@ DorienVincent: Agree with all. Jargon needs to stay. We don’t want to dumb this down to kindergarten level. “Translate” should not turn into “Move stuff around” or whatnot. The way to fix the tech speak and make it more useful is definitely to fix tooltips. They could go as far as just go to the “turbidity” wikipedia and copy/paste the meat of the definition into the tooltip. Like Jonathan Williamson said, “using the word in its own definition” is a big no-no. I believe the current tooltip for Brownian is “changes the brownian strength.” That tells me nothing.
Blender UI is definitely not broken. A few tweaks to upgrade it would be nice, but it still works very well. I would say 90% of programs out today have more bugs than Blender does. Especially since they fixed the crashing issue that it had for so long.
Inconsistent or not logical (because badly documented) I would rather say and too much on the interface that repeats each other.
Here is a good example:
In edit mode you can do mesh modeling
In edit mode you can also UV Unwrap.
In UV/Image Editor you need to be in edit mode in 3D view to be able to see and edit the mesh.
Makes sense to a certain degree - for a person new to it is not going to be logical.
After one class sessions the students however understood why you need to be in edit mode to be able to edit the UV in the UV/Image Editor.
So proper documentation or thorough tutorials is what will help new users more than a slick interface.
The biggest problem is not where what is in an interface but understanding from a user perspective how a software internally works.
For people obsessed with technically precise nomenclature and dictionary definitions, y’all are pretty hung up over the rhetorical power of the word “broken”.
My previous comment was not originally posted in this thread, it was moved here. With regards to focusing in on words and jargon, I have no major issue with, for example the word ‘Translate’ being changed to ‘Move’. My mention of it was in reference to something Andrew said in his long podcast, something to the effect of “…translate, what the hell does that even mean”. I wasn’t aware that people struggled so much with English vocabulary, to be honest ‘translate’ meaning to move isn’t really that difficult or unusual a term. I thought that it was nit picking on his part, searching for things to have a pop at in order to back up his assertion that Blender is broken. When I started 3d I didn’t know what a Vertex was, it’s not a common word perhaps we would be better changing it to ‘Dot’ so that the new people aren’t put off by the ‘technical jargon’, where or when do we stop?
It seems that there is an implication here that the developers are wilfully disregarding the wishes of the user base and this is nonsense. I could understand all of this if modelling, rendering or basic animation systems were really ‘broken’ but it’s not the case. Now in fairness, a couple of years ago a good argument could be made about the state of the rendering engine. I was vocal about it on this forum because the engine genuinely couldn’t do things that I regarded as a basic necessity, yet people rushed to defend it. Of course, the same individuals soon changed their tune when Cycles came out. All I’m hearing now is an abstract notion about the poor new users who will never be able to understand how it works, yet we were all new users once and I guess we’re still here!
For the first time in my life I’m meeting people in the ‘real’ world that know about Blender and are using it, I read people on other forums all the time saying that they are dabbling with Blender for this and that and are in the process of shifting over wholesale. I’d say that not only are there are plenty of new users but also that current ones have been spoilt rotten with all of the new feature improvements!
I understand the need to complain in certain circumstances, sometimes it’s the only way to get things to evolve but I am not buying into all the noise over this issue. Yes, as far as I am concerned there are some small problems but no way do I see it as a deal breaker for people who are serious about learning Blender. The point I made about other software was simply to say the grass isn’t always greener and although I didn’t link specifically to people taking issue with UI layouts and ‘jargon’, don’t worry there is plenty of that going on elsewhere too.
I was a long time Maya user (7 years) then I started to learn Blender and it was HARD in the beginning to do everything the blender-way. But after about a week, it all made sense and I love how it works. Now I can’t stand Maya or 3ds Max GUIs. There are just TOO MANY POPUPS to juggle around in those programs!!! I have no problem with how the mouse buttons are and I agree with everything Sebastian demonstrated in his video. I had those click problems in Maya and they don’t happen in Blender at all.
I agree that there are some inconsistencies but there is no problem with the GUI or the words that are used in the program for the most part (the BSDF in front of shader names should be removed). This is a professional software and like other 3D software, it has jargon like Nurbes, Splines, Normal, Bump map and so on. To even move around the scene they all have different way of doing it. In case of Maya you have to hold Alt and use left, middle and right mouse buttons to zoom, pan, or orbit. If you didn’t know that, then you can’t do anything!
There is one thing that Maya does to solve this new-user problem. Maya will show a popup (that can be disabled) and it has 6 short (1min) videos to get people started. The videos are bundled with Maya which makes the program bigger in size but Blender can list the videos in the Splash Screen and link them to Youtube. Here are the list of the videos:1- Create and view objects
2- Zoom, pan and roll: Navigation essentials
3- Move, rotate and scale objects
4- Select objects and parts of objects
5- Reshape and edit objects
6- Uncover more features
I have Maya’s start videos uploaded to my Dropbox. If someone wants to see the quality of their work, let me know.
Here is the startup window in Maya:
3D programs HAVE to include all those switches and buttons to enable users to make complex scenes…
I’m not knocking Mr Price himself, His input to the community has been invaluable in terms of his artistic talents, but i do think he has gone about this the wrong way, dramatically declaring how broken blender is and then sitting back and having no further engagement in the topic, except to create a follow up throwing more petrol on the fire. when all that is “broken” is a handful of consistency issues.
an acceptable way of doing things would have been to say " Iv’e had issues with some of the UI features and i’d like to take a proposal to the developers, what feedback can you guys give so that we can make the proposal as solid as possible." then go into what his issues were. but currently he is simply stirring up the mob, and it is a lot of his fanboys that are making the most noise, not all and certainly not exclusivly here. and i know not everyone that agrees with him is a fanboy, in some regards i agree too (i am totally against changing From RMB select though)
change will happen, in one of PLyczkowski’s post above he referred to Tons plan to refresh the UI in the blender road map but in the same list of projects it states the need for a better UI for the 2.7 series. the roadmap also hints that the 3.0 will need a complete redesign whatever the plan, it simply tells me that devs are aware that things need to be done and are also willing to listen to the community, however if the community is just screaming and arguing in a hysterical fit at how broken it is because someone with a following says so, then they wont get any constructive information and they’ll simply do what they think is best between themselves.
my thoughts would be to let this thread rot in piece and let the discussion continue constructively in the ui proposals thread where it needs to be
Maya’s translate tools sound irritating. Blender’s 3D view controls are intuitive and very easy. I couldn’t even tell you if it’s Shift or Alt to pan or zoom but I can just do it.
One thing that I’m seeing come up here is jargon/lexicon/vernacular/etc. I think that is actually a big point of contention. I remember making my first mirrored anything (and everything in my first two renders was badly lit and ray-traced for NO REASON), and Fresnel and IOR just throwing me right off the mark. Fresnel was an impressive lighting specialist, and IOR wasn’t a person, as I later found out, but I sat with these totally blank spots in my education for years, just applying the ‘titch and touch’ method instead, and occasionally getting Blender to give me the badassery I wanted.
It wasn’t a problem of Blender not speaking my language. No. It was a problem of me not speaking Blender’s language. I was an American tourist, shouting at locals about breakfast in France, “BACON. EGGS.” “Parlez pas anglais.” “Uh… COLD PIZZA. BEER.” “Monsieur! Arret! J’nes parlez pas anglais!” “Um, MERCY BO-KEUPT!”
And Blender would turn out what it could turn out, which was less often an arrest warrant than it was in France.
Criticizing some aspects of Blender is like blasphemy to some folks. It’s amazing how they spend so much emotional energy on a piece of software. The BF developers are big boys. They can take any criticism. ;D They know what’s valid and what’s not.
Truth is, life goes on. Many folks like Blender. Many also don’t. They move on. What I don’t get is if I am a long time user of Blender, why would I oppose any improvement? It is so hard to adjust to little changes to accommodate new users?
I also hope that Ton and co. will put together a UI design/improvement team because it seems to me like a lot of artists in the professional realms will give up on an app. quickly if their interface knowledge from the commercial solutions don’t carry over well (and as I always say, I don’t mean this in a way that suggests to make Blender look like a Maya clone, but instead expands on the existing concepts).
I can get around the UI quite fine as it is now, but there’s always room for improvement, there’s always a place ripe for innovation, and there’s always those niggling inconsistencies to take care of, the fact that there has been little work on the UI since 2.5x might suggest to a professional that there’s some usability related things in Blender that the devs. just don’t care about, and we don’t want people to think that as bad as Autodesk’s policies are today, the BF’s is even worse.
So much of the interface can now be customized, and adjusted by means of Python, that maybe what we could introduce is the notion of, well, “skins.” These are simply pre-fab sets of UI shortcut definitions that you can choose from: pick the one that’s most comfy to you, including Blender Classic. If your experienced fingers are muscle-memoried to use a certain keystroke to do a certain thing, “like some other particular product does,” then you can have it. And you can switch from one to another at-will.
I get the feeling that we could do this, basically, “entirely with Python.” I see that all of the user-interface key bindngs are already exposed.
Sure you can use Python, but there’s few 3D artists coming from other apps. that will take the time to learn the Python API and edit the scripts before they actually start producing.
What we need are more of those little customization options available through those region-based right-click menus. Things like…
Toolbar - Horizontal mode, Icon mode (both can be active at once).
Toolbar - Add tool, group tools (add tools and group them together)
Property panels - Single column, Double column
Window borders - lock border (which would allow the movement of 2 or more window borders at once)
Once the devs. get this done, the Maya mode, like I said before, can be expanded to change the preferences and UI options so it’d feel more familiar to an incoming Maya user while keeping the Blender look for Blender users.
People keep talking about “more customizability” but no-one is satisfied that you can just script your own UI, which I think shows that customizability isn’t really exactly what people want. There isn’t a GUI that can provide unlimited customization to itself (it’s a logical impossibility), and in the end all anyone needs or wants is a smooth work flow, to put it in simple terms. Flexibility is a part of that but not the dominant issue.
I can’t understand why there’s so much fuss about the word “broken”. Really do we need to debate on the meaning of this term, and if it was used ‘correctly’? If you take the time to watch the video you can see that it’s obviously a ‘slogan’.
Price brings up some valid points, and (PLEASE TAKE NOTE!) that he’s not only saying his impressions (aka 2 cents): everything he says is supported by studies on human interaction with computers. He read books about the argument. He’s not only saying “I don’t like how it is”. Actually he likes Blender as well as many do. His interest and involvement with this piece of software speaks for him.
And at the same time, he clearly says that this whole idea came from users feedback, which in his case (blenderguru followers) is huge compared to feedback that many of us here have.
So, personally I’m quite happy he’s studiyng his own proposal, given that he has solid bases (books, studies on UIs), and he knows more than me, where most people find difficulties (aka where the problems are).
And i’m glad that he has talked with ‘Big Guy’ Ton about the whole thing. (IRRC he will be speaking at the Conference too.)
I’m sure the Foundation won’t be changing Blender to Bad-Blender, afterall we’re talking about improvements, not just changes
I guess that the average user just doesn’t care if he can make a FANTASTIC-UI via Python. That’s more for a geek/programmer/curious. If someone approaches Blender to have a job done (hopefully quick and good), probably he will not want or have the time to mess with python UI customization issues.
Imagine someone tells you:
“Hey use this fantastic software, it’s great, but you have to write lines of code to actually be able to use as you please. Ah, be careful then: once you customize it, many tutorials online might get hard to follow…”.
Try to think it’s not Blender. Wouldn’t you look around for another fantastic software? One you shouldn’t write the UI because is already well done?
It’s 14 pages long now but it’s a good read if you want to see the opinions of people from studios large and small. Those folks are who Andrew’s crusade is mainly about I think. The first few pages covers a lot of ground but further in there’s more about the UI and pipeline issues. If you don’t mind some semi-heated debate then read on to the end. There’s some good stuff in there. You’ll probably see a few familiar names.
Took me a couple hours to read through it all slowly last night. It was worth the time and very interesting.
Well formulated lsscpp and in it’s essence I agree with you.
Personally I’m hoping for some substantial changes of the Blender UI in the 2.7x development cycle - BUT without turning off existing Blender users, and have them relearn their workflow that much.
This is why the question of how to make a future Blender better at customization & personalization gets important. Finding the most clever well researched design for Blender customization. So the program are catering both for the existing Blender ‘super’ users (with their shortcut driven workflow), and the new user (from other programs) with a need for a intuitive welcoming UI. A UI that gets the new user ‘hooked’ on Blender, using Andrews term from his last podcast.
When I get a little more time in the coming days, I will post my own thoughts on how this somehow could be done. Going deeper into the UI customization concepts from this earlier post I made.
