Multi Monitor - Multi Window - Papercuts

When was the last time you tried, and what changes are you needing specifically? I think fixed most windows-related multi-monitor issues with a couple small exceptions.

Hi.

I still have the same usability issue in 2.92. I use 2 or 3 monitors in same way as my previous post and I would like in Windows to be able to easily switch between 2 separate Blender sessions. Now I have to open all windows in the preferred Blender session rather than just one ALT-TAB switch between Blenders to have all windows related to that session opened. This problem must be for everyone who are working in large scenes or otherwise need 2 or more Blenders open with multiple monitors. For single monitor setups there is no issue as there is only one Blender window per session.

Attached image is an example showing 2 Blenders open and to see how many different windows there are in my current 3 monitor setup. I have one Blender sub window for each screen which is total of 6 windows for those 2 Blender sessions. I have pointed out my main Blender windows that I would like to switch and open automatically all secondary windows to other monitors in that Blender session.

I would image most usual case is 2 monitors, so there is slightly less switching than in my example. But it is hard to know which Blender window is for which scene and needs manually activate all windows.

1 Like

Please try in a newer version of Blender - lots of changes were done for version 2.93. And also describe a bit better what you are trying to achieve, what you see, and what you want to see.

I can have three instances of Blender on each of my three monitors, with each of those having child windows. I minimize any main window and all the child windows minimize with it at the same time. Restore the main and they all come back at once. They seem to be shown and work in a logical way on the taskbar and when I Alt-Tab they behave as I would expect - the same as other applications.

Yours seem to work like I’d expect. In my setups (workstation and laptop) I have to minimize each Blender child window individually and also restore all individually from taskbar if minimized. I believe taskbar would restore all Blender windows of specific instance then Alt-Tab would work also.

For me all Blender windows are collected in Windows taskbar under one Blender icon that shows all child windows of all Blender instances. I should post a screenshot, but using mobile now so can’t do it at the moment. I don’t know if this could be solved by some specific Windows setting if yours works, but I didn’t find out any solution before.

Windows version is 10.0.19042 which should be recent.

Note that my comment originally (for about 5 minutes) said “of Windows” but then I corrected it to properly say “of Blender”.

Your complaint says that you “still have the same usability issue in 2.92” so I am asking you to try with version 2.93 or 3.0

3 Likes

Got it. I’ll try more recent Blender version.

I hadnt tried 2.93 beta yet but I downloaded it to try it out and it does bring all “sub-windows” to the front when its active which is great!
However it doesnt allow me to effectively use a floating outliner in the way I had hoped.
This video: https://streamable.com/7isso0 shows the issue I’m having with a clip from Modo to show how I wish it worked.

1 Like

That looks to be fairly normal Windows behaviour of only sending input messages to the currently active window. You can make it work as you want to, and how Linux works, by enabling “activate windows on mouse hover” in your control panel - I think an accessibility option.

2 Likes

I confirm that 2.93 beta works as I’d expect! Thanks @Harleya , my long time suffering will end once the release version is ready. :smiley:

2 Likes

Oooooh… I just tried this in 3.0 Alpha. Thank you so much! :smiley:

2 Likes

There are a couple known “todos” but a quick summary of the changes.

Temporary windows will no longer steal any other window. It used to be that you could create a render and it would go into the space formerly occupied by Properties, for example.

On Windows all new windows are created with parenting specified, and so will remain on top of parent, except for Window / “New Main Window” which is intended to host other windows. For example, right-click on any header and select “Duplicate Area into New Window” to create a floating on-top window. But this does mean we have to minimize to get them out of the way.

Window / “New Window” no longer creates a complex layout, but opens a window with a single editor (your largest at the time). “New Main Window” still creates a complex layout.

You can minimize and maximize all the windows individually, or you can minimize everything all at once by doing so to the main window. They should be all grouped together on your taskbar, unless you have turned that off in Windows control panel.

When using multiple monitors all windows should be created / saved / restored where you expect them to. So you can save a blend while you have multiple windows all over and they will be there when you open it again. With the restriction that it won’t allow a saved window to cross a monitor boundary - it will keep each within a monitor.

One known issue and “to do” is that this multi-monitor window placement works great if you have your monitors arranged horizontally. But they might not be placed correctly if you have any monitor above another. There’s a patch for this.

Another very small issue is that if have multiple monitors and they have varying OS scale, some windows could be placed slightly out from perfect by the difference in the size of the window title and borders. So they might move by a pixel horizontally or 15 pixels vertically if on a monitor that has higher zoom than your main monitor. This can be hard to notice, but there is a patch for this too.

There were lots of other changes, but I can’t remember them all right now.

5 Likes

I downloaded the 3.0 Alpha and its definitely better! I just wish I could “Show Active” in a separated Outliner window by just hovering over it and clicking the hotkey. Its a lot of extra clicking as I have to make sure to only click the top bar of the separated Outliner else I lose the selection and then have to click the top bar of the main window to go back without losing the selection.

You wrote in developer.blender.com thread that it might be an OS limitation but since it does work in Modo (23 sec in) and Maya I dont see why it wouldnt work in Blender. Other programs like Spotify, Chrome and Windows Explorer allow scrolling with by hovering the mouse over them while inactive.

Patches are always welcome…

What do you mean by “Patches are always welcome…”?
I don’t mean to be rude or downplay the effort being put into this, I definitely appreciate the work being done! I just hope that the last few problems can be ironed out to make Blender the best it can be

Nothing negative. This site is primarily for developers and so I assumed that your “I dont see why it wouldnt work in Blender” indicated that you had some implementation-level knowledge of the subject.

Ah I see, unfortunately I’m just your average pleb user with an opinion :smiley:

No worries. It would actually be fairly difficult to explain to someone already familiar with the internals of Blender and Windows why keypresses for an inactive window are not processed. It isn’t just that the OS only allows one text input caret and only posts keyboard entry to a single window queue. It is also that Blender assumes a non-overlapping system and also only processes keyboard events for the active window.

But it is also a design choice and changing it can have a lot of unintended behavior. Imagine having a single blender window that takes up half your monitor. Highlight an object, then move your mouse out of the blender window. You would expect that pressing “del” would delete the object even though the mouse is not over that area. This is expected because that is the active window. Having it behave differently because the mouse is over some other inactive window is not a change that can be taken lightly.

I agree that its a design decision as well but thats how the current UV editing works, you can have a selection and based on where the cursor is it will run “focus selection” in that viewport. So from my perspective it would be intuitive that a separated outliner would work the same.