Blender's inclination to hidden menus/buttons might be affecting it's growth across other pipelines not including 3d modelling.
Hello guys. I would like to share a personal insight of what I am currently noticing on blender's roadmap and priority conditions.
I am very thankful and excited on what blender 2.90 and up is about to offer. All the features are game changer and powerful. What I would like to humbly share/advice is for blender to not only focus too much on the tool features but also consider improving more the UI accesibility and workflow speed.
There are a lot of things that in my own opinion does/may probably slow down blender's workflow. The situation is that blender now has a ton of powerful tools but the UI workflow might be causing some bottleneck. Blender is undeniably the top ranked software when it comes to 3d modelling but outside this field it is a little complicated or might have some probable issues lurking, ex: (The texture paint and graph editor.)
A. List of some things that might be causing blender's workflow to be slower/bottlenecked:
1.) Too many drop down menus.
2.) Not utilizing the toolbar header similar to Bforartist software. Useful for placing buttons/shortcuts.
3.)Doesn't have enough clicl and drag functionality.
4.) Sliders doesn't have slider buttons to click and drag to.
5.) No input transform/dimension assignment funtionality of selected mesh while in edit mode.
6.) Not utilizing the pen tool similar to vector editing softwares.
7.) Standard layer UI system not implemented similar to Quixel, Photoshop, Substance Painter and other industry softwares.
Forgive me if some of the list are too vague. I would just like to present a general list of the things that might be currently causing some bottleneck to blender's greater potential. I am planning to make a more elaborate post of specific feature requests/proposal that is related to this post.
Thank you again and big respect to the blender team. Highly appreciate the work that has been done to all versions of blender.
9 Comments
Use hotkeys, quickfavs, toolpanels, search. Looking at the 2nd level of any menu is very rare.
Bforartist — is for slopokes with mouseclicks. Bad noisy design. Use hotkeys.
Yes, there can be somwhere panel for newbs with «add a cube». But it will not make pipeline faster.
May be. Tune it with keymaps of show examples.
Buttons are unnecessary, but may be clicking under/above slider should move it.
BUT mouse scroll is much easier than aiming into small buttons.
type G -1 or s 0.5. But I agree, that there shoul be mode key for typing absolute value, for example [S A 2] to ser 2x scale
Yup. Curves aren`t good ATM. But there is addons.
What do you mean? Blender do not follow standarts, only just cause they are standarts.
* @ Vyacheslav * Nice breakdowns. I am not sure if blender is also planning to make the texture painting editor environment the same with shader editor, but the layer system feels similar to inkscape's, I am not sure with the current version they have.. The ui seems too cramped and not a lot of possible movements similar to how you would deal with normal layer system of image editors. I hope this of their roadmap.
* @johnpdelacruz28 * Texture painting update and layers probably will made finally. But there is not good perfomance even for 1 layer drawing. So I prefer perfomance first. I prefer to use and paint masks for shaders/materials combined in one node tree. And the layer system do not help much. Because layer painting ≠ multilayer painting.
Point 1: Kind of agree, but find it really convenient when you are used to it.
Point 2: I personnally don't want to see that in Blender. That just creates a mess of icons. I took a look at BForArtists, and just thought "Ok they took of everything that makes blender what it is: Lite UI, intuitive shortcuts and so on. Of course, Blender UI is kind of mystic, but that's what is great, you don't rely on UI to do stuff, and therefore, you have A LOT of space for your 3D view. I've never seen that in any other software.
Point 3: Agree ! Mouse or pen gesture could be a nice addition also
Point 4: No problem with it as it is right now, but why not adding a really discrete one under the value. What i would like is a smaller value increment when dragging. I work in centimeters and that's really hard to get accurate value lets say on bevel modifier without having to ping pong with typed values.
Point 5: What do you mean ?
Point 6: If that's the one frome Adobe, i prefere not to have it XD
Point 7: Yeah, and material instances >_<
* @Darknoodles * Your points are great and realistic. I fully agree to some of your positions.
#2 Reply: I respect your opinion with this one. I believe most blender users are divided/have different takes about this one. That is why I hope blender would consider those highly practical/powerful tools that are somewhat not too keen for some other users due to preference reasons, to make it as an optional feature similar to Bforartist software.
Not necessarily to make a lot of things to be optional but only to those tools/features that has a great potential and when it comes to workflow. In my own personal preference/situation, there are times when I wouldn'y care too much about the mess. I would just like to have a faster way to finish something and that is how I see regarding the toolbar header conversation.
The only limitation I found with the bforartist version is that the user doesn't have enough freedom to choose which tools/buttons/settings can be added as a quick access shortcut in the header. Making it a separate editor could really be helpful. Allowing the user to decide where to place it in the screen.
#5 Currently in edit mode you can't do some basic assignement of precise dimensions to all the mesh you are currently selecting. I believe the program in blender only accounts the entire object even if it is on edit mode.
Ex: I would like to enter a precise dimension in the (x) scale. This would be impossible. There are no textfield or input reciever to type to. The only available scale functionality are bound by ratio and average calculations I believe. Please correct me if this is not accurate. Everyone at some point can benefit from this basic precision functionality. Even the old ancient artists have also acknowledge the strong points and benefits of having some form of precision can be great from time to time. A mockup image could explain it better but I believe you see what I am trying to say.
#6 In affinity Design, They created a pen tool that acts like a bezier if you click on something or use some modifier keys. Affinitys pen tool + node tool workflow combination is very easy and fast. I am not sure with adobe XD, I already forgot how their pen tool works.
* @johnpdelacruz28 * For the point 5, if i get it, let say you have a cube that is 2cm, and want to make it 10 ? Yeah, there is no direct way except making maths formula with the scale. So that would be your current dimension times (target / current), so 2*(10/2) One thing i find missing, is the ability to position the object at a precise word or relative location. At the moment the only way is in the object property or N-Panel. That's not a big deal though.
* @Darknoodles * I have found an addon that can atleast achieve the edge length assignment. I cannot find it in my folders anymore, maybe it there somewhere.
The good thing about that said addon, I believe it has a default constraint that anchors the active edge to its original location. Making it easier to create complex demension assignments. The addons name is "set edge length" addon if what I remembered was right. Having a hard time finding it on the web.
* @johnpdelacruz28 * Yeah i remember this addon, i thought it was included in blender but no. The workaround would be to use Edgetools and "Extend edge" and the sliding the vertices but that's not really practical. Maybe i still have the addon somewhere, but i don't think it's compatible with 2.8
Edit: Just found it blender-addons.org/mesh-tools-addon/
* @Darknoodles * Wow. Great man! Thanks. Now I don't have to dive in the rabbit hole of my semi disorganized documents. I would be nice if blender could find the creator of this addon. Maybe he/she has some other stuff to offer for blender's precision tool.