Blender user interface design

Archive User Feedback
1343

Hi, I don’t know if I’m at the right place to talk about this: The volumetric toggle ON/OFF button.

It was removed in last blender versions. If a volume is detected, volumetrics are ON automatically.

I think there are some cases where it can be interesting to have the option to disable it.

For example, if you are working in Mr Elephant scene, volumetrics are now enabled by default, and if you are running a middle range computer, the scene will be slow. I think it can be interesting to have the possibility to continue to work on Mr Elephant scene disabling volumetrics (in the occurence you can simply remove volume scatter shader in world node shader editor but it is not really handy and you can loose your settings). Then you can enable volumetrics again just before doing your render/anim…

It can also be interesting to render with/without volumetrics enabled to compare.

I don’t know if there’s a simple way to enable volumetrics automatically when you add the 1st volume to the scene, but keep the possibility to disable all volumetrics when you want.

2 Likes
1344

For the world, you are not forced to remove the volume shader node. You can simply mute the node.
For volume objects, they can be hidden.
It can be easy if creator of blend files grouped them into a collection.

It can be complicated if it is not the case and user did not give an explicit name to them.
So, you are right.

There might be an option into Simplify panel to disable all kinds of volumetrics.

1345

Indeed, mute node and/or using collections are good ways. It was just a remark but it is not that important. Thanks for your answer.

1346

Personally I liked the change of Volumetrics enabled by default, but I had not thought about people with low end GPUs.
Anyway in your case if the scene becomes too heavy, you can set the highest value of “Tile Size” and low values of Samples in Volumetric item. Probably so that it does not become annoying to constantly change the configurations for Rendered view and Final render, perhaps it would be convenient to have different configurations of mentioned settings separately for Render and Viewport under Simplify item.
If the volumetrics comes from World, you remember that in LookDev you could enable Scene lights without enabling Scene World for fast navigation.

1347

Flip Region F5 keyboard shortcut on panels is only available for 2.79 keymap. Why is it almost hidden for 2.8 keymap? Is it problematic in any way? I believe that Flip Region’s ability is a very powerful customization option for users. This should have keyboard shortcuts for other Key Maps, even it should appear as an option in a menu when you right click on a panel.

1 Like
1349
1350

I kind of agree here… Sometimes there are situations where you really want to disable all volumetrics. Maybe it would be sensible to put that volume toggle button/ticker into the simplify-tab, since it is basically a simplification that would most likely be wanted in the viewport, but also still be rendered.

1 Like
1351

But Cycles also does not have a checkbox to disable Volumetrics globally, and volumetrics in Cycles is even heavier than Eevee in rendered view (if you use same GPU to display and render). In the message above I have given options so that it is not heavy, even you can configure Samples = 1 in Volumetric and it would work in the same way as it being disabled.
For me what would be more important, would be to have separate configurations for Viewport and final render.

1352

Agreed, which is why I suggested putting it in the simplify-tab, which has exactly these settings to help optimize the workflow. :slight_smile:

1 Like
1353

My god. That’s indeed a hidden feature. I had absolutely no idea you could flip regions like the N and T panels. I’ve been using blender full time for 5 years.

2 Likes
1354

Hello.

I have concerns about the removal of the sidebars item name box:
SidebarItemName

This wasnt only useful for renaming purposes. It enabled users to copy+paste the item via mouseover into a different name box, like modifier or constraint targets, on the fly.

In my experience its safer and faster to use copy+paste than searching or using the picker tool (which isnt available for bones). Personally I used the name box heavily.

The benefit is that the name source stays in place and you never have to switch context of the Properties editor to change or copy the name from the Object or Bone tab (bones have another tab).
Since switching happens globally for the window, it requires some back and forth while working in a specific area, bone constraints for example. In 2.7 you can rename, copy and organize your bones and constraints in a workspace of just 2 “static” windows. Very comfortable, no longer possible in 2.8.

So it turned out to be a bigger papercut for me because the name box assisted this workflow quite well. It made me more unreliant on other editor windows and I really wished you had not removed it from its place.

6 Likes
1355

Hi Guys,

I realize there was a conversation regarding this subject before, but with many new users converting to Blender I guess it can be expected for this to come up periodically.

I made a rough conversation starter/proposal on rightclickselect as well, (https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/dzdbbc/) (keep in mind, I’m not a UI designer. It’s a concept, nothing more) but figured I’d bring it up here where it might reach developers more directly.

The main point to be clear - in a production environment you’re going to use many in-house tools, scripts and plugins. I’ve been working at big VFX houses for quite some time now (currently involved in pipeline development) and one can be looking at twice as custom many tools as default maya would ship on a daily basis.

The ability to sort them in an efficient manner, so that it doesn’t clutter up the interface is crucial. (I’m not necessarily talking about the ability of drag and dropping scripts into a custom shelf, organizing them freely, assigning custom or built in icons).

I’m very open to look at it the Blender way, I’m a huge fan of not having floating panels, but I definitely feel that this needs some attention. By no means do I want to make it Maya-like, on the contrary. In many aspects I would want to make Maya Blender-like.

Organizing 10 addons in the workspace might be feasible for hobbyists but it’s not going to work on a daily basis across departments in a big scale production environment.

Forgive me if I’m not going through the whole thread, while if definitely looks interesting, it’d take a lot of time to read the 1280 entries (maybe for topics like this there could be a summary of some sorts).

Anyway, the question would be - is the N panel as it stands now set in stone? If so, what would the suggestions be for bigger production houses in terms of organizing their toolset so that it can be accessible across departments in a streamlined fashion? (keeping in mind that the user can be a seasoned professional with 20+ years of production experience, or a jr ATD, straight out of school)

Thank you for your time, and again, excuse me if this has been discussed and brought to a conclusion before.

Cheers,

Dan

3 Likes
1356

@dan2 this might be useful

1357

Thank you @ThinkingPolygons,

I’ll definitely check it out. The main reason I was refraining from using floating windows is that it can complicate things when using several instances of the same software at the same time.

1358

This is exactly what I proposed before! (read below)
After my post jendrzych the designer of the new icons mentioned that he created a mock-up with the same idea.
Then William Reynish, Blender’s UI designer joined the convo with this:
“Only issue with that, is that then addons need to always supply an icon if they want to add their own category. Technically I would think it should be simple enough”

I’d consider this absolutely OK - especially with jendrzych’s idea that the first two letters of addon’s name could be there if no icon was provided.

But the discussion died at this point - I haven’t heard about this since then but I really-really hope they get back to this idea after 2.8
It’d make so much more sense (especially if they implement my drag and drop idea with it) and would be so much more professional as you said.

1359

@kynu Thank you for getting me up to speed on the subject. There could be a pre-defined set of icons as well for the addon developer/user to choose from, depending on how descriptive the icon should be.

I’d prefer icons instead of the first two letters, many addons are not very descriptive on their own. I might know what ice tools, machin3 or mira or grasswald stands for, but in a big production there would be hundreds of juniors and atd-s who don’t.

I’m glad to see that these changes wouldn’t be overly difficult from a technical point of view.

2 Likes
1360

I’m curious if we can get a dev’s updated response to all these proposals
@billrey could you please tell us if this UI adjustment is something considered for a future release?

1 Like
1361

Yes, I think this, as well as having the ability to enable whole sets of addons would be crucial in production.

Let’s say I’m doing FX, I’d want to be able to quicky enable/disable not just the FX toolset, but also Layout, Character animation, and Bakes. Having a core set of addons, preferably with icons, color coded in the N panel would be a good start.

The amount of custom tools is just way to overwhelming. As it stands now even a simple publishing and QC toolset would fill up the N panel.

1362

If designed correctly, the floating windows need not actually be real windows in the eyes of the operating system that add them to the task bar. I would also like to mention that we should get rid of the horribly unintuitive window splitting system that Blender currently has and implement the window system that VS Code uses, which is fantastic.

1363

@Keavon I see what you mean. It might come down to individual needs and personal preference. I can definitely see the need for using floating windows, this might be a different discussion though. I listened to an interview and can vaguely remember Ton being against them, and I fully respect that.

During my day job I’m using Maya a lot which is a perfect example on how not to do it - having 6 instances of maya open, with 3 outliners, 4 graph editors and 5 hypergraphs can quicky become a nightmare if they’re added to the taskbar. Do we have floating windows in houdini? For the life of me I can’t remember, if we do I’m never using them.

I’d need to see a good example, but at the moment I definitely see the upsides of not having floating windows, as well as the limitations. The UI space can be filled up fast. Maybe a slightly different duplicate of the N panel would solve it, specifically dedicated to custom work environments. Same way I’m using different addons when sculpting, doing lookdev, layout etc. there could be a way to populate the N panel based on the workspace. (I know, we can do anything in any workspace at the moment, and it’s good to have it like this, just thinking of ways to manage things for large scale projects)