Remove Legacy Textures
It's always nice to see a bit of clean up to remove unfitting or outdated features. Remember when blender had stars?
The legacy textures tab is an appendix left from the Blender Internal renderer days. It's outdated and it no longer fits the blender design direction. The names of the procedural textures here aren't even consistent with the nodes in the shader editor or the geometry nodes editor.
Since blender internal was removed, these kind of textures no longer serve any purpose for materials and rendering (Which may be confusing for those who do not know). They are still around, because (as far as I know) they are used for sculpt brushes, exactly one deform modifier, legacy particles, fluids, and absolutely needlessly in the compositor.
SOLUTIONS
For compositor: The image and procedural textures (checker, noise, etc) should be accessible directly in the compositor, exactly like they are in the shader editor or geometry node editor. There is no need for a "Texture" node. Simple as that.
For sculpting brushes: Perhaps you could set up a simple procedural texture to use directly here without relying on a textures tab in the properties. However, most of these procedurals are useless for sculpting, so that may just be a waste of space and effort. Note: Other leading sculpt dedicated software do not have this, apart from basic noise, and it's completely fine. (zbrush) All Blender needs is the ability to select an image for brushes, and add noise. That's it.
Displace modifier: "Displace" modifier should work on vertex group weight, like every other modifier. This would be consistent. Texture based displacement can very simply be recreated with geometry nodes.
Legacy particles, Fuilds: For the time being, Just replace it with image textures. This functionality doesn't add much. Perhaps some noise could be useful here, but that's it for procedurals... Still, this old particle system will be completely replaced with geometry nodes eventually.
So. Goodbye "Texture node editor", and goodbye "Texture" tab. Maybe come back after an overhaul.
Cheers.
6 Comments
If I am not mistaking, these were kept back in 2.8 to avoid some feature regressions, overhauls are already planned, and I think already being worked on (?).
Besides, there doesn't seem to be anyone really bothered by the current state on the tracker, and there a many other things to do, so I feel like it's not really something worth asking the devs to do.
Good to know
Could you share any sources that reference this, and specifically noise texture nodes? All I found was this 5 year old project that is in the "unactive" category in the "Sculpt, Paint & Texture" module, which leads me to be pessimistic that changes regarding this are coming soon.
Posting real quick during coffee break:
Features are removed because they make further development problem and not because it adds one icon un UI. That probably will be there anyway, when successor arrive.
The icon isn't the problem. The feature being an outdated appendix of the past, and not fitting the overall blender design direction is why it should be removed. With such simple solutions, it needs no replacement right now. However, it can come back when it's updated to fit the current blender and has a good purpose to exist.