Decoupling x-ray and limit selection to visible

[lcas]

@LudvikKoutny

Every single time there’s new Blender version, I know I have to spend another half a day submerging myself into the whole complex technical dump of patching and building my own Blender version. And then waiting ages for all the damn CUDA kernels to compile, just so that I can just get latest Blender version with all the bug fixes.

All the joy of doing 3D for living is instantly gone and I almost want to quit this altogether. That’s how demotivating this is.

Ok dude, thanks for essentially being my notification that there’s a new Blender out, but it isn’t anywhere near what you are saying. In case you aren’t exaggerating to make the same old point, here’s a few tips:

1. Was never long enough to really care, but it felt like it used to take about an hour to compile everything on my old 2500k. That’s assuming you really need every single CUDA version, but you don’t. Just edit out the ones you don’t need to save time. If you get a gpu with a different version of CUDA, just rebuild with that one. It will still be a net gain in time doing two single CUDA builds vs one with all of them. Again though, its about an hour on a decade old cpu.

2. Don’t use your workstation to compile. Do that on another computer and get back to whatever you were doing. If you don’t have a backup computer, you better get one before you find yourself needing one.

3. Don’t sit there watching it compile. Go get some sleep, food, sunlight.

4. If you are in the middle of a project, don’t upgrade/update anything on your workstation. If you can avoid it, keep your workstation offline. Just assume any new system updates, drivers, and software versions could ruin you. Doesn’t matter how benign or ridiculous it seems. Go get whatever other computer you have lying around, and test things out there first whenever possible (drivers will be hard unless you have two of the same thing)

5. That last one requires a bit of discipline, and no matter what you do it won’t matter, you’re always going to have some kind of update related issue and lose a bit of time. It’s just about weighing cost of that discipline vs the theoretical time rewards. It aint the end of the world though, don’t get all mopey and quit.

[LudvikKoutny]

1. Seems like it’s single threaded then. It takes at least hour for me.

2. I don’t have any other computer, for past 12 years that I do 3D. Exactly for the reason that I never needed one.

3. I don’t, but it still takes a while. The compilation is minor issue compared to the frustration of getting the whole thing to build. Libs often break and require several cycles of SVN repo cleanup and update.

4. 2.93 had quite a few frustrating bugs that .2 solves, so I want to have them ASAP so I don’t waste time encountering them and working around them.

5. I know that, but having to delve into actual building of C++/C code standing on notoriously fragile make system is just nothing an artist should ever go through when having common “update issues”.

I mean look at it. I said I just wish to be able to download Blender from blender.org and be good to go. And you suggest I should get another computer and expect to sink time into updating Blender versions. That kind of speaks for itself. No one who wants to have just normal, comfortable selection in Blender should go through the hoops of spending time trying to get build system to work, then waiting for it to build and getting entire separate PC just to do that.

It should be a matter of downloading the official Blender from official website, going into preferences, and finding one checkbox that would make many people happy. A checkbox requested one and half years ago.

[1D_Inc]

One and half?
Sounds like 3dsmax users didnt asked for this for a couple of a decades, every single 3dsmax user want free 3dsmax, and it is understandable since Autodesk itself don’t care much about it. For me such a period was in 2010, I just decided to learn an approach first to perform hard workflow test instead of immediate flooding forums.
Isnt it strange that only recently switched users asking for that?

[lcas]

I don’t want to do this either, but that’s life. The tips I told you are common sense stuff that should be done to whatever degree you are comfortable with. Evaluate how much discipline you are willing to live with, like what is worth your time doing.

None of it is anything unreasonable though. Here’s a little more perspective:

Good luck compiling anything else to fix your own problems, or tweak something like we’re doing right here. You get no source. Your only recourse with basically everything else, is to scream and cry at a stone wall, hoping it gives you the time of day. And you paid them good money on top of it.

[Hadriscus]

@LudvikKoutny

You wanted to show example of facedots being beneficial and you failed.

They had a point just above though, as I helped point out (in terms of the facedots being more appropriate in certains scenarios such as cleaning up CAD geometry with the help of an area-selection tool).

Now that being said @APEC is right, with a couple preferences for select-through and facedots (and potentially one for edge selection as well) we’d be all settled, and there’s nothing to fear for people who like using facedots better.

[1D_Inc]

The problem is quite deeper.

Every single modeller thinks he is cool, so every opinion here is a subjective and biased.
In such a subjective matter I, as workflow designer, prefer to follow numbers and statistics.
Independent research and tests are the only valuable source there.

Here we come to CGevent - a massive official meeting of CG artists in our country, that is organized every half year.

One if its part is a famous 3D Battle, a Mortal Kombat race between different DCC users.
Originally it is Autodesk contest, so usually it was a battle between Maya and Max.
But in 2015 they decided to invite Blender as well.

Same task, same hardware, different software, almost default setup with some time given to tweak (to compare software approach, not addons), to prove which one is better. Result is checked not only with speed, but also compleitance and quality - it does not matter how fast work is done, if it is not made properly.

Blender squished both Max and Maya, the winner (Derbenev) completed the task twice as fast, and even made a render, which was unnecessary.
He won Autodesk Maya license though - a famous photoe.

In 2016 Autodesk decided to not invite Blender.

In 2017 they decided to invite Blender again.

Max and Maya users got properly prepared this time, but the result was pretty much predictable - with select visible paradigm, facedots display and edges selection Blender has won even the box modeling challenge.
Blender shown twice faster results later again in 2019, when two Blender users finished work twice faster than any other participant.

So it is question of a quality of an approach.
An approach which was massively learned from 3dsmax is limited to a narrow scope - thats why box modeling is widespread there, since it is the only modeling workflow that fits such kind of an approach.

The goal of a Blender approach is speed and versatility, in practice it benefits at much wider range of a workflows, and includes box modeling as well.
So Blender already made a better choice.

[lcas]

[BUILD] 2933 Select Through Extra
[DIFF] 2933 Select Through Extra

New version with everything in it, mostly the same just a little cleaner. Changes are the tool settings are now collapsable, don’t cluttler the tool header, and independent control also works for transform drag select rather than only the select tools.

1. Header button for select through, use this to assign keyboard shortcut

2. If you want separate controls for facedots in xray and solid

3. What it looks like with two xray controls

4. Collapsable select through options in tool settings
   Hide button - If you don’t want to see the header button
   Independent control - If you want to control select through independently for each selection tool
   No facedot select - If you want to see facedots, but not have to select by them
   Near xray - If you want to see in xray, but not select through

[LudvikKoutny]

Uh? A "little cleaner?

One checkbox has turned into 4, with two more in a popover and one more in a preferences

This is exactly what I was always afraid this patch would become.

[lcas]

I’m talking about compared to what the previous version of this one was, where someone noticed those issues. You are seriously tiring. This aint about any one person’s opinion or needs, this is supposed to be about contributing ideas and critiques and getting something done. Nobody is in charge of this thing, so please chill with trying to be. I’d love it if anybody else would do their own thing and share it.

[LudvikKoutny]

People who are in charge of this thing actually rejected it because they said that one checkbox was cluttering the UI too much and made it confusing. So following that logic, how is “contributing ideas” which make it by an order of magnitude more complicated supposed to help this ever happen officially?

It’s fine if you want to make your own branch/patch to make Blender’s selection even more complicated than it already is, but it’d perhaps make more sense to open your own thread about it. This one was supposed to be about a simple solution of not having selection and viewport display tied together, without introducing any significant amount of new UI elements.

[Znio.G]

@LudvikKoutny

People who are in charge of this thing actually rejected it because they said that one checkbox was cluttering the UI too much and made it confusing.

Where is that? I didn’t see anyone rejcting this feature just because it adds another check box, the whole discussion is about whether to add it to edit mode only or to the other modes/tools

[lcas]

I’m here to get ideas, because every once in a while, something that is said around here leads to something useful. Even when it isn’t directly useful to me for the subject at hand, sometimes an opinion or idea can be used for some other feature. Sometimes, a stupid idea simply leads to a thought that would have otherwise never come to mind.

Your problem is, besides being a relentless complainer, you also want everything your way to a ridiculous degree. Even after Kio has given you the solution to your problem, you can’t help yourself from making a scene and threatening to “quit doing this for a living” simply because you had to compile. Nobody cares. That behaviour is kinda typical of what I see around Blender forums. I think the zero cost aspect of Blender attracts a certain type of people with this degree of entitlement.

But the main issue for you, is that while I’m here to get ideas from people, you just won’t stop trying to shut up anything that you percieve to be outside of what you want. You hamfistedly shoehorn the same couple of points when responding to other posts. We know you don’t like facedots, it doesn’t mean they aren’t useful to other people. We know you only need 1 checkbox, I agree with you even, but it doesn’t mean there can’t be additional options for people. You’ve actually asked people why they are even daring to post in this thread simply for disagreeing with you. It’s very childish, and like I said, tiring, when you do this over and over.

Who cares why the devs rejected whatever ideas for select through. If they want it, they are more than capable of implementing it themselves. It is their project, and their decision, to make. They aren’t sitting around waiting for us to wrap select through in a pretty bow that is just so great that they have no choice but to approve it.

I’m not here to repackage the same idea and try to get the devs to buy it like some used car salseman. I’m also not here to convince or convert anybody to my way of doing things the way you constantly do. I don’t care if select through ever gets into Blender, or what it is like if it does happen, it’s probably not going to be hard to get it working the way I want. I’m here to see what people have to say, because sometimes it leads to something useful. This is why I’d like to see other people doing their own builds and sharing them, because we can give each other ideas. Please consider stopping the constant policing of this thread, because it really inhibits any sort of friendly, or at least professional, conversation.

[EmanueleBernardi]

You are right! That’s not so obvious though.

[Atticus]

I have been paying attention to this issue for a year… There is no doubt that there is still arguing about something less important here.
There is still controversy about why such basic functions have been improved.
Isn’t it easy to give users one more preference option? It can be hidden in deep places without affecting your vision at all (at least not as strong as a lot of face dots crashing my eyes when toggle x ray). It can be disabled if you don’t like it. Everything is just like your usual operation.
It is because it can solve the problem that someone speaks for it
Why not send a vote to right click select

[lowpolybrain]

Another option, from UI perspective, would be using a modifier key, maybe:

When user is holding an Alt key - select by face geometry (so the face gets selected when entire face geometry is inside selection box, for that sweet “Just please let use select the polygons we want.” behavior)

Okay, I know Alt is occupied, but there must be a way to figure something - maybe when the user is starting the selection holding an alt (nothing happens right now if i try to select stuff while holding alt). Maybe the selection box could have a different color or style to indicate we’re gonna select faces, not face dots…

I am used to selection dots, but there are some use cases when it would be much more comfortable to use the old (similar to most other 3d software out there) approach.

[LudvikKoutny]

So after a while, I was forced to use Blender version without a select through patch to test whether some crashes have been fixed in newer release. It took just a few minutes find a scenario where Blender’s xray solution makes selection very slow and inefficient.

- YouTube

First part of the video shows workflow with the select through patch, second part without it.

I just needed to select inner discs of two wheel meshes. With selection occlusion enabled, it was impossible. With xray enabled, it was also impossible because of the density and irregularity of face dots distribution. The face dot based xray simply almost always fails on anything that’s more trivial than a couple of simple cubes

[1D_Inc]

Such a deselect is better be performed in vertices mode.
In case if you want to leave cylinders selected, you better use faces mode, like in the video.
So both possible scenarios are natively supported.

[LudvikKoutny]

No, it’s not. Vertex mode would not make it any better. In fact, it would make it worse.

When deselected in vertex mode, it doesn’t deselect the vertices at the ends of the cylinders, which are then impossible to select by hand efficiently, as they are in very close proximity to other dense vertex geometry.

- YouTube

Please stop spewing BS.

[1D_Inc]

Switch back to faces mode after vertices deselection.
This will complete operation.

[LudvikKoutny]

Oh, so I can replace one step workflow of: deselect the damn thing I want
with a multi-step workflow of:

• Pause and figure out which mesh element selection mode works for the given selection
• Switch to it from the current mesh element mode
• Perform the selection
• Switch back to the mode I want to be in and hope the side-effect of the mode switching will result in desired selection

How awesome…