[Bf-committers] Recent features UI feedback/review
Matt Ebb
matt at mke3.net
Mon Sep 25 04:15:53 CEST 2006
Hi all,
I've been out of the loop a little bit lately, had no internet for a
few weeks after moving and just recently was confined to bed for the
last week with a virus :( Anyway, I've done some experimenting with
the cool new stuff that's been added recently, and have a few
comments to make on my experiences with them. I hope these issues can
be rectified!
3D texture painting
------------------
I'd read about this on the mailing lists in internet cafes and was
really excited to give this a try, but I was remarkably disappointed
once I actually updated and compiled CVS and give it a try. I was
really looking forward to giving it a try, since the texture paint
mode has been largely useless since it was implemented due to it's
horrible speed, which I'm sure you all know. I was so sad when I
tried out the new texture paint and found it to be not really much
better, speed-wise, than before. I thought it was just my crappy
hardware until the topic came up in IRC, when someone mentioned that
I had to turn off MipMaps in user preferences. Huh?? I tried it, and
lo and behold, texture paint was wonderfully fast, and I love it!
It's an enormous improvement over before, and I'm sure I'll be using
it more and more.
Now had I not been in the #blender*coders* IRC channel talking about
this I would never have known, and just given up, which is a real
shame, and ridiculous for such an important feature. Something so
fundamental should not require obscure options to be set that
seemingly bear no relationship whatsoever, that an average user would
never figure out on his own. Most artists would barely know (or care)
what mipmaps are, let alone what impact they would have on texture
painting.
MipMaps should just be overridden to be off when in 3D Texture Paint
mode. For something as basic as this, it should Just Work.
Tangent Space normal mapping
-----------------------------
There are problems with the 'NMap TS' button (of which the TS only
shows up on nothing less than an enormous buttons window) Firstly,
the name is very un-descriptive. It's also for choosing whether the
map represents normals in tangent space or object space, so it should
be a set of two buttons representing the choice between two options,
not an on/off toggle.
Whether the normal map represents normals in tangent space or object
space (or some other space?) is part of the 'encoding' of the colour
representation on the image - it's something that's specific to a
particular image, not to the entire material. The button is in the
wrong place - it should *not* be at the material level, and should be
in the texture buttons with the other 'normal map' toggle that is to
do with the same concept: what those coloured pixels in the image
actually mean. Other controls, such as a menu for choosing what
'style' of normal map it is, i.e. the variations in what colours/
mappings different apps produce, can live here too. It doesn't belong
at the material level, and certainly not in the Shaders panel either.
PS. The non UV tangent derivation is great makes things much easier :)
Displace modifier
-------------------
Can we have a proper std_libbuttons menu for the texture choice,
instead of a text entry field?
EdgeSplit Modifier
-----------------
The label "From Flag" is quite meaningless and bizarre to artists
(who know flags as those coloured bits of fabric on government
buildings). "From Marked as Sharp" would be much more descriptive,
just a matter of moving that button underneath.
As for the name, "Split Sharp Edges" would be better ('split edges'
still doesn't really help an artist understand what he'd use this
modifier for). It's more natural to use names that would fit into an
everyday sentence, that is, verb before object. It's also less
quickly readable (not to mention nerdy sounding) to remove spaces
between words, since you can't recognise the individual words by
their general shapes any more (which is largely how we skim-read).
Same goes for UVProject - "Project UVs" would be a lot better.
UVProject
-------------
Name issues as above, and a similar thing as displacement, it would
be good to have a menu with Blender image blocks, rather than the
text entry field.
I'll be getting back into IRC as I feel better if you want to chat
about these things, but otherwise that's what this list is for :)
cheers,
Matt
------------------------------------------
Matt Ebb . matt at mke3.net . http://mke3.net
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