<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>While defining the way Blender draws the panels and buttons on the screen, this may the time to make sure the system supports animated transitions.</div><div><br></div><div>Why use animation in the UI? Because if a button or panel <i>jumps</i> to a new position it is obtrusive, and the user must reorient him/herself, whereas the if a button or panel gracefully <i>moves</i> to a new position, the reorganization is clear, and the user can immediately find his/her way in new state.</div><div><br></div><div>Currently, Blender uses animation for panels opening and closing, but since the sense of buttons hierarchy is much stronger in 2.5 I think it is pretty important to allow for animations where buttons may appear or disappear.</div><div><br></div><div>Here are some example movies for demonstration:</div><div><br></div><a href="http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/panel_openclose_anim.mov">http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/panel_openclose_anim.mov</a><div>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/panel_content_anim.mov</div><div><br></div><div>To support this, I'm assuming the system would need to be able put buttons into 'blocks' that can then be animated using OpenGL?</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><div><br></div><div>-William</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On 9 Mar, 2009, at 7:13 PM, Brecht Van Lommel wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>Hi,<br><br>I made a To Do list for 2.5 technical issues to work on.<br><br>http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/WinterCamp/TechnicalTodo<br><br>Some more detailed ideas were written down at:<br>http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/WinterCamp/TechnicalDesign<br><br>Who will work on what isn't clear yet, I'll probably work on RNA/Context<br>items, Ton on WM/Screen and Campbell on Python, as was already<br>happening. Especially UI topics would be good to tackle sooner rather<br>than later since that is the missing thing to get 2.5 to a somewhat<br>usable state, and so that UI designers can get started.<br><br>The design for generating UI's isn't fixed yet, it will be based on<br>layout templates like "transform coordinates", "preview", "datablock<br>browse", "row", "columns", etc. Not completely auto generated from RNA<br>but specified on a fairly high level. We need to think of an API to<br>create buttons as in these mockups (created by William), while still<br>permitting working on multiple selected items for example:<br><br>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/2_5_mockups_01.png<br>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/2_5_mockups_02.png<br>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/2_5_mockups_03.png<br>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/2_5_mockups_04.png<br>http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/2_5_mockups_05.png<br><br>Regarding RNA and Context stuff, it's challenging to keep this system<br>understandable so I'll try to document implementation and usage better,<br>and ask for reviews on bf-taskforce25 .. to avoid me being the only one<br>who understands how it works internally. Diagrams and more detailed docs<br>will follow as I work out the design a bit better.<br><br>Brecht.<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Bf-taskforce25 mailing list<br>Bf-taskforce25@blender.org<br>http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-taskforce25<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>