Better Support for Reference Images
I think that Blender could use a better system of having reference images visible. Right now, you can only display a background image in orthographic view, and only when you are in a specific view. As soon as you rotate the camera, it’s gone. A workaround is to have an Image Empty in your scene, but it’s a similar problem with that – when zooming or rotating the view, it disappears often. So if you want to see reference images permanently, you have to open one in the image editor, which takes up space in a very rigid way.
So, the proposal: Make it possible to always show the background image or multiple of them, rotating the rest of the scene independently. (Alternatively, and very versatile for everything: Make it possible to have a separate Blender window always stay on top of the other windows.)
Just for inspiration: A program that manages this wonderfully is zBrush. There, you can have multiple images floating on top of the UI, while allowing direct interaction with the image to adjust its brightness, transparency, size, etc. Here you can see the the zBrush workflow: youtube.com/watch .
6 Comments
I prefer to use just one monitor, since I use a tablet pen for all UI interaction (not just photoshop and blender) and don't want the hassle of switching input between monitors or having a stretched aspect on the tablet. That means having good reference image support in Blender is quite important to me.
The ZBrush workflow is nice. In Blender I tend to first use an image editing app to assemble a bunch of reference images into one image that I can show in the image editor while I'm working, or otherwise I'll use the background images feature, but neither of these options are really that good. In the past I used to have a feature in my gpu driver that enabled window pinning in the OS, which is now gone, but while I had it, I would pin an image viewing app on top of everything so I could look at reference, but again, it's not ideal. Something close to the zbrush approach, also enabling as many reference images as you want would be awesome.
Right now I always have an image editor open in my default veiw with reference images. But if they would just plop in the view that would been great. Also I hate the recommendation of using the camera, I mean with some options that would work fine I guess without even noticing it but I see no reason not to have this feature.
Perhaps something using OpenGL draw, this could be done i guess. The functionality the tool in Zbrush has is really great!!!
I've figured out that the image empties are probably the best way to use references in Blender atm.
Perhaps something using OpenGL draw, this could be done i guess. The functionality the tool in Zbrush has is really great!!!
Having an option to "stick" reference images to the viewport camera is probably the best way to go.
From a UI perspective, it would just be adding a "Stick to Viewport" checkbox for an image in the Background Images panel. (probably should have a mock-up of this)