Blender is moving in the wrong direction

Yeah, devs are ignoring sculpting since the begining, I dont know what, I guess the spring team is using zbrush.

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No they’re not.

you didn’t get the joke but ohwell

I have a couple thoughts on all this.

First, as people have pointed out, this is THE time to throw in every UI change that they’ve been thinking about. The devs are empowered to do whatever they think is right for Blender, and we are at a point at the beginning of beta for 2.80 where most tutorials are no longer applicable and everyone is, to some degree, going to have to learn a “new” program. If you tried to make these sort of changes between 2.81 and 2.82 for example then even more people would complain. So basically if you don’t do it now then it will probably be much harder to do it in the future.

Second, as a result of so many changes getting dumped in much of this is all pretty rough still. Many of the different changes interact with each other in ways that weren’t necessarily anticipated and aren’t very smooth yet. But we likely have at least four months to polish all the workflows and resolve these issues. So while I know the current state of 2.80 can look very scary to someone who has been using Blender for a long time, the answer is not to panic and complain that the sky is falling, but to calmly work together to identify the issues and work to refine things so that they work better. Nobody is suggesting 2.80 is “done” or that all of this is now set in stone.

Third, something I think might be fun and productive would be for the Blender Foundation to hold something like a “pro user summit” where they bring say a half-dozen super power users (people who work for studios and use Blender all day for example) together with the developers for a couple days and go through all the 2.80 UI/UX interaction stuff and brainstorm how it could be made better. Maybe do this in a couple months after things have gotten a bit more polished.

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Considering that the spring team is at the institute, I’m not entirely sure this is necessarily. However if there was enough funds for this and the institute managed to do something like this that would certainly be very cool. Still the point is, I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary, because again, we have the Spring team dog-fooding blender 2.8 right now.

The real question I have is: do any of the artists at the institute put any time into testing the new key-maps too, or as I would expect them to they only really use the 2.79 key-map since the production reality is that work needs to get done? Would be cool if some of them gave the new key-maps a try even if just for a week end or so.

Yes. The issue is that not everyone agrees on what they use more often.

I barely use the search function, maybe once a month. But I play animations several times a minute. And I bet I’d never use the active tools popup. I bet I’m not the only one like that.

Either there is a common trend that could be set as default, either the choice is led to the user. 2.8 will let to the user from the first startup splashscreen. To me it sounds like a good compromise, but we’ll see how it goes in the long run.

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They use the new keymaps, some left and some right click select.

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Great to hear, thanks! :slight_smile:

IMHO, a big issue is having set LCS as default right now. Althought it’s a beta version, LCS is not finished, there are tons of issues being there just because it’s fresh new and being on the way.

I was happy to see the LCS being worked out. When I saw it was set as default, I just though “bug tracker is coming big”.

This is precisely why it was the right time to do this, so it can get very thorough testing. :wink:

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Yes absolutely, but 2.80 isn’t coming out in a few days (I hope), maybe we had some time to let LCS get more robust before putting it to the test. But now it’s done, we just have to push to the top.

Ah, the old “back in the old days” discussion. Of course it had to come up at some point. I remember when facebook changed some random color in their design a fews years back. People went apeshit.

On a more serious note. Since all the main addons I use are now fit for 2.80 (Hardops, Boxcutter and Pie Menu Editor) it took me about 10 Minutes to adjust my workflow to the new blender. I mostly do hardsurface modelling and YES, i do this on a professional level. Meaning i make a living from it and consider myself a pro. So, if things are not working out, i guess it could be a attitude problem. But who am I to judge.

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So having thought a little more about it I realize that there is 1 problem with this. I overlooked that there are already some tools designed to be modal without a widget to them such as the measure tool(and perhaps others that simply haven’t received one yet).

While I still maintain that ideally as many of the active tools as possible should have a widget to them(otherwise why not have it as an action instead?) and only the widget should be the trigger for those tools, the very example of the measure tool is ideal to illustrate that there genuinely can be a case and thus a place for widgetless modal tools.

With that in mind I’d like to draw attention to the fact that once a tool in the panel has been activated, the user has no feedback(beyond the highlight in tool panel) that they are now in a modal situation where their interaction with the application is somewhat limited.

Since the selection requires click-drag and so does the measure tool I recommend that clicking on widgetless modal tools such as measure the mouse cursor change into the tools icon as indication to the user that the active tool has just entered a mode that hijacked the mouse from utilizing passive tools. Another/additional option would be to give them hovering widgets that are projected onto the object/elements.


While at it I want to make the case that perhaps measure shouldn’t be a tool but an action instead. I’ve stated here before that in my opinion the tool panel should be a pallet(floating panel, similar to the last operator panel, both of which should be movable) which might also open the opportunity to return the action bar/side-panel. I think that is the place for the measure…

…action.

Mind, I must concede that it could be considered yet another passive tool instead and be grouped together with those, with that said - this brings me to the next issue I want to cover:

modal actions

Strictly speaking I don’t think they should be a thing as such. What I mean is that by default they should be one-offs, however they should be contextual such that while triggering it(click-drag-release for the measure in it’s case) if the user is holding down shift they should be immediately reusable. This way the user can easily make multiple measurements in a row or build multiple polys in a row(another tool that is actually an action IMO) or what have you.

If everyone is adamant on these action-like tools such as the previously mentioned measure and poly build being tools rather than actions then they should perhaps still be one-offs by default and remain immediately reusable only when shift is held during their use.

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I agree that passive tools like select and set 3D cursor should be active all the time, like it was back in the golden age of 2.79, but how do you purpose that people use the various selection methods? Would it be the same old shortcuts or would it be some other method.

I don’t think the transform options should be tools at all. There is no reason they can’t simply be overlay elements so you can use them all the time unless there is another widget that is taking over from one of the other active tools.

I don’t care if every tool gets a widget or not as long as I can still use hotkeys to do everything and hide the widgets to get them out of my way if I don’t need them.

There should be a way to cancel out of tools rather having them stick around forever unless you switch to another tool. Once you cancel it should take you back out to the selection/3D cursor passive tools. Tools accessed from shortcuts should show up in the top bar and be selected on the tool bar while they are active and you should be allowed to toggle them on or off or cancel out of them. For example pressing D to use the annotate feature and then pressing D again to get out of it.

This way anyone that wants to use the toolbar and widgets can but anyone that doesn’t need it doesn’t have to use it and it wont get in the way. You can reuse active tools as long as they are active but you get to choose when to activate them and when to stop using it. Tools shouldn’t stick around long after you no longer need them. I don’t see why anyone would oppose that. Everyone wins. All the functionality thats in right now stays but doesn’t force anyone to work slower.

I also think right click should go back to being default, like god intended, and any left-click heathen can just change it in the new convenient preferences menu. I assume everyone that was telling me to adapt and change it in the preferences should have absolutely no problem taking their own advice, right? So everyone wins there too.

Also, here is a quick video addressing some of you that messaged me on youtube asking about what I do and tutorials: https://youtu.be/T2yOxilQyKw

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Because active tools are active tools. They are not modal tools like the old ones that you activate immediately by using hotkeys. So there’s no “cancel” to jump to another tool, it makes no sense.
This is how it works in every 3d software under the sun.

Why shouldn’t there be a cancel option for them? You can already activate those tools using shortcuts so why shouldn’t you be able to get out of them if you want to or switch to another active tool using a hotkey while they are still active. That’s literally how it worked before. You still get to use the tool how you want but it doesn’t force itself on anyone that doesn’t want it around. Also with the transforms being overlays you still have the option to use them whenever you want without having to chose between them and some other active tool like measure, annotate, or other active tools in edit mode. So why would you oppose that. It doesn’t stop you from doing anything you can do now.

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This is where the confusion is. Those new tools on the toolbar are not the same as the old ones, even though they have the same name. They are two completely different systems, also it seems like a lot of people are still not familiar with this and they start mixing concepts.
If you want the old behavior you need to access the modal tools using the old shortcuts. For example, when you hit C for circle select, you are not using the active tool of the toolbar, and it’s the same thing for all the tools, even their shortcuts are different.

To me, that doesn’t make any sense. Why have a redundant system for using tools that you already could use just fine before? Why not unify them and be more consistent. If I go to the tool tab and click on the annotate tool then that should be the same as pressing D and activating it. It should bring up all the same options in the top bar and should go away if you deselect it from the toolbar or cancel using right click(assuming you are using the proper method of selecting which is right click) or Esc.

Things like extrude would activate the tool and keep it active until you choose to switch to another tool or cancel out of it which will take you back to use the passive select tool. This way people can just use E and G like before but still get all of the topbar and popup options as well as use the widget or hide it. The new workflow exists for those that want it but the only one is largely uninterrupted. If these two systems do the same thing I don’t understand why they can’t exist together.

Also, can anyone explain to me why this toolbar and sticky tools were added in the first place? I can only imagine it was done for people using tablets without a keyboard. I can’t see any other reason for these to exist since using widgets for simple things like extrude is way slower on anything but a tablet. There is no way this was designed with a mouse and keyboard in mind, which I imagine is how most people use blender.

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I don’t believe anyone of you who keep on dismissing Ouro’s complaints use Blender extensively for modeling. Blender 2.8, in its current state, is just extremely much less efficient than 2.7, and no you cannot change preferences to fix most of the issues.
I will be using 2.7 for modeling and only port to 2.8 for rendering or other special features for as long as possible, if this is how it will remain. It’s sad to see Blender end up like this.

Actually watch his video before commenting:

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Also I don’t understand how this new system is suppose to work anyway. Can someone explain or show in a video how you would even model with the new widgets? If you use the new extrude widget it just extrudes in 1 direction that it picks for you and then you have to use the transform “tool” to move it then click back to the extrude tool to do another extrusion. Whats the point of even having it stick then if you have to switch off of it to do anything. How often are you going to end up extruding something in the same direction multiple times in a row without moving it. Wouldn’t extruding once and using a loop cut be quicker and achieve the same thing.

Even people that like this thing are comparing it maya and pointing out that its slower: https://youtu.be/oXcMF4xrJPo?t=347

When you guys were hiring for the code quest did you by chance hire a Maya spy? Its like a Maya developer snuck in to sabotage blender by making it more like maya so when noobies become intermediate users or pros they end up just switching to Maya since they will feel right at home thanks to 2.8 trying to mimic Maya. All of this would at least make more sense then. You are just training new Maya users while slowing down everyone else. I’m onto you Autodesk.

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