Suggestion: Revert sculpting mode keybinds to pre-4.0 keys, or provide an option to use classic keys for those who prefer them.
Switching the sculpting mode keybinds around seems like a strangely arbitrary decision and I'm not sure why this change was put through. The new keybinds aren't any easier to memorize than the old ones were. It forces people who are Blender veterans to unlearn years' worth of muscle memory, and also obfuscates years' worth of tutorials which would have been using the old keybinds.
If the changes aren't reverted, then at least provide us an option to use the old keybinds, as the sculpt mode tools can't be found in the keymap, and shortcuts cannot be assigned to them via right click.
4 Comments
I find it a bit weird to read those kinds of statements. You can see similar ones at any change made at any time on any software. Yet there is no sane developer, let alone a team of developers, that would spend time and money on making arbitrary changes that aren't thought through. That isn't to say that mistakes don't happen, but that's very different from doing things for no valid reason, as some of these kinds of statements can make it sound like.
If you (try to) know a bit about the software as a whole, it's history, it's not hard to understand the changes that happen, and you can always look up the release notes.
In the current context, you can read quite a bit from Keymap - Blender Developer Documentation :
I will not quote the whole thing, but it's quite detailed.
Well, yet, but it's not like there's a massive keymap change every three month. The last one that happened was for Blender 2.8, and they did provide a keymap variant for people who preferd the older one. Maybe they could make one for 3.6, but I doubt there's as much of a need here.
And in this case a lot of the changes are made to align the Sculpt mode to the current standard of Blender. So more commonly used shortcuts easier to remember, more room on the keyboard for customization.
Can you precise which tools can't be found in the keymap nor assigned via right click?
Note that;
With that in mind, if you have precise examples of tools whose shortcut can't be assigned/customized from their Right 🖱️ menu, or can't be edited nor added to the keymap manually, then that sounds more like a bug, please report them via the menu Help > Report A Bug.
Basically any tool in sculpt mode can't be set back to what it was, since all keys have been swapped around and have pre-existing keybindings which can't be overridden.
For example, I used to use the Flatten tool a lot during sculpting. Previously this was Shift+T. However, Shift+T is now "scrape". I cannot right click and assign a shortcut on Flatten to Shift+T because it's now bound to scrape instead, and there's nowhere in the Keymap where I can unbind or reassign scrape.
I used to use Clay a lot, which formerly was just C. However, C is now clay strips. Because C is clay strips, I can't assign clay back to C where I'm accustomed to it being.
I wouldn't really care if I had the option to just revert back to the keybindings I am used to. Both Flatten and Clay are tools I used a lot during sculpting.
Now the only way I can get to those tools with shortcuts is through the Shift+Spacebar menu which doesn't even work correctly, and immediately closes itself when you try to open it.
This is an issue that has been in Blender for years and is still unresolved. (Go to Blender Projects, check the issues, and look for #77085)
So if I want to use the Flatten tool, rather than just pressing Shift+T , because it's in the shift spacebar menu, which you have to open twice, my workflow is now: Shift+Spacebar->let go->(menu closes itself)->Shift+Spacebar again->let go-> press 6.
If I want to use Clay, I now have to do Shift+Spacebar->let go->(menu closes itself)->Shift+Spacebar again->let go-> press 2.
Was that a pain to read? Because it's a pain to deal with.
The Blender documentation lists the reason for the changes as "Changed some brush shortcuts to more commonly used brushes and to avoid shortcut conflicts".
Okay, well for me Flatten was a commonly used brush whereas I almost never used scrape, and using Clay was far more common for me than clay strips. At least give me the choice.
I just tried to assign a shortcut to a tool, it seems that it does assign the new key, but doesn't unassign it from any other tool/operator that also uses that key already. Annoying, but fixable by hand.
As for the keymap editor, the annoying bit is that you can't search the name of the tool (it seems because the shortcut actually calls an operator that changes the brush). But you can find the sculpt mode's brush shorctuts under Sculpt > Sculpt (Global) and you should see a bunch of "Brush Select" near the end of the list:
Or just type
Brush Selectin the search box, it works too but you can't make new entries from the search result.But othertwise from there you can change the
sculpt_toolto your liking, as well as making new entries.The keymap editor is cumbersome and has nothing to handle already assigned key (no warning, not overwriting from another bind, ...)
There are a few proposals for it already, but I guess it is way down the devs' priority list right now:
You saved my life, haha. It's definitely not obvious that the brushes are in there, and ideally Blender would ask if you wanted to reassign when you try to assign a shortcut that already exists. I also still wish they provided the option to keep the previous keybinds (since they already have compatibility for 2.7).
But in the meantime at least this allows me to switch things back to what I'm comfortable with.