[Bf-committers] Texture assignment workflow is confusing

Brecht Van Lommel brecht at blender.org
Mon Apr 26 17:25:10 CEST 2010


Hi,

I agree the workflow is confusing, but I would like to see some
constructive ideas on how to improve this. Mockups, analyzing pro and
cons of different solutions.. it's easy to propose a solution for one
aspect of the problem but that then often conflicts with other parts
of the workflow and existing design principles. Also I think this is
not something that has to wait for a new shading system necessarily,
it's still going to have to solve the most of the same problems.

* How to access textures for world/modifiers/brushes?
* How can we avoid having to scroll in the material/texture UI, making
it more compact?
* How can we avoid switching constantly between material properties,
texture properties and material nodes?
* How to communicate the difference between texture and texture slot data?
* Can we make the connection between the value that is being textured
and the texture clearer?
* Can we do all this we do this for workflows both with and without nodes?
* How can we make managing material slots less confusing?

I know it's a bit much to ask to solve all these problems at once, but
if everyone has their ideas for little tweaks to improve the
situation, that helps, but doesn't add up to a nice consistent overall
design.

Personally I think we should try to move to a system where you
basically say, "texture this property", and then that property gets a
texture or texture stack attached. I've done some tests with this in
the new shading code but making the UI for that work clear & efficient
is still problematic. Some possibilities:

* Click button that takes you to the texture properties with the
relevant texture pinned.
* Click on the node in the node editor to make it active in the
texture properties.
* Select it in the texture properties from a list of all textured values.
* Slide out a window with texture properties somehow, so you stay in
material properties?
* Open a popup window.
* Open an extra tab that contains the properties for this texture,
than you then later can close.

Brecht.


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