Panic button!

:smiley: could do with a Houdini style panic button which is capable of cancelling any incomplete task. Especially important now geometry nodes make it even easier to bring blender to it’s knees with an accidental node placement or value input error.

15 Likes

Or perhaps an option in the preferences that causes Blender to bail out of tree evaluation if it is taking more than X seconds or if it is using more than N gigs of RAM (which then means a notification telling the user to ease up on what he is trying to do).

Or the geometry nodes window could have a button that freezes the tree until further input (so the user can put together a setup that works in the end, yet could cause hard locks if running during the process of creating it).

Yes, perhaps additionally a popup giving the option to end the task without having to do it via windows task manager, to avoiid potentially losing unsaved work.

A cache node to store the state of the geometry at a point in the tree is essential. Houdini has file cache, ram cache, and file node (user can spcecify if it saves to disk automatically when there’s a downstream change, or manually, it can also be set to read rather than write if for example you’re loading external geometry from file in the form of abc, fbx, etc)

I’m wondering how would you press such button as Blender GUI typically gets frozen on performance heavy tasks.

Just a little reminder, feature requests are off-topic on DevTalk as explained in the banner.

[…] For feature requests, please use rightclickselect.com.

1 Like

Ah perhaps I should have just put it under usability or feedback, and not suggested a resolution. Is right click select run by Blender?

It’s one of our community websites. If you intend to work on this yourself and want get feedback on your planned design / how you would implement this, then it’s fine on here. In case this is just a feature you would like to see in Blender then it’s not really suitable for DevTalk.

I think the ‘user’ feedback and usability forum is to highlight user experience issues and narks in relation to the way blender does or doesn’t perform parts of it’s job.

Seems the ‘user feedback’, ‘other topics’ and ‘usability’ forums should be removed if it’s only for ‘devs’ to discuss code.

Being directed to a non blender website if you have idea’s that you don’t intend to code yourself seems a bit harsh :slight_smile:

As far as I’m aware this particular section was originally included for developers to post about their development or design ideas to get feedback from users, not for users posting feature requests or improvement suggestions. Due to unclear communication it was (and seemingly still is) used for the latter purpose. There have been several discussions about this on blender-coders channel, which resulted in the banner being added to remind everybody what DevTalk is intended for.

I can understand the confusion considering it says ‘USER’ feedback. :smiley:

1 Like

Probably would be best to remove the forum altogether. Presumably if users are giving feedback on a particular developer project, then they’ll do so on that projects thread.

There should definitely be a place for users to submit ideas and feature requests that isn’t maintained by a 3rd party. Otherwise:

image

3 Likes

blender.community is not really ‘3d party’ I think?

On topic: I think this topic would be fine here as feedback for geometry nodes. I’ve locked up blender quite hard using GN in the last couple of weeks. Some way to prevent that would be very nice indeed.

2 Likes

Feedback is not the same as requests. :slightly_smiling_face: The User Feedback section is there to provide a channel for users to respond to the functioning of existing tools in Blender. In that regard, your request is balancing on the edge of a new feature request and user feedback. :slightly_smiling_face:

I suppose everything is ‘existing tools’ in blender, I think the issue was that I suggested a resolution rather than just highlighting a problem, and it was general enough of a problem for it to be applicable to all areas of Blender, rather than a small currently being worked on developer project to which this forum is intended (I think). I still think people would give feedback on the actual developers thread on here or more likely on the differential, so having a user feedback forum that’s only intended for that seems odd.

I mean perhaps it’s not really a Blender problem if a user can lock it up and require task manager reboot, it is user error after all.

Anyway, I’ve thrown it into the dark abyss never to be seen again that is right click select :smiley:

1 Like

Funny topic, but I think it’s on point, and I see it more as user feedback on existing tools.

There should be a logical way to stop the current calculation as there is a way to stop a current render, perhaps by hitting escape. Otherwise blender crashes.

3 Likes

I agree. Don’t know if it’s technically possible though, or if it would require a radical rewrite in the core regions.

Technically speaking anything’s possible :laughing:

But since blender works is a Blender unique way ie. Blender being blender, i’m certain(i could be wrong duh) it would require a core rewrite, when you run simulations (like heavy ones with lots of calculations, softbody etc.) you have to wait until a calculation cycle finishes (one frame) to be able to cancel the whole operation, the GUI is frozen and there is 0 responsiveness if you want to cancel it, you kinda have to hold the ESC button and wait for the whole 1 frame cycle to complete in the hopes that you didnt put the simulation on a road of 1 hour 1 frame calculation.

Hudni is great for that, regardless what’s being calculated hitting ESC will break all actions and the GUI is responsive through the whole process.

2 Likes

I have forwarded your application as a new Blender developer to the Blender staff. They were waiting for you for years! :wink:

4 Likes