[Bf-committers] While we're talking about naming conventions...
Roland Hess
rolandh at reed-witting.com
Mon Nov 2 13:42:57 CET 2009
As someone who has written about rendering several times, I've found
that I have to go a long way around to be clear to readers when talking
about render layers. Explaining the render layers palette where you
choose which layers go to which render layer indicates to me a place for
improvement. I've always thought that the "render layers" should
probably be called "render groups," as Blender's main "layers"
functionality is really more of a "grouping/show/hide" functionality.
I know that we're probably not going to rename such an elementary item
as "layers," but if we're being honest, Blender's use of the term is
blatantly counterintuitive -- i.e. it goes directly against what the
term means in the real world. "Visibility Groups" is probably the
closest thing to it's actual function, although it's long and doesn't
sound very good. We could be all proprietary and trademark our terms for
something like "visiGroups! (tm)" :) Actually, a storage bin analogy is
closer to how Blender uses the buttons, so maybe "bins", "boxes", or
"crates" comes the closest.
If you get rid of the "layers" term, then you can still use "render
layers" later on without confusion. However, it still goes against the
functionality a bit.
Obviously, we don't have to do this, but the current terminology can get
confusing ("No -- not layers, render layers!"), and goes against the
term's real-world usage.
Roland
harkyman
More information about the Bf-committers
mailing list