The problem is different than that, I think. The problem was that in blender 2.8 a unilateral decision was taken to destroy the T-shelf where the user had access to all the tools easily. And in the way of doing that, we tried to destroy the best thing that Blender had, the Tshelf. Something that was said to fail and that was a failure because in the end everything moved to the sidebar and the rest was hidden in some menus because of persecution mania.
3dsmax has got nice addon recently by the way.
There is no perfect software, so lots of addons extends its possibilities.
Hm. I see what you are hinting at. But isn’t the N-Panel supposed to be the new place for that?
Additionally I thought the T-Panel was supposed to be expanded upon in future releases and hold more tools. I’m really torn on the issue now, because personally for me the T-Panel also was a totally overcrowded space where everybody threw their new tools and you had to sift through it yourself to find it. I never really found it friendly to work with, either. But I also do see that a lot of customizable real estate went away for others.
In that way I think that my proposal to make an easy menu editor is still relevant to the issue. No matter if you were to incorporate your own quick menues into the N-Menue or formerly the T-Menu or via hotkey into a floating panel of your own. Quick access is quick access.
I mean - there was a reason to eliminate the T-Shelf, wasn’t it?
I can’t remember it any more but I am sure I’ve heared about it before the 2.80 release.
No, it wasn’t the idea. The idea was left the sidebar for a few things and put addons in all interface. But unlike other people, addons developers know where they and the users want the tools. So they still using now the sidebar instead of other locations.
I suppose their internal reasoning had to eliminate the T-shelf, publicly they never gave it except that it was exchanged for menus because potato. In fact, weeks before removing the T-Shelf, they assured us that the interface would not be changed. Obscurantism in interface changes has been the norm.
It was a decision purely imposed with no real support of arguments or reasons.
So basically you’d ideally want to see something like this:
Empty shelf in the style of the properties panel, that if collapsed shows only the tabs for the various addons. When clicking on a collapsed tab it brings up the tab as a floating panel.
Modo has this kind of side-panel action going on as a separate window type. And I find clicking through the amount of things it’s become quite tedious at times. It does its job but it surely doesn’t feel any better or worse than what Blender has right now. Just different. For blender it seems most things just go into the n-panel instead, now.
Where in the interface are addons to go now, officially?
Looking at some addons I’ve used over the years I am really not too sure that every addon developer knows where the users want the tools, either. 
I do a lot of different proposals to solve the problem, similar to your ideas. You can see some of them here
Basically I propose keep the t-shelf, or convert in a new area, or change the way to manage the tabs.
They had various ideas, specially to put in the properties editor. But they didn’t give enough tools to devs to make that.
Yes, I can see where you’re coming from, now.
I can basically understand the reasoning to reduce clutter and too many menus but at the same time the T-Panel really does feel like it should need more functionality.
The weird thing is that when it was first introduced I didn’t think it too much as the place where only a few icons would reside but saw it more as a similar thing to Modo’s sidepanel. I still think I heared the devs talk about that this was only supposed to be the first iteration, either.
But I’m with you now. Not sure on what the right implementation would be but a custom sideshelf would be beneficial. I am also still for an easy to use editor for creating shelves and tools yourself.
Modo’s editor is atrocious to me. No matter how flexible it may be. I f*ck something up everytime I haven’t used it in a while and short time later bugs start to pile up and I have to reset all my work. So this is certainly NOT the way to go. But user customizability is key, IMO.
I don’t that customization is the key. But a few options, like that you can deactivate addons panels in the t-shelf,… I don’t know. But the problem that we had in blender 2.79 in 2.8 is worst.
In 2.79 we had the basic tabs from blender, and a lot of addons use this to place the addons.
Now in 2.80 all that addons use individual tabs because they don’t have a space for that.
Hm - I do think customization is key. Maybe not as a direct solution to the missing T-Panel per se but it’s an important feature, nevertheless.
I think those two ideas/proposals while being two different things still overlap in large parts, as well.
But I fully admit that I haven’t given this much more thought, beyond this thread for now. Also I am not a developer so the best I can do is contribute proposals and make noise.
(Edit) also just to clarify: I totally agree on the T-Panel discussion. It’s something to think and decide about. I also do think that this is a single design issue and not something that steers Blender as an entire application into the wrong direction. It’s also something that can very much be redeemed if it gains enough attention. Blender as a whole is still moving much more into the right direction despite a few things being weirder or worse for now. Overall there’s much more good than bad, I think. 
One option would be to expand the idea of per-workspace add-on filtering. The current system is fairly coarse (you can filter entire add-ons out of the entire UI, but you can’t hide individual tabs or menus, etc) and we don’t have other places to put things. If we could ‘dock’ tabs as popovers in the header, right-click on them to access a show/hide menu in the sidebar, or move them into a ribbon, the sidebar wouldn’t feel so crowded.
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Speaking of gamedev have you seen what UE4 is doing?, it’s actually taking the same direction as Blender but the opposite way, they’re now providing rigging,animation,modeling uving & even sculpting tools inside the engine so game Artists won’t even have to use the DCCs all the time of course this won’t replace Blender in it’s entirety but if certain tools work better like uving,rigging… then Blender game devs will migrate their workflows to UE4 instead.
I didn’t see, I have seen a new way to work with blender and autoamtically see the changes in Unreal.
But, I don’t particularly trust the developers of unreal. Possibly because their software only gives me daily headaches.
Not everybody uses Unreal, though. Or wants to replace all their Blender workflows and plugins.
It’s cool that they are doing it for simple stuff, but I doubt that any game engine will replace an entire 3D App anytime soon. Even Unreal.
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Unity added the same to Unity and… nobody uses it except for level prototipe. But for example make animations in unity is really easy.
i can’t believe that all this was just an accident. Rather inclined to believe that the current composition of the developers sold for money, and is ready to appease their new owners. And the new owners require the blender’s compatibility with the “industry standard” (read: “with what the crowd is used to”).
Lowering the threshold of entry - many dwarfs will notice this and will be satisfied. But at the same time, the ceiling will fall, and it will interfere with the giants, which are very few.
Using the touch interface is not a problem in itself. I think that this (or something similar) is the future. BUT! blender, blender interface, blender UX - is what has grown on the keyboard and mouse. Trying to adapt this to a touch is like trying to smoothly turn a cat into a banana. (I think many of the developers like bananas)
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Did you learn this in your tolerant-liberal-capitalist school?
People are different, everyone has their own opinion, and all opinions are good. Let’s make the majority happy. Correctly? What is it called? Democracy? Or idiocracy?
Following the industry standard chosen by the crowd is a dead end.
Minimalism, and relying on the adaptation of an intelligent agent (user) - these are the priorities for building an adequate interface (in the broad sense of the word).
We use a tool (such as a blender) in order to get the resulting product. The tool (such as a blender) itself in this process should be as inconspicuous as possible. He must merge with your hands, become an extension of your mind. So that you can fully concentrate on work, on the process of creating the target product. Without this condition, it is impossible to create really important things.
If the user fill his blender in all (or all but one, as the blender developers like) the colors of the rainbow, turned on all the gizmos, all the visual junk (which took so much time to develop!), which is in the blender, listens loudly to the music, and draws its own porn anime cartoons with grease pencil, looking one eye in the video tutorials on the blender, then he does not understand what the local whiners whine about this topic.
I guess they have simple task - turn Blender into some sort of freeware Maya in 2.9.
So they are tuning Blender in something that satisfies needs some random character/asset freelance modeler and animator with heavy nostalgia for the 90th.
Those features are painted in black to make them looking modern.
Not sure it is a wise choice, the design should be functional.
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That is not entirely true, they do not try to turn blender into another program, simply that since they do not use it and do not know how to design functional interfaces they are dedicated to copying ideas and concepts from other programs. Sometimes they try to copy MODO, sometimes Maya, sometimes Substance, Photoshop… they don’t base their redesigns on usability and user feedback.
And in the end they manage to copy all the bad vices of those programs, and macOS, of course.
If you really look at it, blender 2.8 doesn’t have any change in UX except for the active tools, which were already perfectly experimental in 2.79. Most changes are purely cosmetic. And when they have made changes in UX they have been for bad, only the QuickFavorites is saved.
If you look at the summary
- Topbar, discarted
- Space Popup, dialed
- Industry Standard keymap, few people use it
- Remove T-Shelf, Error, moved to Sidebar
- Move Tools to propertie editor, few people use it.
- PieMenus, bad implemented
- Right align columns, error
- Move the shorcuts to info bar, nobody see it now
- Redesign of the brushes, error
To not talk when they had the great idea of remove the wireframe (yeah, this happened)
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