Blender UI paper cuts

I think you misunderstood me. I am talking about a key you have to press to call (bring up) a pie menu, not about a selecting an option from the pie menu.
Slightly moving my thumb and presing the right-click button on my Wacom Intuos stylus is still quicker than reaching for a key. In addition I don’t have to move my hand away from the Alt key which I use for navigation. When it comes to that I can do it even in pitch black (joking).

I agree that pie menus are quick and forgiving and all that but in Blender you cannot call/trigger them with a simple mouse click instead of context menus. If I could set up Blender to bring up a pie menu instead of normal context menu when I just right-click on an object (no keys involved) that would be even better. I guess that could be my next feature request. - user configurable context pie menus. Or just let me choose what triggers what. But that might be some low level stuff not easily exposed to user configuration. I don’t know.

This would be similar to Maya context marking menu which is pretty damn fast and thought out because you just right click (and hold) on an object and you can go directly to vertices, edges, faces or even switch component and object modes - all within one simple right-click marking menu (not possible in Blender):

maya_marking_r-click_menu

It’s not about not letting go. It’s just that everyone is different and prefers different UX and methods. A good professional software should respect that and give users more options. I actually started my first 3D experiments (back in the day) with Blender and I didn’t like the UI. When I tried Maya I was in awe how much easier and logical can 3D software be. The old versions of Blender never really clicked with me. So this is not a case where I am “just used to industry standard” and not able to let go.

And I am not the type to say that certain UX decisions in Blender completely suck and are without any thought. These decisions are just not compatible with the way I (and certain people) work. And no amount of “getting used to them” will make them better or quicker. Like I said every user finds his/her best workflow. Now it is up to Blender to even allow us that.

Personally I am never for total removal of options. I almost always ask developers to “add an option” or “make a switch” because I don’t want to take anyone’s favorite workflow away. I, myself, would not be happy if it happened to me. For example I don’t care for right-click selection at all but I am glad that it has stayed as an option. This makes Blender richer and can attract more users because everyone can fine tune their UX. Blender has still a long way to go when it comes to pleasing wide range of users but I would say it is on the right track.

I don’t see any reason why context menus could not be (re)designed and used for rapid access. As far as bringing them up they are the fastest thing in Blender. Why not make use of this speed if the user wants to? Like I said let the users decide what suits them best.

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Anyway my next papercut is quite related:

If you bring up a pie menu, the last selected option is highlighted in the exact same color as your current selection. If your cursor is somewhere between those highlighted items it is quite confusing. It is not immediately clear what is selected and what is just marked as last option:

confusing_pie_menu_marker

It would be great to have an option to turn off this last option marker or paint it with another color.

Thank you.

P.S. Sorry if this is already possible to do.

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It’s kinda funny the name repetition that happens in the properties editor/object/object data tabs…

Is it okay?

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I’d like to suggest the Mesh Options (when in Mesh mode) be in the 3D view along with other object / mesh dropdowns. (I had to search online for the Automerge option in 2.8)

I have placed it inline with some of the object / mesh related dropdowns in the 3D view of my screengrab (below)

(Not sure if this has already been suggested)

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Ahhh, I finally found auto merge, thanks!!! So yeah I agree or would at least wish icons like in 2.79 would return. I think it would make a great use of the empty space if all of those options where laid out in a similar way to the left side. Them being tucked in away in drop downs made them feel disconnected as if they relate more to the scene, layers, or something.

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take a look at this study tread on pie menus …
in particular the last two videos on this post …

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The “quit prompt” doesn’t show when in Fullscreen mode in Windows 10.

Right-click menu to delete things from Outliner / Collections. PLEEEEEEEASE…

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I totally agree – “This is not the ‘Cube’ you’re looking for…”

] __ ]

We have a “affect cursor” option in the translate action, it would be great if we could also have that in the rotation action!

Hmm. Where is this affect cursor option?

In the modal map for the cursor tools, there are two shortcuts. One is a “place cursor” on left click, and the other is a move or transform.translate operator with “transform cursor” option ticked. This operator moves the cursor. Since the cursor also has an orientation now, this option might as well also exist in the transform.rotate operator so we can assign it to some shortcut and rotate the cursor if we need to.

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Is it possible for the 3D Cursor to stay snapped to an element?

So that when you snap the 3D Cursor to an element, then move the mesh or object, the 3D cursor moves with the element that it is snapped to.

(Sorry if this a repeat request)

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Is it possible to prevent undo from removing layers and materials you created in preferences?

Where this is most noticeable is when you’re trying to maintain a smooth and quick grease pencil workflow. In GP you tend to make and modify a lot of strokes, and in between make a number of materials and layers. It’s hard to remember the order you’re laying things down sometimes. If it were possible to have undo not touch materials and layers that the user created, it would be more predictable and prevent back tracking when you inadvertently delete materials or layers that you created. I would rather delete or modify materials and layers manually.

Is there a way to set undo to this that I’m not aware of? I could see this to be a useful setting in preferences if its not there already.

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It’s fine.
The header is there because it makes no sense to remove it in the few situations it doubles up on information. In the other situations, it provides useful information. For instance in other tabs you can see the active or pinned object, or if you’ve scrolled down past the data block widget you can e.g. see which material is active. Or higher up in tabs it displays which active view layer you’re on, near the passes and layer settings.

It would be nice if when dragging a .hdr or .exr image in the blender node editor I asked you if you want to create an enviroment texture or an image texture, since 99% of the time these two formats are used more for environment images.

I made this example mockup.

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I am not sure if this is completely right here or if it ws proposed in the 1970 answers already but here goes: It’s always weird to me that the outliner does not allow for shift-clicking to select multiples.

The right-click/select items extra step is weird but not too bad. Selecting colums in a colum view IMO should work in a different way than by 3D view paradigms.

shiftClick

Especially with really many items in the outliner selecting can becom a very scollheavy, tedious and error prone task the way it is now.

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The new Object Rename (F2) should have the mouse right/left click to confirm and cancel the operation, pretty much every popup menu and operations works like that. Is quite frustrating since we get used to this behavior and for that one thing now it does not work.

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It seems it is not a developer priority, this has been discussed many times. I for one have stopped reporting paper cuts since they don’t take them into account.

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I’m curious – What is the reasoning behind not implementing the Shift+LMB to select multiple items?

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