— Preparing next post. Is it clean enough? :
Well, it seems, it is hard to explain the real need of QCD system without proper workflow example,
because it’s reason is related to UMC (User’s Memory Consumption) reducing, and does not exist out of context.
So, as it was told in Layers Maniphest, there are workflows, that requires QCD on top of collections more, than collections itself.
Let’s look at an average case, because simple ones have nothing to do with the topic.
Let’s look at the general process of building a scene using the example of historical restoration, which, as any other,
consists of two stages
- Assets modeling
- Assembling and setting up the scene
An example of historical restoration is interesting because of its unusual attitude to references.
There are several groups of references quality, such as drawings and photoes.
- The advantage of photography is in accuracy, but they cannot contain restoration elements, since they are photofixation, in addition, good ortho photographs of destroyed objects are a rarity.
- The advantage of drawings is flexibility, but they are subject to inaccuracies.
As a result, the photos do not coincide with the drawings, and we are forced to use both types of sources together, comparing them during process.
This means that we must place all kinds of references on the model in order to be able to make it, in the end we get the following picture:
But here is an obvious problem - you know, it’s kind a mess)
Basically, to even start to make such a model you need such abitities:
- To view model with references
- To view model without references
- To view photo references separately from drawing references
- To view different stages of model with/without refrences
- To view/hide temporal/helper objects with/without references
- Do the same for different views and parts
- To view all above with/without surrounding objects, like walls, to make sure that everything at the end fits everything + with/without global references.
- To control available slots
- To check your current visibility state of all that things above as fast as possible in order to survive.
And all this for only one element out of thousands!
So, making such kind of objects does not even need all that infinite amount of collections, it requires the fastest way of management of several numeric slots.
Actually, management of combinations of them!
Well
The QCD system solves that just perfectly - it allows to control huge amount of visibility combinations of slots at a glance!
So, what we have got for now:
_________A
Without QCD widget, managing all this things in outliner or that new “somewhere hidden or closing third of the screen” widget, it is impossible to finish the work without reading them in an amount the size of Tolstoy’s “War and peace”.
The work turns into a constant game of “find 20 differences from previous state you don’t see”.
Look how precisely you define the difference between this states because of human’s perception ability called subitizing:
This way abscence of QCD widget makes regular work incredibly hard.
_________B
Without numeric acces there is no way to control all that states at all!
(it was a VERY STRANGE proposal from devs to remove numeric keys assignment. Also it is already removed from edit mode, so now we have to quit it any time we need to manage visibility.)
_________C
As long as sending to slot number is not equal to invoke slot number (M5 issue), everything you sending with M5 shortcut goes to slot you can never guess because of those combinations mechanism!
Everything sent with the M5 is lost in the space-time combination paradigm!
Every management solution that was made in 2.8 makes you work with the only possible way - imperatively read and remember every time again and again,
raising levels of UMC to unprecedented heights.
read and remember to get involved to the scene
read and remember to send objects
read and remember to set states every time you trying to do so
read and remember to compare states
But human’s temporary memory is a very fragile thing - it’s hard to keep in mind even a couple of phone numbers for most people on earth.
So, even after a single day of such unnecessary reading and remembering and forgetting, human’s brain starts melting.
In such production like historic restoration, or architectural modeling, or gamedev asset making,
people need to make such operations with a maximum speed of their perception, to make thousands temporal setups and, probably billions comparisons.
At the moment you can forget about changing state 20 times per minute, it will damage your health.
That’s the cost of using systems with high UMC level.
And that’s needed to be fixed.