The problem with the new Blender 2.8 tools panel

The tools panel used to be a place where you had everything, all the abstract tools that you never used, a lot of the addons you had installed, grease pencil tools, UV tools, etc.
Now its been replaced with the simplest tools you can find, Move, Bevel, Extrude | Different sculpting brushes | Basic texturing brushes - and this is all fine, for beginners.

Beginners will grow to love the new tools panel, but advanced users, who already have all these tools bound to their keyboard, will no longer find any use for the tools panel. Having the ability to press T and have a bunch of useful tools pop up is great, to then press T again and have them all disappear.

I understand that they moved the more advanced tools elsewhere, such as on the top row, and i love the new clean drop downs, especially in sculpting mode, but this does not address the “removal” of the tools panel. Why not make something new out of it?
Bring back the tabs that we had! and let us decide what we want to have there. Just like Zbrush does it.
Or have it so that you have one tab dedicated for each addon you install, making it really clean and useful for those who rely on a lot of addons.
Or give us an “advanced version” of the tools panel, with tools for symmetry, vertex groups / shape keys, layers etc. Things you often need, but not always want to have on the screen.

Come up with something, for as it is now, the tools panel is no more than a graveyard, only to be visited by beginners, and never to be seen again by advanced users.

1 Like

My impression is that the tool panel is a work in progress and will eventually feature all the tools from the old T panel.

If not, then that’s just daft.

1 Like

i really hope so, but considering some of the other changes, i think they are trying to make it beginner friendly, which does make sense when looking at the current tools panel.

The tool panel has become the place for modal tools…addons are free to use the tool properties area in the properties panel or make popular or even their own editors… .

As an example retopoflow, box cutter and mesh machine are addpns that all offer modal tools. They could populate the tools panel or even add their own contexts (like edit mode, you could also have retopo mode, box cutter mode etc… if those tools become new modes the tool panel can become co.pletely context sensitive and repopulate with tools for those addons

I concur. I don’t see why those tools can’t be shown in addition to the current (2.79) tool panel, on top or on the side or whatever.

I believe one of the developers said specifically that the tool panel is not finished.

In addition, the point of the code quest was to lay the foundation for all of the various new concepts and tools in 2.8. Now that it’s all done, the development has shifted to finishing them.

1 Like

in that case ill give it some time. Cheers