Blender Icons Topic

About Blender icon design and technology.

Related threads:

New icons for Blender 2.8
Colour coded icons

Related tasks and revisions:

Toolbar icon theming support: T64177, D6649
Full-color alert icons: D6859
Support for loading custom icon sheets: D5655
Fix blurring of the gizmo icons D6734

There is a common trouble with all toolbar icons, due to the fact that they are not really bitmap icons, they don’t match pixel grid and look fuzzy.

On the left actual screenshots, on the right as it should be.

match-to-pixel-grid-1

What is more strange is that these small arrows are also not align to the pixel grid. I mean, at the default UI scale.

match-to-pixel-grid-2

And, for example, these arrows for some reason are not symmetrical.

On the left the current version.

match-to-pixel-grid-3

Another example, on the left the current version (scaled), on the right without scaling (how should it be ideally).

24-and-48-px-actual


There is also a strange shape of the marquee rectangle.

marquee

3 Likes

On the fuzzy icons: Get a higher resolution display! :slight_smile:

In all truth, I do intend to go through and check them against a pixel grid to make sure things are more sharp when viewed on old, low resolution displays.

There is Status bar design (Using icons in the status bar) thread, but there are also objective problems with the icons themselves.

mmb-icon

This icon looks more like wheel scrolling then pressing MMB. Scrolling is much more common than the third mouse button, new users will think it is scrolling.

Even when you know it’s a third mouse button, it’s still confusing. There are two different icons, one for just click and the other for ‘tweak’ (click and drag), for example:

select-box-select

And then the following example (rotate view) looks wrong as a click, though there should be a click and drag.

mmb-to-rotate

While using the Box Select tool, I see “Shift-LMB - Begin”. What’s the meaning of that? How can I click if I’m already holding down the button?

begin

Or for example, when transforming using a tool, I see “Click LMB to confirm”, while it should be release the button:

confirm

And so on… So that in general this all looks unclear and confusing users.

Here should be a “new” and not “duplicate” icon (in progress, D6466):

There is no need for icons:

node

5 Likes

@Harleya

I think we can consider storing 64 pixel version in Blender and then converting it to 32 and 16. I’m not sure about the performance, but it’s probably possible to save/cache the result on disk and read it next time if it’s faster.

Actually, why not just add the 64 version if you want, with no changes to 32 and 16.