dan2 already replied that having all tools in one mode will result in a crowded UI.
In recent Blender’s history, amount of sculpt tools tripled.
There are 12 sculpt tools in sculpt-dev branch, waiting to be added to sculpt mode.
Current experiments about painting in sculpt mode, in this branch or in master, are only exposing 4 tools : a Paint brush, a Smear brush, Color Filters and Mask by color.
Proposal is adding 7 tools dedicated to painting.
So, compared to current master’s sculpt mode, only using one mode for sculpt&paint would correspond to 51+12+7 = 70 tools in toolbar. That is a crowded toolbar.
In Mode Options tab, in properties, panels about painting slots, masking and painting options will have to be added to Remesh , Symmetry, Sculpt Options panels. That is a crowded Properties tab.
Currently, there is no brush able to sculpt and paint at same time.
There is no benefit to keep tools into same mode. It would not be a lost of time to switch to another mode.
It is better to use one key press to limit UI to paint tools well organized, than to have to scroll toolbar, to have to click to reveal a paint tool in a group or to have to use a shortcut made of a combo of 3 keys to call a tool because there is not enough keys in keyboard for the amount of tools.
It is a long term target to allow users to create their custom mode where they choose what tool to keep or not.
But for the moment, it should be seen as a step into good direction to merge two existing paint modes into a unique one.
If you paint something, that will correspond to an attribute or an image datablock.
You will be reminded to save image before quitting like, now.
Or it will be automatically saved unless you deleted attribute data.
Yes. Image Texture node and Attribute node are already a reality in shading nodes.
They are requiring that user is indicating an Image Datablock or an Attribute from attributes list that are existing before node creation and after node removal.
Paint mode proposal or layered textures design are not modifying that part.
Sorry, I still don’t understand - isn’t “Face Corner” what was used in previous Blender versions when creating a vertex color layer? Shouldn’t be this the default value then?
I really think that people will be confused by the new settings (I bet no artist knows what Byte Color / Face Corner means), so they will just confirm the defaults … and then will find out they can’t vertex paint as they are used to.
Thanks for changing the default color to white, I just read your suggestion in blender.chat
Very excited about the Paint Mode, it is exactly what I need! Can’t wait to test some first versions
Thank you for all your work.
If we should merge modes into one shouldn’t be part of the discussion. This is really going off topic. There is no way we can have all painting and sculpting workflows unified into one mode. This is just adding a lot of work for very questionable benefit.
The only 2 negatives about multiple modes for me are #1 it can take a long time to switch into/out of sculpt mode and #2 the keyboard shortcut customization is a bit overwhelming (along with some inconsistencies that seem like oversights instead of intentional).
Performance improvements and UI improvements to the keymap editor would solve those problems for me.
As soon as I learned I could enable drag to open pie menus my life was changed, its so natural and fast I dont have to think to switch modes, I just find myself in the mode I need, not remembering how I got there because I can switch so fast, like its burned into my muscle memory.
with a high poly object there is nothing fast about switching to sculpt/edit/object mode for me. It has nothing to do with the menus or shortcuts for switching modes
I know the focus now is on the sculpt/paint workflow, but I wonder if we will be able to use the same quick masks, face sets and so for on weight paint mode? Masking out some parts of the mesh would really help in that process… So my question would be, how far from each other is every mode? And if possible please combine them.
Great proposals, can’t wait to play with them
I am not saying that modes should not grow and handle more tools.
I am saying that current solutions are not pertinent to handle that.
The toolbar is not made to handle an hundred of tools.
That is already not great for modes where a dozen of tools are hidden in a group of tools or out of frame of editor.
Keymap is structured per workspace, per editor, per mode + per active tool.
If you increase amount of tools, you increase keymap conflicts probability and need to complicate shortcuts (amount of keys available on keyboard is not increasing).
That has nothing to do with pertinence to increase amount of tools.
That is just a logical consequence.
More tools for same space.
Logical consequence of that is hiding a part of them, having them out of sight.
UX consequence is a lack of direct access to tool. That is a lack of speed.
Way to avoid that is to let user define set of tools he uses to show them, and ignore the ones he don’t use by hiding them.
But if mode is only made of essential tools to workflow, way to solve that is to let user define several sets of tools. What is equivalent to let user define several custom modes.
Nobody will accept that all modes are fused into one without having presets of custom sub-modes.
That is not the subject of discussion.
But if one day, we have entire freedom to decide to create custom modes made of any set of tools, current modes will probably be used as default presets.
That is only true if your mesh is dense.
Paint mode should have speed improved to level of sculpt mode by reusing work done in sculpt mode.
So, I hope that switch between Paint and Sculpt mode will be fluent.
But I understand your concern.
Pablo destroyed coherence of sculpt mode keymap by introducing new tools and new workflow.
Sculpt mode keymap has to be revamped.
But that is a lot easier to solve, if you don’t add difficulty to find 20 supplementary shortcuts to support painting features.
Quick question - is multi object painting something that’s being considered? (select a bunch of objects with different UVs and painting across them when adding dirt splatter or stuff like that)
That would come after but is a good suggestion. Since paint mode will be based on sculpt mode it’s very much tied to the proposal of adding multi-object sculpt mode.
An alternative feature that got added for Blender 2.93 is to switch objects instantly via the “Transfer Mode” operator with the shortcut Alt Q. It’s not the same but better than switching to object mode first.
Having a quick way if switching objects is handy as well. I’m actually trying that by pressing ‘d’ in every release (I think that was the initial key binding in some sculpt dev branch ages ago) and never realized it made it’s way into master.
Thanks for bringing it up, I would have missed it for sure.
Also, since masks were brought up, auto masking modes could use a facelift for texture painting (just some that come to mind, I’m sure others have good ideas to add as well):
Auto masking based on UV Shell might be a good addition,
That grow operator (not sure what to call it, the one that comes up when pressing “shift-w”) could get some options to be based on topo continuity a bit like zbrush transpose, so that one is able to mask out lets say an arm/leg/tail/finger/tentacle starting from any poly ring. Currently doing that on long cylindrical geos is a bit fiddly especially if one needs to be exact.
To auto mask by UV shells you could create face sets based on UV seams.
The “expand” operator can use some updates yes. For now try to expand based on mesh boundaries. This follows the topology very precisely. Even edges next to hidden faces count as boundaries.
A bit of polishing by adding additional operations that could be handy.
The facegroup workaround can work if someone would want to get rid of their existing facegroups which is not always the case. Sometimes it’s preferable to just switch automasking on and off.
Again, this would mean modifying face sets. For character workflows it’s super handy to have a given set of face sets, but when sculpting or texture painting one might need to isolate something quickly just to make a single stroke.
It’s nothing major and no deal breakers either, just things that could be improved cause they might be used more often once paint mode gets in.
