I fullky disagree with the “Collections / Layers” being the worst of all programs.
On the contrary, I’ve worked for many times with 3dsMax and Maya, and in both, the layer system is vastly inferior, the Collection paradigm is way more powerful, it’s not ONLY a layer system, but a scene organization system, a layer rendering organization system and in the future (probably near future) an override organizacion system for many parts of the scene.
You have to take into account that an object can be in multiple layers at the same time, somthing very useful for scene organization, also for render layers management, and there are more things to come to the Collection system.
In the end, I totally disagree with that assumption, Collection / Layers in Blender is IMHO the best layering system I’ve experienced, far superior to the Maya Layering system or the Max Layer (which BTW come from Autocad Layer system, which is horrible in all it’s aspects).
You can already compile an Android version of Blender, with quite a lot of adaptation work, but it’s totally possible and it was done in the past.
But the UI/UX paradigm in a small screen and device like a phone or an android tablet is so different that you would have to rework how everything in Blender works, IMHO it’s a loss of development time not justified at all.
currently it needs to be developed more as it is inefficient and when it will be good enough then i may say that it has something to hold till that the layer system just isn’t enough
I don’t agree, BUT… that does not mean that it may have caveats or things to improve, however what is needed for that is a document very well detailed about the problems that you (or other users) seem to see
Agree areas are awesome but not really well managed because of the unfinished workspaces feature.
The main bad point with workspaces is that it don’t sync the 3D Viewport accross workspaces… So when you switch to a different workspace ( say the UV editor) you have to scroll and move a lot the scene to continue the work, also you loose the shading mode you were focus on that is not practical when you switch for instance to the material editor…
I think that with this point solved it should be a lot better so we can imagine having different workspaces to quickly jump accross different areas or having the right tab of the properties editor under the hand…
I am talking about the areas, the workspaces have certain shortcomings. But blender areas were useful before the current workspaces existed (which exist since 2.8).
Sometimes it may seem useful, but the interesting thing is that the viewports are not synchronized because most of the time they are used to change what you are working on.
thank you for a working visual it will help to improve the idea a lot better, seems to be good but we should have both the things as some users might want to stay in the old layouts and a few who are core artist will do much of modeling so they should have a quick access to the places they want as they will always be staying away from just making it look good by the renders so they may need my drop down idea.
i will be improving my idea in the coming days
This is an excellent idea , it gives more customisability to the blender workflow (which is extremely inflexible in certain area’s), thank you for making a visual demo.
Blenders “lego Blocks” workspace splitting can be extremely frustrating to work with and annoying, turning them off or not using them forces you to learn shortcuts through the sheer lack of user accessibility.
I really hate it when a program forces me to learn something i dislike regardless if the process is more efficient, even if it’s unpleasant to use i still have to because thats how it was ment to be deal with it, at that point it feels like the program does not take into account my needs or how i work that it makes the whole process frustrating.
It is my opinion that this proposal should and could be an alternative “checkbox” in the menu that allows you to contract the properties menu into a collapsed state by clicking the same button again from within the viewport.
The N-panel in general is just terrible, why must i always use a shortcut to collapse it ? thats the most terrible part of the the N-panel next to the terrible stacking of the addons and tools in it.
I would propose that the N-Panel also gets a dedicated small button for itself, so that you can at least collapse/uncollapse it with a push of a button.
I want blender to respect my wish to not use shortcuts for everything when i just want to use my mouse; thank you very much.
Typically, you would not need to have one luxurious screen space and multiple popup side panels. The most typical scenario is that you would have:
3 splits of the viewport (eg: 1 silhouette, 1 wireframe, one textured)
one outliner permanently in sync on what you select, perhaps second split outliner with only the big picture of all collections
why not throw the properties as well, nothing to loose
In one simple word: CHAOS
So is impossible to simplify things once you try to achieve maximum efficiency. You end up customizing everything anyway.
However in your proposal, I can take only the meaning of popup windows or panels. As for example adding animation drivers from 2.8+ versions is a dream, while back before in 2.7- versions you would had to switch to the animation panel.
Well no one is saying that we will remove anything it will be something which is to be added as basic if someone wants the original one he can get that even.
Quick access of popup windows are more desirable for me cause i really hate to constantly split the window only to merge them later after i’m done, i also dislike the workspace tabs and i dont know why it just feels too flow breaking for me.
Feedback:
Windows like the outliner, n-panel and properties should stay on the right side as that is the default everyone is used to in the 2.8xx ui design,
uv, shader window etc. are practical if their at the bottom as they are in the demo.
Heres a customisability breakdown for the button location:
There could be “invisible” shelves that exist on the borders of the viewport that contain the buttons for the popup windows, you can split these shelves if for instance you want one bottom that is on the top right and some other button at the bottom right, that way you have a customisable way where everyone can place these buttons in a place that feels most comfortable to an individual.
Basic function would also be that a window pops up from the direction of the placed button.
If by any chance you want more than one editor type window open at the same time, you could “pin it” or make it automatically when 2 or more windows are opened, they would get joined seamlessly.
Also have an option to only have one open popup at the same time for people who only want one, this could also have the function where all the windows would popup from the same place where all the window buttons are on one shelf
Overall, i love the minimalist approach of this idea where you can easly access any function window with ease without splitting your viewport or turning your second split viewport into a different one.
Not so bad but I’m pretty sure you will have regrets later because of overlapping windows…They are everywhere! Also sometimes you would want to keep an eye on a panel or a properties or the OUTLINER and if it auto-close you will have to click and click again each time you want to access. Not a good solution imo.
Maybe with buttons that open/close an area instead of popups could be interesting but actually it’s a no go for me
I didnt like it. I love blender because of its non-popup interface. For example, I literally hate other softwares with many windows that pop up and put the main main viewport. I think blender has the best windows and way of working. I really dont like overllapping windows and softwares using addons that cause many overlapping windows for renderers or other plugins. Blender is good because their addons dont create new window. they put it on properties or somewhere. So blender is great.
