Proposed Loading Screen for a Smoother Blender Launch Experience
It's been a while since newer versions of Blender have become slower to open compared to previous versions due to the addition of more tools (it used to open faster than a web browser!). However, because of how fast it used to be, the current way it opens feels a bit awkward, and there's a few seconds of pause on a blank screen. I think it's time to add a loading screen like other software, and I’ve designed this as a sample. Ideally, I'd love for Blender to open as fast as it used to (but I guess that's not possible anymore), and if not, I hope this way of loading the software is well received.
7 Comments
I don't feel the loading too badly but for people with many addons I assume it can be a little jarring. This is very nicely presented and appealing so upvote from me :)
Nice design, however i personally dislike loading bars, as there is no real way to make the indicator "real" (as in display the actual loading status). Therefore it's usually recommended to use circular repating loading indicators or any other looped indicator.
While it may be "funny," I really believe it isn't the way Blender should operate. Despite its multiple toolsets, it shouldn't take more than 4,000,000,000 CPU cycles to load. It may need to implement a sort of lazy-loading, similar to Excel, just-in-time compilation of the tools when they are used.
Additionally, it should decouple many Blender functions from the number of polygons or objects in the scene. It frustrates me that it recalculates things or calls the dependency graph each time I change a color or add an empty node disconnected from anything else. In a large scene with just a cube enabled in the only enabled collection, Blender's behavior is lacking in modern requirements. I really hope they don't assume that users only work on low-level scenes like those in Pixar films, such as "Sintel," and rely purely on Moore's Law instead of code optimization.
This feels well outside the scope of a loading screen implementation and are deeper concerns around Blender's architecture that are probably better communicated to the core team responsible for it. If you're concerned about these things and have the expertise to help improve the situation, I'm sure they'd be happy to take on your help or to at least explain to you why things are done the way they are. The situation is likely more complex than simply not implementing modern practices.
Regardless, I'm not so sure that a loading screen would be all that big an issue? It's a smoother transition than Blender just popping into existence. I'm also not sure where Blender's loading style is an issue or uniquely deficient, it boots almost instantly in a great many cases.
On my side it takes no more than 1 second to startup with factory settings. Only after adding a bunch of addons it starts to really get longer.
I'm not here because of the loading time I just love that animation. The devs might suffer though...
It turns on instantly Why does it need a loading window??? Maybe only because of aesthetic pleasure 🤣