[Bf-funboard] selected/active/colours/etc.

[Matt Ebb]

> Do you mean the tiny object center... the color of that one has no
> meaning yes.
> But you're hardly aware of that... I made it yellow just to make it
> stand out among the black wires...

But it *does* have a meaning - it means unselected, since it's contrasted
with the pink of selected. When you select an object it turns pink, when
it's deselected it's yellow. Whether or not this meaning is intended or not,
it's there. It's used for lamps (in this case, it's not just the center
point either), cameras, empties, and all sorts of other objects whether
their obData is editable or not. It's also now used to indicate 'selected
edge' for meshes.

> I still don't understand where yellow is 're-used'....

Yellow is also re-used to indicate selection in the Ipo editor (keys, and in
the control points of ipo curves), in the Action editor/NLA editor, and in
Image/UV editor. In these cases, yellow is used to mean 'selected' rather
than 'deselected' (which is confusing), but it still continues the idea of
it being to do with a selection state rather than representing the hierarchy
of objects/obData/etc.

Now whether this is just a co-incidence or made that way just to stand out
from the black wireframes or not doesn't really matter. It's reinforced so
much throughout Blender that users will think it's to do with selection
anyway - that's the impression that's being given.

Perhaps there wouldn't be so much emphasis on the idea of color = selection
if there were other things that indicated selection too (other programs
stick manipulators on selected objects, etc.). However in Blender, colour is
the only thing that visualises selection state. The idea of
selection/deselection is much more immediate to artists than the structure
of the data in Blender, so naturally people will associate colour =
selection.

Maybe this is just me - I've *always* understood colour in Blender to
represent selection states, and not of the structure of the data. What about
other users on this list?

Matt