When in object properties materials change time line to nodes
I was thinking how about some smart switching of viewpanes. When one goes to the default view, to Object porperties, cycles tab. Then automatically switch the timeline view for nodes view of cycles materials. When mouse over 3d view restore timeline view. I thought of this because those are steps people often take (adding materials switch views to edit them, and back).
Such dual use concept might apply to more areas. Maybe it could become a more advanced set of options for some of blenders complexer tasks. For the fracture modifier, and some add-ons like flipfluids, any addon that requires more settings, or popups. If there are only a few options (like in mesh edit smooth settings, this could be also in timeline view, as a small area in that view. Currently those live in the vertical extension of the vertical tabbed 3d pane which is not that ideal
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So basically you want to replace the default UI's bottom timeline by anything you want and Blender have to guess it on the fly ?
A lot of people remove the timeline in the first place because they are doing a specific task which doesn't need a timeline. Some actually remove it from the startup file because they simply never animate anything and don't need it (like those working at 3D modeling only, they barely use it once per year).
I'm not a big fan of softwares changing layout on the fly, it's very confusing for beginners and it's just mostly not adapted to anyone.
@loic.dautry: Clearly if you remove something your not using default blender, so your point makes not that much sense then. If Blender wants to make an easier GUI, and enhance the creation process, making stuff easier to find then this is what i suspect (till some degree 2.8 will have a smarter top bar, its an extension to those ideas as well).
How would one turn this feature off, were it ever to be implemented? I'd imagine that it would do a pretty poor job of understanding what I want in some of my screen layouts where I have multiple 3D Views and multiple Properties Editors visible.
@Jason van Gumster: hovering over 3d screen to switch back, so it becomes that path of your mouse travel that decides, for materials one usually has one node view screen. this reduces some clicks to get there,a more slick adaptive interface
@peter.boos: Key word there, is usually . What happens if there are multiple Node Editors visible? I do this frequently. That use case absolutely needs to be handled in a proposal like this.
@Jason van Gumster: Please explain why you would like to have multiple material node views ?. Note the idea here is to do this width the time line, not talking about additional node views. So this extends the default view, widht a smarter timeline view
@peter.boos: I often modify the default screen layout frequently over the course of a work session. I'll have multiple 3D Views, multiple Node Editors, multiple Property Editors, multiple Graph Editors, or nuke them all for a single 3D View.
Specific to your Node Editor question: When lighting a scene, for example, I may split the Node Editor and pin one to one to an object's material while I let the other one go with my current selection. That way I can select lamps and edit their emission settings while also still having my object's material settings quickly and easily accessible without having to lose the lamp that I currently have selected.
@Jason van Gumster: it could still work, it could be optional automatic switching of timelineview, but have extra node views not switching.
@peter.boos: How do you specify which one switches and which one doesn't?
Also, what if I have multiple timelines open (one zoomed in on one sequence in a shot and the other for the full shot)?
@Jason van Gumster: rather simple the first one
@peter.boos: How does Blender know which one is the first one? Especially after re-opening the file with that saved layout?
What if you want it to do it on the second one?
@Jason van Gumster: its not yet implemented, but it wouldnt be a lot of trouble to figure this out in code, as it might be saved in the file as well.
@peter.boos: I'm not concerned about code at this point. Technically speaking, anything is possible. I'm just concerned that you haven't thought through all of the use cases for this feature and how it might affect the user experience. A user would need to have clear control over this, even after opening a file a long time after it was created (or opening a shared file from a colleague). How would you envision giving those controls to the user? What would it look like in the interface? How would they work?