New modifier panel and list

[HooglyBoogly]

Thanks for the feedback everybody. I know the modifier stack is a precious part of Blender, and to me too, I hope everyone at least starts with that knowledge. There’s a lot, but I’ll try to address everything. I’ll start with the rational for the decisions and then address the specific suggestions.

Apply, Delete, Duplicate Buttons

This was discussed among the UI team on the “user-interface-module” channel of blender.chat, that’s why it might seem like it came out of the blue. I don’t want to pretend that there aren’t tradeoffs here, so I’ll try to list off the benefits and downsides of this change.

Menu Pros

1. There is a nice separation between the settings specific to each modifier and the general ones that apply to all of them.
2. Everything general is in the header, meaning you can quickly access the general options for closed modifiers.
3. It allows hiding the “Duplicate / Copy” and “Apply as Shape Key” buttons which aren’t used quite as often.
4. All the modifier operations are in the same place, and menus are used commonly to show lists of operators.
5. More space for the modifier name in the header.

Cons

1. Although a quick “click and drag down” can be used to delete modifiers (and I’m not sure many people know about this), the delete button is less accessible, both visually and functionally.
2. The apply function is similarly less accessible. Although it is accessible from the header now.

Suggestions
Thanks for the mockups @slowk1d. Having buttons below the subpanels in a footer is interesting, although it isn’t feasible with the panel UI system right now. And I’m really not sure about that giant “Copy” button.

@slowk1d

The fourth mockup represents the modifiers when collapsed.

I like your last mockup. That combined with a menu when the panel is more narrow could be interesting. Although I’m concerned that it would push people to make the properties panel wider than it needs to be.

@d-V-b A custom panel context isn’t currently possible (although it could be made to work). But I’m not sure it solves the problem, because it just hides the operators more. And the dragging with shift or alt is pretty much out of scope for technical reasons here.

@John1

the old layout made it possible to click drag across multiple modifiers and it’s just a single click, not hidden inside a menu where you have to access each one individually.

You weren’t able to apply and delete multiple modifiers with a click and drag before, these buttons are operator buttons that only activate on mouse release. The modes are still toggle-able for multiple modifiers with a click-drag.

@RonanDucluzeau

Seriously, I think that a 2 lines solution for header of modifier panel I proposed would be less problematic than extra menu hiding very often used operators.

This is also not currently supported by the panel system. It’s an interesting solution, although I think it might break down the idea of the “Header” a bit. And all of the contextual displaying of toggles is interesting too, but it’s relatively unprecedented, and I’m not sure where those options would be stored.

Subpanels

I was resistant to the idea of using subpanels for organizing modifier settings at first too, but I came around. I think the improvements to organization, clutter, and clarity are just too good to pass up.

I think the subpanels will help new users a lot because they give every button much more context than it had before. But for experienced users it can hep too. It can make the panels take less space vertically, and also hide options that you never use.

However there are probably some possible improvements. One quick one I would like to make is a shift-click on the header could expand all subpanels too.

Modifier List

I think the modifier list is a great addon, and it makes sense for some use-cases. But there are downsides to this too. For one, you can’t adjust the settings of multiple modifiers at the same time. Personally I’m not a fan of selecting in UILists to display options for different modifiers. It makes more sense for particle settings because they all have the same options, particle nodes will even change that. The visualization of progress from one modifier to the next also isn’t quite so clear. The dragging also doesn’t work in UILists.

Also, I think you might find that having all the modifiers collapsed will give you many benefits of the list. You can ctrl-click on a panel header to collapse all the other panels besides the one you clicked on.

That said, the plan is to keep the list UI possible with an addon, and that the addon can use the new modifier panels or provide custom ones. I will make sure that’s possible on the Blender side. I’m also personally in favor of including such an addon with Blender.

Other

@d-V-b

I think that it should be possible to drag the panel by the name(lable) - double click to edit the label.

Interesting idea. I tried turning emboss off for the modifier’s name at some point but the panel expansion when clicking conflicted with the double click. I expect that problem could be solved though.

@RonanDucluzeau

Except apply operator, all operators in menu has an icon.

This would be a great improvement. A check-mark might work well too.

@slowk1d

I’m not completely against the idea of using sub-panels for highlighting the main modifier’s parameters, but now the problem is there’s some inconsistency between how the modifiers show options:

What you propose does offer more consistency, but it’s a bit more nuanced than that. For example, the bevel “Width Type” option has 4, possibly soon-to-be 5 options, expanding that is not really viable. I would be open to moving the “Affect” option up, but it’s really not used that much as far as I know.

@erickblender

in the multires modifier context subdivide should be more visible.

The idea I had was to add icons for the other two subdivision types so that they take up space. Obviously it will take some time to do that though. What you’re suggesting is a drop-down, which I take it people aren’t the hugest of fans of