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None of those graph diagram one make any sense to me for this purpose. I like that two-types-of-brushes-in-a-cyclical-shape one, I think it does a decent job getting the point across. Aside from that, the only thing that really came to my mind for iconography for this purpose is just the asterisk (*) because it is a catch-all in many computing contexts, and activating that icon makes it “apply everywhere”.
No matter how many times I think about this it makes no sense. Even if there was a pictogram that was universally known to indicate “Apply to All” it would still be clumsy there on the end. Is there some way to remove that button completely and do it differently, like having “selected” and “all” buttons above it?
3 Likes
The current icon is something I understood right away when I first saw it, because to me it doesn’t register mental as “The World.” The line through it says it is a globe, and therefor indicates that clicking on it will make the changes global. At least that is how it is in my mind.
None of the proposed shared data pictograms make any sense to me, but the ‘many brushes’ one does.
I think one with 3 brushes / “many brushes” is best one, rest are too abstract.
1 Like
Hej, I constantly fail to choose the right tool, when it is about using/distinguishing fill and scrape.
These icons aren’t exactly the same, but both look way too similar to me. And what makes it even worse for me is that if I look at them closer the fill icon reminds me on scratches of a cats claws, but it isn’t scrape and the other one looks much more like filling. It is af if they were flipped. Perhaps I am the only one who has problems with these, but I’d be very happy if you could have a look at these and try to tweak them.
I didn’t design them. Those Toolbar icons are completely different beasts, made entirely in Blender. @billrey - could You share a link to the source file with the Toolbar icons?
Oh sorry, I assumed you were involved.
@Debuk https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/124614/how-to-edit-2-8-ui-icons/124627#124627 https://developer.blender.org/T64177
Found some time to make these. I designed them as alternatives for scrape and fill.
@ankitm @billrey: I am experiencing some problems with new meshes in the blend file. Using the shipped materials the mesh display turns black in my case. I guess I am doing something wrong. Could need some advice here.
Anyhow these are my two proposals for replacing the scrape and the fill tool icons. I designed them to be easier to read. They are less similar to other icons and reflect typical results you get by these tools.
I did them because in daily usage I found they the can easily be confused with each other as described here:
11 Likes
You must add a Vertex Color layer to make the meshes visible, they must be parented to the correct icon object, and that object must be in the ‘export’ Collection.
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I kinda like these icons better. The current icons kinda shows “Scrape/Peaks” and “Fill/Deepen” Yours only shows just “Scrape” and “Fill”.
Not sure if you now like the new or old ones more. But yes I tried to limit visuals to just that. I also simply don’t know if the current ones are meant to communicate other functionality, but most icons in the toolbar don’t, so I guess not.
The inverted function is also customizable in some tools (and thats true for both tools edited here) and it’s enough if an icon communicates the main feature of a brush as its mainly about find a tool without much thought. In almost every case the invert function is aiming to offer the exact opposite behaviour. For me personally it would be helpful to swap them. 
oooh, these are purty and very clear!
These icons indeed seem better. I can either set them up in the icons blend file, or you are welcome to submit an updated blend. Up to you.
Hi William,
Didn’t make a real checkout of the repo. Just exported the single file. So I simply uploaded it to pasteall.
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52874
The icons are already in the icon_geom.blend For now I put the new ones next to the old ones with a name addition (.rework) Perhaps you want the old ones archived. I put them in the sculpt collection and export collection but wasn’t sure to what you wanted to have it parented.
So please have a look at it before you start generating icons.
Ok, I will update them and clean up the file.
@billrey: Thank you!
The similarity between nudge and rotate is also quite high and as I was motivated to tweak some more I reworked these two icons. as they could also be easier to distinguish.
I made the shapes easier to read on small scale and put it all more into perspective as the
other icons.
8 Likes
The only thing with these is I fear they are too detailed. Try to scale them down to make sure they are still readable.