Blender UI paper cuts

I get that this menu was recently added, but it’s very rough Ux wise… it at least should change it’s color or something when there’s an option selected in it (preferably add a symbol to the button, but then why not just make a symbol toolbar out of it)…

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This is my go to menu to copy things from one object to another, but it doesn’t contain particle systems:

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That option is apparently buried here… with a wording that (as is very often the case with Blender) makes you pause and think about in which order you selected your objects (ie, what is the active object again, and will I affect the active objects or the others):

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The various render passes in 2.9 do not respect depth of field.

  1. Hit w
  2. Selext next/previous (not sure about hotkeys)
  3. Hit L

Guess why blender can’t rename the folder.
I’m pressing Enter to aprove the new name.

Spoiler

The folder with that name already existed but there is no notification

7 Likes

This makes no sense. When you are in edit mode, you’re always using a tool, so it’s all about switching, not dropping/exiting. If you want to switch to some selection tool when pressing esc or something, that’s up to you to assign a shortcut to it.

Ctrl + shift + numpad +

People ask for this all the time (me included lol), it’s pretty much standard, yes.
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/in-the-sub-object-levels-there-should-be-an-element-level/9396
Even for uvs:
https://devtalk.blender.org/t/island-select-plz/12319

2 Likes

If that’s set in stone with Blender, I probably have to find a way around it. Maybe a script or digging through possible shortcuts. I like the definite confirmation that a tool is done with and cannot do anything further when I accidentally click in the viewport with the pen. (Which happens like a brazillion times a day). I’m just used to it working, coming from Modo and Houdini.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow::face_with_monocle::no_mouth::dizzy_face: I only knew it without shift. Neat! Thank you. It even snakes around the outskirts of a plane correctly! That’s one off the list.

This is a debate about active tools. I’m with you about it. Blender needs a pasive tools (select and transform tools) and an active tool (extrude, knife,…) and when you don’t know what is happening click ESC to go out of the tool.

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If you want to drop tools with Esc, you’ll have to add the shortcut through an add-on, as pressing Esc when you’re setting a shortcut in Blender cancels the process. Making a simple add-on to wrap your favorite shortcuts is fairly easy, though.

Tool dropping is handy, even if it doesn’t fit 100% into how Blender presents tools.

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It’s not clear to me what this would do. Like @ThinkingPolygons says, there is always a tool that is active. What should happen when you “drop” the tool ? Revert back to previously used tool ? to a specific one ?

I did this proposal time ago, it explain the way that could work

You have your active tools but when you escape from this you go to the passive tool (selection+transform tool)

4 Likes

I like this idea, but it seems a bit complex to manage for such a basic thing. Having to keep track of two different families of tools, … I don’t know. Right now we can almost do this though : in the gizmos popover, we can enable transform gizmos at any time. They only become visible when one of the selection tools is active. It seems that the “other tools” are mostly similar to operators (short-lived) ?

The problem is that for example juniors have problem to go back to a “secure” mode. Sometimes they don’t know what they are doing and they can’t go back with broke something.

And for people that don’t use the active tools bar is also a problem because sometimes blender change to a activetool and you don’t have any feedback because you don’t use the gizmos.

Not to dismiss your idea, but I don’t recall a situation when Blender switches to a tool on its own ?
The tweak/select tool can act as a safe fallback, this is how I use it in Maya (W key activates the select tool) since there is no way to trigger a transformation with a hotkey (like we can in Blender with G, R, S).

Blender already has something similar to this, selection tools can now be used as Fallback Tool. See T66304.
The Drag dropdown is visible for applicable tools and allows setting which selection tool to execute as fallback.

Depending on what you set there, either the active tool is executed when you drag outside of gizmos, or the selection tool set as fallback is executed.

2 Likes

I know, for that reason I think that this must be complete with a little change in the paradigm that allow users go back to the transform tools when they enter in panic mode.

i noticed that in blender 2.7 linked objects got a cyan outline color when selected and a cyan origin also when not selected to indicate the link. in 2.8 this seems not to be the case any longer and its not possible from the viewport to see if a object is linked or not.
It would be nice to get this back.
I see that also in the outliner the color scheme is the same as normal objects, was this change maybe a design decision on the new color theme?

the chain is not good enough?
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how does that chain show me something in the viewport? in a example like that it might be ok but if you have hundreds of objects with multiple collections and partening level you will not see those chains

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Last Blender 2.9Alpha
This tooltip is still here
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