Yes, I agree. But the issue I have with the approach is that both Blender’s current keymap as well as the proposed Industry Standard Keymap are lacking in terms of ergonomics, especially with modeling tools. There is a certain basic set of modeling tools, or tools in general, which should be easily accessible all the time, such as extrude, inset, loopcut and bevel.
In both current Blender’s keymap as well as the proposed Industry standard one, for example shortcut for Inset is set to I key, which is quite inconvenient to reach, and at the same time, there’s quite a few unoccupied keys much easier to reach.
This was a practical example of a broader issue, which is that both “industry standard” hybrid keymap, and Blender 2.7 style keymap are keymaps which fail at ergonomics. Yet there is no third keymap planned. None of these two planned keymaps address the issue of hand gymnastics currently required in Blender to do even the most basic of things
EDIT:
I’ve made a graphical example of how I think the keymap creation should be approached, in all modes and editors. Basically, the more frequently the feature is used, the easier it should be to reach
Maybe this would be a good use case for Campbell’s new and improved keymap options, a quick toggle between QWER invoking the old direct use operators or the new active tools
Users have always bet on a unique keymap with options, we have even openly defended the use of WER (we only lost E key actually). Because as many of us have already said, if the Maya/max keymap has not worked, a keymap that is a remix of max, maya, cinema and houdini will not work better.
That’s not true, the problem was not moving between editing modes using numbers, the problem is that it eliminated showing or hiding collections (that use numbers) which is something that is used thousands of times a day, to exchange editing modes, which is used very few times every day and 99% of the time is to move between object mode and edit/pose mode. And for a secondary function 10 main keys of the keyboard that made a primary function are lost.
The solution that has been discussed several times
Tab - Edit Mode/last mode
Tab+drag - Show list of modes.
It is much more useful, functional and easy to understand.
In the moment that users know that hotkey and hotkey+drag are different things he will know to avoid problem. Same happens in other softwares. Obviusly old users will need more time to learn new way, but I use it after 10 years of using blender and I only needed one hour to use it without problems.
Prone to error is the facedots off by default, where is hard to know what are you editing. Or the new pie menus, that are really hard to read and you can’t change by old menus with a option.
As has been mentioned already, there is a way to use the keyboard to switch tools.
Use the key-map preference for space-bar to switch tools.
Then you can use the Spacebar as a tool modifier: Space-G for grab, Space-R for rotate, Space-K for knife… etc. Pressing space isn’t any harder then Shift or Control, so this can be done fairly quickly.
Interested in feedback, do people who like to switch tools via key bindings find this handy?
I think its weak we don’t support convenient key-bindings to switch tools by default, but artists in the studio preferred using space for animation, so we went with that.
This was in our daily builds for a while (perhaps a week or so?), we had some bug reports from users wondering why switching to editmode had become slow - we all agreed it added a delay which wasn’t nice as a default.
Once you know to expect this it’s OK (even handy), but all things considered I wouldn’t push for it by default.
as far as i tested blender is fast only in using hotkeys the rest parts like switching between modes,tools…etc is completely different from other programs and it’s slow…so all those claiming it’s faster are wrong,trying to remember hundreds of hotkeys along using other apps is not fun, that’s why i think going with pie-menus for modes was a great choice…and people shouldn’t forget that most devices used today are not just keyboard and mouse but a bigger range.
@ideasman42 Currently there’s no way to add “number of cuts” interactively with the scroll wheel when using the loop cut active tool, like how it works when we hit ctrl + r.
So it would be possible to add a shortcut like Ctrl + scroll wheel for that? It would be really handy.
I think that it’s because in the studio you have more animators than modelers.
But in general I think that new keymap and toolbar need a polish work. Especially the select and transforms tools need to use pasive tools concept.
The toolbar is hard to understand, you are changing all the blender menus to pie-menus, without easy option to revert this, but then the new toolbar is a classic menu with 15 elements.
I don’t understand that, if you don’t use keyboard (because you don’t want to remember the hotkeys or you are using a tablet PC). What is the use of changing the shortcuts to have piemenus (that you must learn each shortcut and each piemenu, double work) or active tools, if you also do not use the shortcuts?
If you’re not going to use a keyboard, it won’t do much good to change the hotkeys.
What solutions give Maya/Modo/Max/Cinema4D to work without a keyboard? Because better solution than blender 2.79, with all the options at hand of a tablet with T-shelf… I don’t see.
it is terribly annoying that the panel appears with the whole list of tools while you are selecting a tool through shortcut.
but you imagine this situation in 7-8 hours of continuous modeling with this panel that will continuously flicker in front of the eyes?
do you want to become epileptic ???
came on guys, do miracles and then lose in these obviousness?
I have nothing against the combination of two shortcuts to activate the new tools, but the fact that I constantly see the list of tools as a popup I find it unnerving, especially because they are fast tools and distract me from work …just to give a somewhat comic example … of the thing
the point is not to over-load the keyboard, provide the tool and let the users decide which shortcuts are useful, not every single option needs a damn hotkey which might conflict with what user need and he can’t change it because it will break other parts,the pie menus/menus are useful to provide multiple options which reduce clicks immensely, of course not everything should have pie menus…other apps give users minimal keymap so he/she can add what fits his work best and not force them to use what ships with the software also (like in maya) easy way to stack up (tools/commands…etc) in the shelf panel, removing even the need of assigning hotkeys for them this is 10x faster.
SO why they are not?
I always wonder why D doesn’t activate the annotation tool instead of the annotation modal.
billrey, sorry for rejecting most of your ideas but there’s a lot of biased changes in blender I would like to not have happened, please don’t target blender to an audience, blender is supposed to be a democratic tool.
I would like to re-ask a few quality of life reversions to blender.
Manipuators shouldnt be tools, they are in the first layer of interaction, almost like the hand of the modeler. It should be active along with any other tool.
Bring back number row brushes shortcuts. Its almost impossible to setup it correctly with the keymap editor and the numbers are the easiest way to reach brushes.
as a final consideration.
Right keymap is faster, evey experienced blender user can guarantee that. so why force newbies to use Left? I say force but I mean “not letting know”, no one likes to mess the defaults, we assume the default is better, a configuration wizard is not enough, everyone does Next>Next>Next>Done without even looking, there should be preferentially something like a popup “You must choose the selection mode before continue” therefore, giving the newbie the awareness of the Right click mode, letting a chance for a conscient choice…
I reasoned on the spacebar use as a switch between select mode and modal tools and it would not be so bad if you did not appear every time the popup, but only act as a switch …
and even the combination of shortcuts to navigate between the various transformation tools is not bad …
instead
I’m not convinced by the use of the new modeling tools with the combination of shortcuts that use the spacebar
I do not know…
I think we should make a better merging between the classic method and the new tools,
two totally different and totally independent modes confuse …
at the base of all there should be the fact that the old users, knowing the philosophy of operation of blender, find natural and intuitive some functions (the combo shortcuts … s + x ,r - z, etc…) also for the new tools…
for the new users, once the problems of the incongruities with the left click select are solved, and with the industy standard shortcuts, they will not have too many problems to adapt to the philosophy of using the shortcuts combo in the tools … actually, I have seen videos in around new users come from other software who discovered the combo keys and found them powerfull … as it really is.
Yeah, I know, but unfortunately this is a little slow. We need direct shortcuts to the active tools.
Coming from other apps, I actually don’t want to deal with the modal tools at all, that’s why I wish we had a preference to turn them off, so we could use the active tools with the usual shortcuts.
I don’t think the option is bad, but I’ve never understood why people who know how modal tools work prefer active tools.
The biggest problem of the modal tools is to know the hotkey, once known they work better than the active tools. The active tools are much more uncomfortable except when you use the same tool several times at once. That’s the weirdest thing. The active tools force you to leave the mouse pressed constantly to make the transformation, which tires enormously in the forearm after 8 hours working. On the other hand, manners only need one click to confirm, and not have constantly pressed any button, which makes it much more comfortable to use the keyboard for the rest of actions.
