What happened with pie menus?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Before this thread is closed, are there simple answers to the questions,
“Is it possible or likely that sticky keys will be available to use as input keymappings before, or separately, from Pie menus?”
“Is Sticky Key code a part of what LiquidApe has worked on that could be kept no matter what the fate of Pie menus will be?”
“Does everyone understand that 'Sticky Key” in the Blender context is COMPLETELY different from Windows OS StickyKeys?":smiley:

Also, props to Psy-fi for the ability to evaluate his own contribution honestly and discard it as poorly coded. For myself it’s one of the hardest habits to break, always trying to patch it up instead of redesigning the flow.
And props to LiquidApe for his very cool headed and reasoned responses to all the inflammatory hype on this thread. Although I have the worst of it on ignore I still see it in the quotations.

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//edited…

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Whats astounding is how some of the most artdent defenders, rather reverse haters, have been white washing the absolute vitriol they have and are continuing to leave on IRC. DingTo, a lot of that coming from you is not only two faced but intellectually dishonest. You are and have continued to be one of the most hateful, mocking people on the irc channels, even to the point where you send harassing PMs and dig through people’s personal profiles throughout the net. Some of you are thinking that those who “complain” are some how the problem, but looking at the responses so far show that many are just impervious to the giant steaming pile of hypocrisy laying in front of them.

People have concerns, they raise them, and they get attacked, mocked, treated like trash (literally calling us trash). You call us rats and poison, joke about “whacking” certain members of the community, and act like nothing is wrong with that kind of commentary. Its disgusting, its low and yet you come here and pretend like its all normal and some how WE are the extreme ones? If you cant understand why theres a conflict of interest, and why a group of those (many who are more professionally inclined) are marginalized, mocked and treated like crap on a daily basis… then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

This thread is good, because it does highlight a serious issue with how many of you are out touch with how this stuff is percieved, the very flaw in the mechanism or should we say “private club” you have built up around yourselves. It is not healthy for Blender or this community. Its obvious the source of hate isnt coming from those who are frustrated with the inconsistent behavior and unrealized potential of Blender’s development, but rather those who have their emotional state tied to how Blender is perceived and those who feel the need to work together to defend their private little club.

Its very sad, and yes DingTo, I do see your provoking comments on IRC. Grow up, and stop marginalizing those with serious concerns.

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  1. I would say likely after pie menus, maybe a release later, we could get lucky and Psi-fy might get a burst of energy to tackle them sooner, but I would not count on it.

  2. Psi-Fy did the sticky keys - I made a few suggestions on what variables should be exposed. I always wanted the functionality, but I had very little to do with it’s implementation. He just surprised me one day when I downloaded the branch and compiled. I think what Psy-Fi has eluded to is that they want sticky keys in - the branch proved it worked well. They just want it in a more finished form.

  3. Good point - sticky key in blender context just means that you hold the key down for a configurable amount of time and after that time has elapse, something new happens. Tap tab to jump between edit/object mode, hold tab to spawn a pie menu with all the modes."

Also, lets try to keep thread on topic - a lot of posts don’t even make a slight mention of pies. If you want to continue the “We are oppressed” storyline, might I suggest we split off the thread to a new one?

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Fair enough, I just had a chance to catch up with what was missed yesterday. If we can all move on and focus on pies without attacking Tiles, Btollput or myself that would be a fantastic step forward in having a meaningful conversation about concerns and design elements some of us feel strongly about.

Speaking on Pies, there was an art director for EA that I was friends with, and one of the things he would do when working in Maya was pull up a pie menu with options that lead to another pie menu for a specific operation. I wonder if this would be something that can be achieved post addon state.

You already showed how you can just quickly flip the wrist in a specific direction to call upon the function associated with the menu, in the example above, it could result in patterns, offering far more options with less hotkeys. Example, press and hold hotkey for pie, swipe up then right. Up would select the category or submenu with right being a specific function in the category or menu accessed by sliding up.

Seeing this in action has shown its an extremely fast workflow, especially for those using tablets.

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Could not be possible to implement Pies without Sticky keys, I don’t know, maybe making use of the RMB click (with LMB selection of course, or the equivalent shortcut for RMB that I don’t remember) and set the cursor position to something like Ctrl+click or similar, it should not be a big disadvantage I think respect to the benefits, this would be also in line with OSs and many applications.

Just a question/thought, I apologize if this was already explained before,

paolo

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I like the idea of multilevel pie menu
hope it has been included with new API PIE commands!

happy bl

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Totally possible. With the current implementation you can set them to whatever you want. Even to gestures!

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Thanks for the answer LiquidApe. Keep up the good work. And the chin.

I respectfullly suggest that Sticky Keys be developed separately from Pie Menus even though they could come together in the UI, because it seems they could be used for much more. It sounds like this might be the way they are going anyway.

Multilevel (nested) pie menus sound nice too, as in each level could fade in opacity as the next level pops up

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Thank you Sebastian for the fast and thorough reply,
so, maybe I missed the point, what prevents Pie menu to go in master, maybe the current implementation by Psy-Fy relies too strictly on Sticky keys?

paolo

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This should be possible already. A pie is an operator filled with other operators. Just put a pie on one of the operator “slices” and it should work fine.

What you are describing here is called marking menus. They have been under patent from Autodesk for awhile, but patent should expire shortly (I think original patent was granted in 1999 if I remember correctly) It might be a possibility at that point. Pretty sure we don’t want to copy verbatim though. You can see what I think you are talking about here: http://markingmenus.org/

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Pie menu addon is going in master. Default ‘off’ for now. If it proves to be popular, it could be turned ‘on’ by default in the future. The Devs want an escape route, so that if somebody HATES pies, they don’t HAVE to use them. Basically, they are trying not to shoot themselves in the foot.

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Haha!
Thank you LiquidApe, yes, actually I should have figured it out by myself.

C’mon guys, it’s not so terrible after all!

paolo

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Exactly, multi-level pies should already be possible to get added in that way - have a pie which spawns another pie etc. but may break for drag style interaction. We should be able to make this work better in our code though - this is where interaction with add-on writers will come into play.

Implementing the sticky key operator itself should not be too hard but I expect it won’t be included for this release because it will have to gothrough code review, since I want to make it fully customizable in the keymap. This is not such a trivial change and may need some thought.

Explanation:

Sticky operator currently have two shortcomings:

  • Actually, they are macros so you need to define them in code - C or python
  • Once they are defined they cannot be reconfigured, so you end up with a bloat of code if you want to define more.

Sticky operators are just a sub-case of what I would call conditional operators. Those are operators that call other operators based on a certain condition. In the sticky operator’s case that condition is “time elapsed while keeping the evocation key since the start of the operator”. But it can be any condition, like for instance the value of a certain property, where you can call different operators based on a tool option for instance. These can be pretty powerful, albeit some may feel that they sound a bit “programmery” (please forgive my language invention here) in nature.

So where is the problem? Well, the problem is that to make this system reusable and fully configurable, we need to support setting the two operators, as well as the condition for the conditional operator in the keymap itself. This is not difficult, and can even be done now with minimal code, but the problem is that currently we only allow operator names while for a complete solution we would want to support operator options too.

Currently, if you try to set an operator in the keymap options, (which currently sucks somewhat for casual users because you have to know a little python to do it) you get a set of all the properties for that operator to configure, in the keymap.
This is the design I want to keep for the conditional operators, but allow showing properties for two operators instead.
This sounds easy, but it may actually require some bad hacks. I just hope I can make a good design out of this.

In any case, this won’t work for that release, but I feel this is no reason to postpone pie menus themselves, albeit I will probably restrict their set somewhat because the ones in my branch assumed sticky keys were present to make the pies more hidden for users who did not like them. On the other hand, sticky keys would create this expectation that the sticky paradigm should be supported throughout blender for all operators, which is something not in the initial design - some operators may not even be able to support this correctly currently. That would also feel like a “half assed implementation” and lack of a unified design. Given the preferences of different crowds, I think the main key here is to allow easy configurability of pies. And there’s still a lot of work to be done there still.

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Thank you Psy-Fi for the explanation,
now I’m going to look stupid, and maybe I am, but what you are describing looks to be quite complicated, not only to develop but also to use.
I watched the LiquidApe’s video but 'cause of my bad English understanding I didn’t follow so much, and I limited myself to look at the pictures.

What I expect from Pie menus is the ability to enter, with just one shortcut that in my vision should be RMB click, into a pie with all the appropriate combinations of possibilities for that context, from which to navigate throughout other pies until the wanted command is reached.
So, just one shortcut, no more.
If that is correct, then I don’t see all this need for Sticky keys, not for the moment at least.
Or is my vision totally distorted?

Thank you,
paolo

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sourvinos - I think that eventually a “mega” pie could be built that does what you want, and I’m sure it will be, perhaps a pie version of the dynamic spacebar addon: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/3D_interaction/Dynamic_Spacebar_Menu

What Psy-Fi said it that it is currently possible, but the “fast drag” method won’t work with it. He thinks that the drag fast interaction can be made to work though. Would this “Mega menu” be a good addon? YES. Would it be good for default? I am more hesitant at that - mostly because multiple nested pie menus tend to be slow. Even slower than regular menus. If you have that many options, it makes more sense to have regular style menus.

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LiquidApe,
I realize that I’m quite far from understanding, at this point I have to activate your addon and see what you (all) intend with Pie menus.
I didn’t do it till now because I was under the impression that your addon was very prone to changes and someway provisional, so I didn’t want to become too accustomed to it and change my workflow in vain, though, Pies would be my way, so I’m really interested to it.

What I mean is something a la Maya.

EDIT:
If they have to be too slow, then I agree they would not be so useful, but potentially they are way too fast and easy than regular menus, no doubt.

Thank you,
paolo

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@sourvinos - don’t get too acustomed to my addon (the one linked in my signature) that is not the pies going into trunk. They are similar, but the ones going into trunk have a different “backend”. It’s coded in and generated in C (fast code) and a python access to it. My version (the pure addon one with no C access) has python running the whole system. We had to do lots of hacks to make it work. The internal version will be much cleaner. Just wait on that one! It’ll be shipped with blender next release.

This must be really complicated for a non-native speaker…it’s even complicated for us that actually speak English natively!

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Yeah, but now I must understand what I can expect from the future, I start to fear that it can be like Tabs, so useful in theory…

Thank for the notice.

cheers,
paolo

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Just keep talking, complaining etc. here on blenderartists. That will make everything better. [End of Irony]

Business as usual did not turn out well neither. That’s where the current problem comes from.

That “my” method works at least a bit better can be seen at the reactions in this thread. Some of you start to wake up. Good. Now we just need to manage that you start to see the real problem. Lack of conversation. And stop to search for the witch that you can burn.

I am simply not guilty for what you blame me here. I am not just talking and complaining. This just fits into your war polemic. And i guess you hope when you repeat it often enough then people remembers this part. And not the part where i say what i did so far.

Originally Posted by michalis http://blenderartists.org/design/baorg2012light/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png

Not really, this is your problem. ha ha,

hehe…

You’v got to admire Tiles’s guts. He is good at sticking out, not always in the right places but he’s good at it.

But truly Tiles, I admire your guts to keep pushing the argument forward.

Cheers,

:wink:

I don’t mind harsh words. I don’t even mind being wrong here and there. As long as the whole thing ends in something constructive. And i still hope it does. That’s where i stay a dreamer.

And it even looks like that. Just look how much conversation and information pops up in this thread now. Wow! Thanks folks! What did you stop for so long?

Now we just need to manage to get rid of the war polemic, and we have a interesting conversation.

Now, let’s open the blenderartists forum and look at a thread here in the Discussion / News area. A thread like this. I see complains, I see moaning. I see people like Tiles who bring up the same arguments over and over again. (How many times did you bring the blenderstorm thing up, in this thread alone?).

You see complaints and moaning, and don’t ask yourself a single moment why we moan? And you still don’t get where the problem resides?

Over and over again? War polemic again! I brought up the Blenderstorm issue in exactly two threads now. Same counts for other things. It’s not over and over again. It’s at place, in fitting threads, fitting to other arguments. I am definitely not spamming BA to death with critics in every thread. But even when i would raise it a thousand times, this doesn’t make it less valid.

That this hurts you is out of question. Nobody loves to get told that he might have done a mistake.

I think it’s just natural, that my ears will not become more open reading the same stuff over and over again. After a while they are just closed. Reading threads like this becomes a waste of time.

Ton, is it you speaking?

You are just a wheel in the machine. You aren’t even meant with the critics. Because you didn’t do the big decisions so far. I fear the time though where you start to, because you start to show the same attitudes like Ton here.

By the way, you are quite busy here for a thread that is a waste of time for you. Do i smell personal hurt feelings by chance? We really have to come away from this “critics” equal “personal attack against Blender and all Developers”

So no, there is no war with the user base.

Still in the “everyting’s fine” mode? Well, that’s your right i guess.

There is a war in here though, fought by a handful of people, who can not stay constructive.
And frankly, I don’t want to be a part of this war. There are thousands of other people, just a few steps away. People who provide valuable feedback, constructive and friendly. They get my attention. And in the end, they are the ones shaping Blender.

Thanks for bolding the important part DingTo. Because this is not a one way road.

Calling its users Noise is definitely not constructive and friendly. Censoring critics and misuse the adminstrative weapon because of personal hurt feelings is not constructive and friendly. And you know that i mean Blendpolis here too. I am not the only one who got a administrative warning there because i said something that you disliked. And bashing your users where you should be the deescalating part is definitely not constructive and friendly.

Let’s have a close look at this thread who is constructive and friendly, and who not. Count the bad words and personal attacks toward my direction. Did i hear moron? I did. Did i hear rat? I did. Did i even hear killing? I did. Did i hear a moderator voice to stop that? Nope! More the opposite, as usual.

Then count my bad words and personal attacks towards your or any other developers direction. You may notice a surprisingly big difference here in quantity and quality.

tiles, i watched the beginning of the blender introduction tutorial on your website… if i were new to blender i would be a bit discouraged. shouldn’t a tutorial be encouraging and motivating? and this doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about blender’s flaws (and offer tips and workarounds). but how about mentioning some positives too from time to time? :slight_smile: but i guess this is just your style? :slight_smile:

it’s great that you did the tutorials (and otherwise they aren’t badly done). i just wanted to give some feedback…

Could i have done it in a way that lets Blender shine more? Definitely. Would it have helped? Nope. The way i did it was intended, to catch another user group as the usual one. It’s exactly this current mixture that leaded to quite a few happy “ah, now i get it”. From people that were already discouraged by the UI.

But i will take it into account for my next turorials. So thanks for your feedback :slight_smile: