[Bf-funboard] Scene inspector/explorer mockup

[William Reynish]

Relevant to the whole layers/managing discussioun I
have a few ideas.

I have made a mockup showing how a scene inspector
could look. I think we should keep parent/child
relationships away from layers. We shouldn't try to
mix them together because we will end up making a more
complex system that is not as flexible. We need to be
able to have an objects child on a different layer
from the object itself as you can now. I suggest er
add a new window tyoe instead on the old Oops Window
called "Scene manager", "Scene inspector" or "Scene
explorer" or something similar. In this window, there
could be three modes (either visualised through
togglebuttons or through a dropdown menu): Layers,
Hirearchy and Schematic. Layers would be a list of
layers where you could edit their name and properties
(such as rendertime visibility on/off, preview
visibility on/off and selectability on/off).

Basicly it could work like the XSI layers system which
is very simple to use but also extremely powerful.
Here is a screen showing the XSI layers system:
http://www.shadeless.dk/ui/layers_xsi.jpg


Here is the mockup. It shows the Scene manager in
Hirearchy mode which displays datablocks and objects
in an organised hirearhy with the standard Blender
icons for objects, textures etc. (maybe it should have
arrows instead of "+" and "-" to make it more
consistant with the rest of Blender.) I have organised
things as they are in Blender (the material datablock
is attached to the mesh datablock for example). Here
it is:

http://www.shadeless.dk/ui/scenemanager_hirearchy.jpg

I hope this will spawn some more thought on this
subject.. Oh, and do comment!

Regards,

William

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