What is the most ridiculous Blender defaults you have learnt to live with but still pisses you off?

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Update, wow this blows up !
Looks like there is a lot of long standing bull that many of us just gave up on and accept, I have compiled and will continue to update the top ten most veiled incomprehensible Blender’s default behaviors.

List constantly updated [updated on: 21 April 2020]

1 [Most Criminal]:
It’s almost as ridiculous as pressing E for extrude but if you right click so that it “visually” looks like the extrude is canceled, it is actually not canceled but just in the same place as the original plane causing two planes to be in the exact same place…people try to makes excuses by saying this allows you to execute inset…but that is what pressing “I” is for…inset…
[Some xxx says because “history” so let it be…wow really ?]
User @Kabu puts it best:

Criminal indeed. That creates non manifold geometry and makes for the source of most bugged modeling within Blender, second only to dirty ngons…

And user @Hadriscus

This happens because internally two operators are chained in seemingly one operation : the extruded face by default just sits where it was created, and then the translate operator is called on top of that. Apparently cancelling the operation cancels only the last operation, when it should be (imho) cancelling the entire thing, extrusion included.

2:[Consistent Inconsistency]
Can you believe the current Blender default is B for Box Select, C for Circle and Control+Right Mouse button for Lasso and YET L itself is assigned to…nothing ? The absolute hubris of this nonsensical inconsistent crap is beyond…
[some xxx says L is for Select Linked, that’s for the DOPESHEET hello :expressionless:…L in the 3D viewport is just there doing NOTHING…by default ! B for Box Select, C for Circle and L for Lasso ? No let Lasso be some other shortcut…or else that would make TOO MUCH SENSE and we can’t have that…]
PS: This nonsense has been resolved by an add-on here:

All credit goes to @Cirno !!!

3: The third most hideous not so much inconsistent but…user @Jeric_Synergy puts it best: “Really ?!”

Talking about deleting:
Select an object in outliner, hit del…nothing happens, hit x…nothing happens,
right click, select delete in the menu…here we go.
Then, by chance, read a heated thread here in the forum about Lightwave just to find out
that you have to move the cursor back to the 3D viewport to delete
things in the outliner…really?

4: Box Selection inconsistency/not conforming to industry standard [submited by new user @Tom_123]

Make a box selection, delete the selected part, sigh … backfaces were not selected /deleted.
Shouldn’t there be a checkbox in the N menu or somewhere else, where you could check
that the selection ‘cut’ through the whole mesh? Without enable/toggle ghost view every time?

[In object mode, box select will select everything even hidden behind the objects, standard behavior across most 3D packages…but in Blender’s edit mode, box select will only select front facing and you have to go to wireframe mode in order for box select to behave like standard…why ? because reaons…that same reason behind 1, 2 and 3…]

@Tom_123
Of course this isn’t a big deal, but it feels odd to change the whole viewport appearance
just for a selection.

5: Just…unnecessary dependency on the numpad.
This is probably further down the list but…yeah it is about time we talk about this:

Unnecessary dependency on the numpad…most of us use laptop these days…most laptop don’t have numpad…I DON’T WANT a laptop with a numpad…takes up unnecessary space…

User @Mr_Flamey

Focus selected being . on the numpad. I left it at default until I got a keyboard without a numpad and was forced to move it to a more sensible location. In my opinion, there should be NO commonly used keys only available on the numpad, and everything used frequently should fit on a 60% keyboard, with other keys and numpad being left for customization.

User @RobertLe Robert Lechl

What I found strange was, that there are shortcuts exclusive on num pad. Last time I used a keyboard with a numpad is more then 10 years ago. It’s a useless thing you don‘t need and that takes a lot space in the desk, especially if you have Wacom too.

6: Disable in Render should be the default instead of the current disable in viewport ONLY.
How many times have you disable the viewport visibility and click render and were SURPRISED that the object you hide is visible in render and then say “Oooo right right…that’s just for viewport only…” ?
All the time…don’t even try to pretend that’s not true.
User @Tom_123 says it best:

The icon for ‘Disable in Render’ should be shown by default in the outliner.
This may prevent beginners to do an overnight rendering, just to find out, that every object
they had hidden in the outliner was nicely rendered in best quality.
No big deal though, just check it in the filter menu then save your start up file.

What are yours ? Not even one ? Get it off your chest ;p

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Hi.

L is Select Linked, at least with right mouse button selection behavior.

The main problem is that in 2.8 we do not have good visual indicators by default for these types of problems (zero-areas/overlapping faces). If you enable “Center” under “Mesh edit Mode” item in “Viewport Overlays” drop down menu, Face Dots will point this out similar to 2.7x

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Select a face, ALT+N (normal menu pop up)> rotate normals (blender enters into manipulator tool mode (rotate) and listens to numpad typing numbers (lockdown). The only way to know what is going on is by looking at the top left side of the 3d viewport where small numbers are your only navigation stars among the ocean of “listening events” blender is having.
So if you try Alt+N>rotate normals>R>X>15 (but do not press enter): You see the normals starting at a 5º angle and ADDING a 15º rotation, and IF YOU MISSED the degree of rotation, and retry a new number coordinate like “5” (because in your mind, it will reset back if you type again, right?) WRONG! It will keep adding degrees to infinite and beyond unless you press “ENTER”. In other words : 15º+5º=20º instead of the expected 10º
For experienced users this madness is a normal thing.
For the new users this is license for an Arkham asylum. And you know how things go inhere…

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Selected objects off by default for .fbx export. In conjuction with ALL types of objects on by default.

So, you are working on a large project - happens to me all the time - you are tired or whatever and you forget that each time you load a scene, it goes back to the defaults - again happens a lot, during one session.

You export and realize too late you left the defaults on. Go get a coffee (standing in a social-distancing line and listen to irate people bickering and fighting) comeback (what was 10 mins but now much longer) later to find your cad file and all of the various iterations of your model and everything else, 100’s of objects some times, all exported to this huge bloated file.

Just make sure you are not completely brain dead or you are in for a surprise when you load it into Unity…

Need another cup of coffee?

Probably you do.

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I’m still trying to adjust to Z-up. Does that count? :slight_smile:

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Is here any other up? :smile:

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Before 2.5x series, blender’s keymap was not customizable and there was a keymap for any operator.
The idea was to use Capital of operator to help user to remember corresponding keymap.
There were long discussions about refactoring the whole keymap since 2.7x.
Nobody agreed on what should be defaults for 2.7x.
So, for 2.8x, decision was made to provide 3 keymaps with Blender : old 2.7x keymap, industry compatible keymap and a mix of standards shortcuts and old keymap as default.
It was imperative to avoid to confuse too much older users who were supposed to help new comers to discover Blender.
Ctrl Right click is consequence of changing default keymap to left click select and, at same time, introducing an active tool using left click, too.
In historical, right click select keymap, lasso is Ctrl Left Click.
In industry compatible keymap, Box select is left click and drag and you can browse Select tool categary to use Circle Select or Lasso by pressing Q.

With default keymap, you can use fallback tool pie menu Alt W.

Inset was not always, there. During a long period of its history, blender did not have an inset operator.
At that time, people were really cancelling an extrude movement and then, scaling down their selection.
I agree that is confusing and was always source of errors. That should be modified.

You should not continue to be pissed off by defaults.
You should be able to save your owns and work with them without problems.
What are really annoying are defaults that can not be customized, yet.

No. This is not normal.

Rotate Normal should work like rotate operator.
It adds rotation to existing rotation.
You start with something that has 5° of rotation, you add 15° > you obtain 20°. That is normal.

What is not normal is that you don’t succeed to change 15° into 5° before validation.
If you change your mind, you should be able to erase 15 by pressing backspace, twice.
Then you should be able to enter 5 as value. Backspace erase only one character.
If you pressed 15 and want to change it to 12, you just press Backspace, once.
If you want to change 100 into 2, you have to press Backspace, 3 times.

And after validation, you always have ability to modify value by using slider in F9 panel.

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Well I’m pretty new to Blender, so I run in a lot of traps.
My favourites for now:

  1. Add a cube, type in the dimensions to make it a plank, go on with modelling,
    after a while add a bevel modifier…hmm, looks strange.
    Try to find out what you did wrong, search the whole internet for a workaround,
    just to find out that you have to apply scale / rotation / location (Ctrl + A)
    for every change you made on an object…really?

  2. Make a box selection, delete the selected part, sigh … backfaces were not selected /deleted.
    Shouldn’t there be a checkbox in the N menu or somewhere else, where you could check
    that the selection ‘cut’ through the whole mesh? Without enable/toggle ghost view every time?

  3. Talking about deleting:
    Select an object in outliner, hit del…nothing happens, hit x…nothing happens,
    right click, select delete in the menu…here we go.
    Then, by chance, read a heated thread here in the forum about Lightwave just to find out
    that you have to move the cursor back to the 3D viewport to delete
    things in the outliner…really?

But don’t get me wrong, I love Blender and such outtakes are a very low price to pay
if the alternative is to buy similar software from companies who cannot be trusted,
don’t care about your privacy, lure you into subscription traps and
ask a lot of money for meagre achievements.

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  1. Focus selected being . on the numpad. I left it at default until I got a keyboard without a numpad and was forced to move it to a more sensible location. In my opinion, there should be NO commonly used keys only available on the numpad, and everything used frequently should fit on a 60% keyboard, with other keys and numpad being left for customisation.

  2. The number keys being used for hiding collections is INSANE. The old numbered layers went out with 2.79, so why do these shortcuts exist? The number of times I have hidden everything by pressing one of the number keys when I was in object mode but thought I was in edit mode is crazy. To be honest, I removed these shortcuts recently too. Absolutely bonkers choice for hiding collections.

Can’t really think of anything else that bothers me about the default layout other than a few things I used a lot being removed for 2.80 but that stupid . still being on the numpad.

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What I found strange was, that there are shortcuts exclusive on num pad. Last time I used a keyboard with a numpad is more then 10 years ago. It’s a useless thing you don‘t need and that takes a lot space in the desk, especially if you have Wacom too.

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One thing off the top of my head would be when using the Shrinkwrap modifier to project details to MultiRes. Every time when switching to Project you have to check on Negative to make it work as it should. It’s really weird having those as defaults.

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I am the opposite. I have become so used to Blender’s z up that all other systems confuse me a bit.

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Yes. Dimensions field is not really helpful to edit object.Best habit to take about that is just to consider it as an info about object dimensions.
Alternative is to enable Edge Length in Edit mode and scale mesh is edit mode.
But that is not great, either because there is a measure for each edge of mesh and that is unbearable on a complex mesh.
Blender UI is not good at all for work with measures.

In 2.79, those are 2 different buttons. But toggle to restrict selection to visible faces, or not, was also modifying display.
They judged pertinent to merge both buttons in 2.8 instead of really disconnecting display and selection restriction.
So, no. There is no way to avoid to switch X-ray on/off or to switch from Solid to Wireframe mode.

Developers did not have time to dig into improvements of outliner.
They reinvented it for 2.8 to make it handle viewlayers and collections.
A first improvement of its keymap was only added in 2.81, mainly for selection.
But yes. There are still room for improvement.
If you lack shortcuts from 3DView in outliner, you can add them to outliner’s keymap.
That is not a situation that should continue.
You can add a X and/or a Delete shortcut to outliner’s keymap without waiting after developers.

10 years ago, there was no navigation gizmo or view snapping.
All Numpad shortcuts are related to view navigation or local view.
That allows to have all shortcuts related to view in same area of keyboard.
Although it takes space on desk, I still found it an ergonomic choice.
And Shift+Number aligns View to Active or rolls view. That are still things that navigation gizmo is not able to do.

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I wouldn’t like it if the num pad was not utilizied. 3D apps are complex and the more buttons you have ( and are considered standard ) the better.

Besides that num pads are really useful for typing numbers quickly. It is a gazillion times faster to type them blindly on a num pad than on the numbers above the letters.

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Ok my turn : I hate that when parenting objects, Blender does not apply the inverse transformation matrix to children. Actually we can execute “parent without inverse” which does that but also resets the child’s current transform ! Ton explained the reasoning to me in an email in '14, saying

It’s useful for several reasons;

  • if the object has an animation itself (loc/rot/size), the parenting will keep the object exactly on the same position (animating).
  • you can parent something, and then unparent it, without changing the properties nor the visual transform of the object. Also nice for keyframing or animation.
  • in many situations people assign objects with rotations and scales they forgot about it. If you then make such objects a parent, the children might scale or rotate to unexpected places. No use for it.

Imagine you made a simple text animation, animating dozens of letters individual. You then can decide to parent it all and move it to another position. Or unparent it, and things just keep work as you made it.

…and he’s right. Maya can’t do this for instance. If you want to move your animation around, you better have planned early and created a parent transform node that you can grab and move around. I mean unless you’re only using parentless objects, those can be reparented without hassle to any transform node provided it’s sitting at world origin.

However I don’t see why parenting Blender couldn’t be done so that inverse parent matrix is applied, and animation curves are updated with new values so that the object stays visually in the same position.
To be frank the reason I’m annoyed by this is because I come from Maya, and currently the only way of getting the same behaviour as in Maya (zero-ing out transforms easily) is of course to use an armature, but it’s overkill for most things.

That’s just being new to 3D in general and how mesh data and transform nodes work : think of your mesh as being contained within a box that can be transformed (=translated, rotated, scaled) and whatever modification you do on the mesh in edit mode (say a bevel) will then proceed through the “object level” transformation, if that transformation has a non-uniform scale then your bevel will look inconsistent, it is the only expected result. In other words, modifiers happen in “object space”.

This is requested a lot, personally it never bothered me but decoupling “xray” and “select occluded” would be nice to have.

There is a lot of work being done on the outliner these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if they made this finally consistent. The thing is Blender’s interface is entirely context-sensitive, and the context is defined by the cursor position : hover over the 3DView and you get 3DView shortcuts, hover over the node editor and you get node editor shortcuts. It’s a fantastic model that really frees up the keyboard, except all those shortcuts have to be kept in sync across editors, and sometimes there are missups like this one.

I have to agree… it happens to me too often

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I can quote, I can quote…

Criminal indeed. That creates non manifold geometry and makes for the source of most bugged modeling within Blender, second only to dirty ngons…

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@anon62435837 Yeah, okay, 2 is extremely useful behaviour no matter how weird it sounds on paper. A lot of the time you have other plans for your new bit of topology than just pushing or pulling it along the normal. This kind of thing allows an advanced Blender user to run circles speed-wise around Maya or Max users.

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This happens because internally two operators are chained in seemingly one operation : the extruded face by default just sits where it was created, and then the translate operator is called on top of that. Apparently cancelling the operation cancels only the last operation, when it should be (imho) cancelling the entire thing, extrusion included.

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THIS. So much THIS.

The other default is when you suggest a minor UI improvement condescending Blender fanbois descend on you to say “if you’d just LEARN the program instead of complaining about it, you would have known to look at that tiny obscure print, instead of suggesting the devs learn some g.d UI principles!!!1!eleventy!”.

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Best to keep writing our complaints in a good hearted manner, this can quickly degenerate (although you’re not targeting anyone in particular).

Much love,

Hadrien