Then have a purge command for it that is invoked at the time the user decides to optimize Filesize.
We are discussing in circles here. Materials and actions are never second class siticens and a program should never automatically delete things the user has invested work and time into.
Yes - it may keep filesizes down in some cases but it will cost a lot of time, nerves and potentially money in many others. And I have still not heard one good argument against that other than filesize and “professionality”.
(edit) In fairness - I could think of a scenario where it would be beneficial to not automatically save Materials or animations. When you already have a scene with a few unassigned saved materials/animations and import a lot (say, in the 100s) of assets at once pulling in a lot of assigend materials/actions you don’t need and where purging would delete other wanted things, too. Though this scenario could still be remedied with a “don’t import (x)” checkmark, a datablock manager or some other form of management tool.
But I still stand firmly by the opinion that it’s always worse having something silently deleted and that this never is “professional” just because users got used to living with it.
or have a global checkbox in settings to disable fake user for every file, i mean everyone can be accommodated with this, globally have it on by default (by that i mean save every material) and everyone else who dont like it turn it off, easy as that, case closed.
I think this is not too important. I like the way it is, it is like in my job. I mark important stuff, things that are not marked will be taken out so its really efficient in my opinion.
Instead of having huge blend files
You have to take into account that non professional people use Blender, they foremost have no idea what fake user is let alone that blender does not save their files if they dont checkmark it, that is something which experienced Blender users understand.
Enforcing a “dont save by default” approach is very bad for user experience and should be changed to a more “friendly for everyone” approach, i’d rather newbies came over here to the forum and ask why their file has a large size rather than come here to complain how Blender destroyed hours and hours of their work.
Pro Blender users know their way enough to know the bad quirks of the software to default certain settings, Beginners have to go through needless frustrations of loosing data and work hours just to learn that Blender does things differently (this in my unprofessional opinion can and should be avoided at all cost).
These definitons about what a pro is and how they should work are really pointless. The only thing we can define for sure is that as with any change in an established system - it will break the workflow of at least some users. Every change will no matter how minor it seems at first.
On the flipside this doesn’t mean that it has to remain the way it is. That’s how progress goes. Things I liked have change in Blender as well. Yet I can assure a 100% that Blender is overall a much better product than it was 2 years ago. Yes - even (or specifically) for professionals.
Here’s the problem, the removal would require for the devs to put in a alternative system in or at the very least a system that manages data saving or the alike.
Problem is the devs are terribly preoccupied with all the changes in our near future like the simulation nodes etc. so i’m not sure they have enough time to overhaul the fake user system (as it is a system thats very deep in the code/root by my uneducated guess).
For the moment making it fake user on by default in the settings which you can turn off, as a small quick fix untill such time that devs could focus on the Fake user more focused, or they could bring in a new dev that could work on this and other replacement systems.
Agreed, and discussions on how to approach this have been going on for years. I don’t think the only two options should be “leave completely as it is” or “redesign the entire datablock system”. Default to on Foo created, fake_user = True, add a “default fake on/off” preference checkbox, and call it - perhaps not fixed in entirety for eternity, but certainly more artist-friendly for now.
If everything would be saved, you would end up with a huge blend file and you had to go trought every object/image… and check the number of users and so on and then finally delete what you marked as waste. That seems really a lot of work.
Purge button allways seemed important for me
For the sake of discussion, what do you consider a large file?
How often do you create a material, action, etc that you have no use for? I’m not suggesting that the Shield buttton be removed; merely that when you create something, it is automatically protected. The user can still click it - right after creation, so as to not protect it.
Now , given the choice between big files and the alternative of… GETTING FIRED, because you used blender to make an asset and blender by design didn’t save it for you and your supervisor was waiting for such assets and you just stalled the whole production pipeline , for one reason or another, and your backups weren’t accessable ; which can happen.
Pick, the bloated file option.
Let’s make it clear folks :
Blender, in its current state , does not save your data.
And i am considering tagging every developer in the core team so they will get notification for this thread, this , is uptop priority (2nd only to blender crashing bugs).
Within the scope of this discussion, the ‘asset’ is a material, action, etc that is not assigned to an object (and not marked as protected, ie “fake user”). It is deleted by Blender when the file is saved.
No. And I am really getting tired of explaining this. A material is never only used in combination with an object. If you delete an object and have not manually marked the Material as “important” then Blender will currently delete it without question or warning. Deleting one thing != everything attached to it is now free to delete. Creating a variation of a Material or Action != Not needing the other one any more.
And every time you create a variation to maybe have clean keyframes to get back to later on or to have as a material back reference or whatever reason. Doesn’t matter. Every time you create a variation you have to remember marking the thing or it will be lost forever.
There is absolutely no benefit to it and this is not good design just because you and other people got used to it over time.
But apparently we are on different sides of this topic and I just hope that the developers see it differently from you as well. Arguning the same point back and forth has really no use in this discussion, and we are getting nowhere any more.
The point of object-oriented system is solid datamanagent on a massive projects with high variability dynamics during teamwork.
We didnt “got used to it”, we has chosen it on purpose after comparison, when switched our studio from Maya to Blender.
