Simple transform, like Game Engines
My suggestion is to simplify how Blender handles Parent/Position in general, and including in the Outliner.
This will take a whole lot of reworking internally In Blender, I know.
But there's a huge problem here that needs to be fixed. Even after the 2.8 revolution.
There's so much weird going on with Blenders Parent / Transform / Position relationship. It's fundamentally .. "not very well".
If you do not know how troubled the system is, then try and work with Game Engines like Unity / Unreal, and see how simple & logic "transform" can be:
Local / Global position just makes sense. Also after un-parenting.
I suggest Blender to be that simple.
9 Comments
This is basically devoid of content, Please specify what you're talking about rather than 'I want it to work like software X' without saying what it is that you want.
* @Bassam Kurdali * it's fairly simple. Objects lose touch with their pivots, transforms and all that very easily. In Maya "freezing" transforms constantly is key. In max you "reset xform" . In blender you "apply". But it's a constant hassle. Having worked in all three I can say blender might be the most muddy of the bunch. A completely straight forward and hierarchy based system like the very simple one in unity is preferable, as a foundation at least. I'm not saying get rid of the awkwardness of wacky transformations, just consider making it something we can choose to use and make it super easy to "freeze" "reset xform" "apply whatever" in a non-convoluted way. I can understand the grief users feel when wanting to just "straighten" a damn transform.
* @andreasng * There is a free addon to Automatically Apply Transforms:
gumroad.com/l/THZfd
* @andreasng * as Bassam said: make a clear point instead of saying "should be working like in Unity". What and how is "broken"? what is akward and muddy?
* @ xan2622 * If that is the point, I prefer Blender's non-destructive way!
The Outliner has recently got improvements, thanks to Nathan Craddock.
Here is the thread that gathered all the suggestions: devtalk.blender.org/t/gsoc-2019-outliner-improvements-ideas/7185
And here are the Weekly Reports: devtalk.blender.org/t/gsoc-2019-outliner-weekly-reports/7642
(you can search for "parent" if you want to know what has been suggested).
I agree. Even coming from Maya - blender seems truly broken when it comes to transforms and hierarchies. Sadly this is something fanatics will get mad about, so I expect this to get no backing. 🙁
* @andreasng * Hello! As a former maya user I definitely found blender's way of handling transforms rather confusing (I wouldn't say "broken", but they don't seem to behave in the same way as maya/unity etc). For example in those tools, if I make a cube and a sphere, move the cube to (1,2,3) and the sphere to (4,5,6) then parent the cube to the sphere, the cube's transform will then be applied in the local space from the sphere (I guess 5,6,7, if there's no rotation or scale applied). Then if I set the child object's position to 0,0,0 it will be at exactly the position of the parent object, and if I then unparent it it will be at the parent's position, and it (1,2,3). This is super useful and I find it very intuitive - but it doesn't work like that in blender at all? And I'm not totally sure where those transforms disappear to when doing parenting in blender. But maybe other people find this totally logical :-)
* @dfer * I definitely think transforms in blender can be improved, but I'm not sure what the proposal here is. For instance, some software has transform stacks or nodes, allowing you to compose transforms more flexibly (whereas blender has baked in tranforms like the inverse parent) - but I'm not sure that's what this is about? I'd rather not have to speculate about what the proposal might be.