[Bf-docboard] Blending colours - tying it all together

[Stanislav Blinov]

Hello

2013/6/2 <bf-docboard-request at blender.org>

>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 08:44:26 -0300
> From: Ivan Paulos Tom? <greylica at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Bf-docboard] Blending modes mess
>
> About the page:
>
> This is making confusion since 2.4x series.
> In the past, we have decided to have a shared page which
> could be used as a template for other pages.
> Some friends moved the information to the nodes page,
> and asked to put links for this page, but this is not
> so good from a user perspective.
>

Yes, perhaps in our quick discussion in the IRC I did not fully explain my
intent, I'll try to do this further in this message. I'm not proposing to
saturate the wiki with cross-links to other sections, but find a good
middle ground where we could put most of the information shared between
sections (that is basically duplicated right now) in one location and then
link to it.

For instance, right now we have:

Compositor Mix node. Description of what it does (inputs, buttons, toggles,
etc). Long list of modes to choose from, with their descriptions.
Texture Mix node. Description of what it does (inputs, buttons, toggles,
etc). Long list of modes to choose from, with their descriptions.
etc.

See how they all have that "Long list of modes to choose from, with their
descriptions". This is redundant, and the info in existing lists is
incomplete and still not very helpful to new users. Improving it in-place
will only grow each section and make further edits and fixes more tedious.

What I propose is this:

Separate page with long list of modes to choose from, with their
descriptions (with formulas, illustrations, etc). Here we could even place
notes (text or icons) if the mode is, e.g. only available in some editors,
etc.

Compositor Mix node. Description of what it does (inputs, buttons, toggles,
etc). Link to the list. (i.e. "For information on the available modes see
<that page>")
Texture Mix node. Description of what it does (inputs, buttons, toggles,
etc). Link to the list. (i.e. "For information on the available modes see
<that page>")
etc.


----------------
> About the name:
>
> Blend: -> Mixing Mode: (In the label of the Influence Panel)
>
> I agree with a change to "Mixing mode" instead of "Blending modes",
>

I did not propose to change the name, in fact "Blending modes" in my
opinion is still a way to go, because "blending" is a term used for these
kinds of operations since forever :) The discrepancy is due to the node
editors, being newer tools, having named their nodes as "Mix" or "MixRGB",
where in reality "mix" is just one of the simplest ways to blend colors.


>
> Because of the color blending modes present in the color ramp tool,
> which is used to generate color bands with a color blending factor,
> some users are confused, as we have discussed.
>

Color ramps do not have blending modes, they provide a set of
_interpolation_ modes to choose from. This is different matter. The
interpolation modes in color ramps dictate how exactly the ramp is being
sampled (with sampling factor being a "position" in the color ramp).
Blending, on the other hand, is an _operation_ performed using (usually)
two color inputs, where blending factor acts as "strength" of the
operation, i.e. how much the result influences the original color.


>
> ----------------
> About your time and efforts:
>
> We have to continue, sooner or later, we will find a solution,
> Welcome to the team !
>

Thank you! Yes, I'll be cooking something up in my user space so we could
have something solid to discuss in our search.


>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2013 12:23:10 -0500
> From: Kesten Broughton <solarmobiletrailers at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Bf-docboard] Blending colours - tying it all together
>
> Thanks for your efforts to improve the color blending section.  I'm glad
> you found the writers-guide, and we should probably install some hooks so
> that contributors with few "experience points" get a pop-up reminding them
> to review it, to avoid this in the future.
>

This sound like an interesting idea, seeing how one can easily go over
one's head right now :)


> As for the goal, there has been much discussion on the primary roles of the
> wiki, with the conclusion that there are many different types of users and
> the wiki can't be everything to everyone.  As i see it, the primary purpose
> is to be a quick reference to someone picking up a new tool, so a good
> table of contents and lots of smaller pages tightly focused should help
> users navigate to exactly the right content.
>

That is one of the reasons I wanted to include artistic descriptions with
more of a "techie-side" formulas (and of course, illustrations should come
as well), so as to cover as many mindsets as possible.

That said, I did in my early days of blender often come across some 2.49
> pages that were much more sprawling and project oriented basically tying a
> bunch of related processes/tools together.  I often found these style pages
> extremely useful.
>

Not only these kinds of pages would be useful, they could contain much more
information (instead of having it scattered across the wiki), and would
make maintaining and editing easier, since the info is in one place instead
of many.


> I would suggest that you take your work, create a user space and see if you
> can fit your work in a format that would be
> 1. Improvements to existing modular pages
> or
> 2 a "tying it all together" section
>

I'll be doing that shortly. Thanks!

Group:
> Our current structure is
> module
>  - introduction
>  - section 1
> ...
>  - section n
>
> What do people think about adding a sort of "starter-project" at the end a
> module, say a "Tying it all Together" section that would allow for an
> exposition of the sections in a module.  There could be multiple projects
> as time goes on (possibly with comments ala stackoverflow) and bonus points
> for covering lots of sections, including useful workflow tips, being
> up-to-date, including new features, etc.
>

To liven the documentation up with practical examples, usage tips and so
on? This sounds like a great idea. The one thing that I find lacking in
Blender Wiki and many other documentation projects (i.e. even MSDN) is that
you usually have dull plain descriptions of concrete functions, and have to
actually hunt for concrete use cases. Sometimes it's relatively easy,
sometimes the info is right there, but sometimes it's not. This is
especially bad when you just want a quick peek at e.g. what you can do with
a concrete tool (i.e. "hmm... will that node/switch/button etc. help with
what I'm doing right now?"), but are instead forced to complete distraction
from your work to actually browse through the pages in search of relevant
info.

-- 

С уважением,
Станислав Блинов

Kind regards,
Stanislav Blinov
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