[Bf-committers] Re: [Bf-blender-cvs] CVS commit: blender/source/blender/src buttons_editing.c

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Chris; I agree this isn't in the category "nice UI convention", but the  
real source of problems is not in this specific addition, but in the UV  
texture and vertex color system in general. It was added in the past in  
a quite clumsy way, and isn't really future proof... back then (talking  
about '95 here) support for realtime textures wasn't standard for SGI  
even.

Although having interactive/realtime 3d creation in Blender is a great  
unique "selling" point, the way it is integrated in Blender lacks  
design and consistancy still. I really would welcome more development  
here. Like;

- separating vertex colors from UV faces (make both indepently switched  
features)
- allowing multiple layers of UV coords and assigned images
- develop sophisticated "baking" tools for radiosity or render colors  
(AO!)
- review how vertex colors and UV texture coords and Images work with  
Materials for rendering
- review what Material properties are actually being used for realtime  
(e.g. try to unify realtime and render better)
- review vertex painting, UV editing and UV-image selecting in general.  
The current modes are quite confusing.

Brecht has expressed interest in working on the UV and realtime  
textures issue, which makes him (together with Jens) the 'module owner'  
of this part in Blender. To encourage them, it might work best to give  
the benefit of the doubts for now. I guess this patch is more of a  
temporal workaround, while waiting for real improvements to come. :)

-Ton-



On 25 Jan, 2005, at 0:27, Brecht Van Lommel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It's just a practical feature. You often want to apply colors to faces
> just by selecting some faces, not by painting them. Not really the type
> of thing you want to do a mode switch for.
>
> But there's of course the fact there's two double buttons. It didn't
> seem that bad to me, but i'm definitely not a ui guru.
>
> The real problem is the way the panels are organized: displaying the
> paint panel in face select mode with only a few buttons doesn't make
> much sense to me.
>
> I don't mind removing it again if more people oppose, just seemed  
> useful
> to me (and to Carsten obviously, who has been requesting this for some
> time now).
>
>> It might be useful but I think the underlying issue here is the nature
>> of the vertex paint system. The real project should be how to  
>> integrate
>> this useful and (in my opinion) underused feature in a way that's
>> useful, unobtrusive, and logical. Simply adding the vertex paint  
>> buttons
>> to other panels obviously doesn't solve the problem which is: how do
>> selection and editing modes get used in conjunction with vertex paint?
>> Personally I think the fact that vertex paint mode and uv face select
>> mode can overlap, but edit mode and vertex paint mode cannot, is a
>> little obtuse and ugly.
>>
>> Brecht - maybe time to look into this more closely?
>
> I don't think this is the underlying issue at all. Merging uv face
> select mode / the paint modes wouldn't solve the problem.
>
> I do think uv face select mode and the paint modes should part of edit
> mode somehow. But I just don't have time for this now, considering this
> requires quite some ui and code changes (there's a bit of a domino
> effect here).
>
>> And very quickly.. if someone is willing to answer.. is it possible to
>> bake texture colors as vertex colors? How about ambient occlusion  
>> data?
>> Shadow buffer data? And call of this be done in some sort of unified  
>> and
>> easy to understand manner complete with menu entries, hotkeys etc?
>> Vertex colors and vertex paint can be extended in many ways and made  
>> to
>> be more useful for the artist than they are already. Anyway.. I hope
>> these comments get people thinking.
>
> This is really just a feature request you're sneaking in here :). These
> are useful features of course, but not relevant to this discussion.
>
> Brecht.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at projects.blender.org
> http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton at blender.org  
http://www.blender.org