Move "quick" operators to a "quick ops" addon
I always found it strange how the "quick smoke" and "quick fur" and so on were so arbitrary in settings, size, and occasionally got quietly broken between versions (quick smoke had some serious problems with it in the 2.8 days) and it doesn't make sense for them to be built in functionality.
For the most part, almost all of their functionality is or can be done through python scripting, and rarely does it need the speed of internal C representation due to simply applying settings and editing meshes in basic procedural ways.
As well, Blender devs will be able to quickly note a version of the addon as unstable, out of date, or experimental instead of unintentionally shipping a built in script that can introduce strange bugs into simulations.
if it's an addon, the user knows they enabled it, and it CAN be disabled, so devs will no longer need to balance the number of "quick op"s they're willing to load in before it's "too much menu bloat for the average user". (note, as another user has stated, addons have poor visibility to the average user. I agree- and think it should be made easier to find than just as tab 7 of the preferences menu.)
on that note, I also suggest the addon uses a drop down or tier of some sort, so it can specify the different presets (hair/fur/fluff, fire/smoke/dust, water/paste/goo, etc.)
NOTE- in the future, it may be more effective as an addon that adds to a browsable list of built in geometry node groups. I imagine this would also be more performant than a python script in most cases.
2 Comments
Correct me if I am wrong, but if I understand your proposal; it all boils down to this:
That's two statements that are wrong:
That would be true if new users actively spend time browsing addons just for discovery's sake.
However, I sincerely doubt any consequent amount of user even browse the addon list aimlessly, let alone to "discover" new things and especially not new users. The most prominent usage is see of the addon list is installing/managing addons you already know about - either through experience or because you are being told by an extenal source.
How can I tell this?
The extreme popularity videos and articles about "addons you must activate" and the amount of tutorials that start off with a list of addons used like node wrangler or pose library and whatnot.
The amount of questions on forums about "how does that guy do this in X video" boiling down to yet another addon to install/activate.
The amount of feature requests on this very website where the very first answer is literally "it's already possible, just enable X addon". This all proves how many people straight miss out features just because they are addons instead of just being "just there".
Yes the quick effects are arbitrary settings, and it's an issue that they have not always been updated correctly when the mantaflow was implemented. But that is a different issue. Yes the system could also make use of more presets. But that's not related to being an addon.
well, you kind of got my intention wrong, and rightfully called me out on others. it's more along the lines of:
"these settings are arbitrary, and would be more useful if the preset selection were more varied and detailed, however in the current system I'm most familiar with using, it would lead to menu bloat if we were to do that- would this be a decent way to do it? also side note they have common update issues and don't seem to require deep system integration to work as-is, so if it was included as an addon it would reduce the number of unnoticed bugs new blender versions tend to ship with. and the issue of menu bloat would be lessened if the user could disable and enable it at will."
but I see, you raise a lot of valid points, (I've actually never spotted that quick effects panel! I learned about them from an unrelated tutorial where the creator happened to use the search function to quickly explain something! I do tend to tunnel vision a bit...)
If it's true not many users know of built in addons or use them (I learned with photo editing software on high school art class computers, so I always check preferences in new programs, so I'm not the "average user" on second thought- I'm not starting with blender), then that in itself should be addressed. The built in addons are worked on concurrently with blender, because many are important for workflow speed and offer little scripts and tools that really round out the program's usability from "god" to "fantastic". We need to find a way to raise awareness of built in addons. I wonder how... (The first thing that popped to my mind was some combo of minecraft's big yellow splash screen jokes and loading screen protips XD)
but yeah, that's why I suggested putting these in an addon, I consider the quick effects like I consider the "more meshes" and "F2" addons. They technically add no new functionality- you could easily do it yourself given a few minutes, but add menu options, scripts, and shortcuts that risk bloating menus or shortcut keys in order to make workflows faster.
also, side-side note; All of the quick effects are simulations of some sort, but given how quick explode works, things like the cel fracture workflow, vines, trees, and landscape, and so on should also fit in the same category, as they are "quick modeling tools with a simulation aspect of some sort". In the future it feels like all of these should be encompassed by geometry nodes, and handled by some preset node group system that way. I guess either this topic was a little late or a little premature, as its usefulness is about to end, but it would probably have been more acceptable several years ago when mantaflow quick effects was most unstable and neglected.