regressions from the old system, indeed, before it was possible to attach poses to a rig and get everything once it’s loaded, but it was clunky to use anyway isn’t it ?

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to be clear, blending poses, pasting flipped, visual previews are all good things. also now i see how the library is managed externally, thanks.

but i continue to strongly disagree with the rest of the UX.

here’s another example of how the split up UI makes absolutely no sense:

you have the option of organizing your poses into catalogues in the asset browser. presumably for having groups of facial expressions, hand poses, etc. but in the pose library view? no catalogues, just the full list of every single pose that you must manually search through (also it doesn’t seem to have any awareness of tags). meaning you go through all this organization for next to no benefit.

anyway, not to be exclusively negative: the solution here for so much of this would be so simple. when you are in “current file” in your pose library in the 3d viewport… you are by the logic of the system, building your pose library as opposed to only applying poses from an external, locked library. expose the add pose button, and add the rename and delete option to the right click menu of the poses. when you have an external library selected? just grey these out. its so very simple.

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