Parenting
Why is the parenting made in reverse in Blender? Why is it "Set Parent To", instead of "Set as Parent"?
Working, i think: "i want to parent this to that". In all the years of working with different software it's always been "parent this to that". I've never found myself saying "i want to child this to that".
It's more confusing as a beginner. And doesn't make a whole lot of sense, beginner or not.
Even for a starter in the computer business it would make more sense to say "parent this to that": We control the children by using the parent, so why is the "importance" placed on the child (selecting it first)?
The object -> parent menu is even called "parent". not "child".
And what about when we want to parent multiple children? What does your thought say?
"I want to make all these objects the children of that other object that will be the parent"?
Wouldn't it be simple to say "i wanna parent this object to all others"?
"Parenting" is even a verb. "Childrening" isn't.
Idk. It just breaks my flow and i have to think about what i'm doing, when parenting, and remember it's the opposite of usual!
What do you guys think? Is there some cases where selecting the parent last makes it much more easier to have Blender "child" objects, as opposed to "parent" an object to multiple others?
8 Comments
I believe Blender devs meant 'Set Parenting (method) To...'; thus, 'Parenting' as a noun might work better.
I know that, when we try to explain certain 'Parenting' subjects in Blender, it becomes sometimes difficult to be clear and accessible in easy terms, because of the apparent lack of more development on better differentiation between technical terms.
For example, what would be 'Bone Parenting'? One may assume it relates to the inner context of the Armature Object: having a Child Bone, Parented to Parent Bone; but it could also relates to the 'Object Parenting' method "Set Parent To Bone"... (which by the ways actually Targets in detail a Bone in the Armature Object; so it's even a bit more complicated than simple 'Object Parenting').
Oof, "Set Parenting Method To"! Simply renaming it to "Set as Parent" would be a better choice in phrasing. in my view. even if we first select the children, then the parent, at least the menu "title" would make more sense.
I don't know about all other parenting systems throughout Blender, but Bone Parenting sounds exactly like parenting bones to one another.
It's not made in reverse, it's pretty logic. First you select all the children (they can be many), and last the parent. There isn't really a standard in that (some software don't even bother doing only one way depending on the tools you use), both ways are valid. It's a pretty common thing In Blender that the last selected object (aka the active object) is the one performing the action, it's in fact the expected behavior in any bulk operation unless the UI tells otherwise.
Take example from the Link Data menu : whatever data you chose to link, it links the one from the active object to the rest of the selection.
The reason why it is named Set Parent "to" is because there are multiple ways to make the relationship:
You could remove "to", and these two formulations would be identical in meaning:
But that "to" is basically an unfinished sentence, which the options of the menu complete. If you have a doubt in what to do, you can literally read the whole thing to understand it,
still, "set as parent" makes more sense in my opinion.
idk....every time i read "set parent to", it doesn't make sense.
and yes, it it backwards. i'm linking materials and it's a copy/paste operation. we want to copy the material from one object to another, yet we select them in reverse.
"want to copy this from that". we first select "that"....
this is the same as right click select. we made the change to left click select. we should make the change from all these reversed operations!
make this the parent of that. selects the that first. derp
I'm fairly convinced " set as parent Armature Deform " and " set parent to Armature Deform " both make sense.
As for the rest:
You can think any of these operations in many perfectly valid ways. It could be "copy this to that" in one software, "copy that from this" in another, or "link that data to the others". It really doesn't matter which way it works. What matters is the UI letting you know.
It's like saying German doesn't make sense with its verbs at the end of phrases, or how traction cars make no sense and should move like propulsion cars. Well no, they all make sense, just not the one you expected.
Blender works from the last selected. Two reasons for it: easy to remember, and easy to change if you need a different object to act on without redoing it your entire selection. It's a different perspective on the same thing. As soon as you see through it, it makes sense as is.
Set parent to armature deform sounds like you're setting the seelcted parent to an armature deform. if I understand this correctly, all the options we have in the parenting menu are ways on how to parent the one object to another.
If the last object we selected, so we can parent it, is not yet a parent (it actually could already be a parentt o another object ,in which case the description fits the action), we're not doing what the description suggests we're doing. We're not setting a parent to something else. We're setting an object As a parent, and how is defined by the options.
The wording isn't correct, and it's confusing, unless you already know what you're doing.
It's almost better to have it be "set parenting method to", like it was mentioned in another reply here.
The current system works for me. I always think, "Okay, you, you, and you follow this guy." While Blender is the only modeling software I've used for this, it seems to me that it's simply a matter of preference.
However, I could be wrong since I only use it for organizational purposes, not animation.
well, there's two things here, the order in which we selected stuff and then the name of the operation.
yes, one can get accustomed to saying "you, you and you are gonna be the children of this last selected object"
then in the menu, that last object will be "set as a parent" to all the other objects selected.
im nitpicking, but hey, isnt this what this website is for, sharing ideas about improvements? they might be wrong but if there's doubt one can still explain their view.
so, "you, you and you, are gonna be the children of this last object i select". "now i set parent to"...set parent to? what do you mean? i want to set this last object as a parent..then the menu shows how.
"Set as parent"..the object...the armature deform...the bone...