[Bf-committers] new UV test grid

Paolo Ciccone phciccone at gmail.com
Fri Mar 26 16:57:58 CET 2010


Campbell, sorry for belaboring this point but this issue brings up a major
point about Blender. There is a difference about what can be done: "Anyone
can add a python extension", and what should be done to improve usability of
Blender. We know that the level of user-friendliness of Blender is its major
criticism. We all know how to use Blender, how to add textures, write Python
scripts etc. This is not about how easy or hard is, for developers, to
dosomething  but how friendly Blender is "out of the box" for the average
user.
We all work to make the program usable to the public at large.
There is a point when technical considerations become secondary to what is
needed to make the program actually friendly. That is why I'm insisting on
this. I truly believe that a slight change of perspective is necessary. The
focus has to shift on the "user experience" primarily and on the technical
aspect secondarily. I know, I'm proposing "heresy" in this mailing list but
it's that kind of "heresy" that makes Apple's product such a success. It's
not different than the idea beahind Gaudi's "Sagrada Familia", the
engineering underneath is at the service of the artistic experience that the
public enjoys.

I don't care about the procedural textures. They are a minor point, although
you just have to see what happened with ZBrush's UVMaster to get an
appreciation of how people respond to that kind of user-friendliness. What
is important is to make Blender an easily approachable tool that can be
extended by the end user who doesn't know what Python or C++ is. It's
important that we stop thinking about the Blender users as fellow coders. It
takes a lot less to fire up Photoshop, or The Gimp, and make a new pattern
and drop it in a directory than do the same and then convert it to C code
and submit it as a patch. Including the fact that actually projecting the
letters in the squares has been recognized as an obstacle. Why shouldn't we
give that flexibility to the user? It's the same issue that makes installing
python extensions, for 2.49, and incredibly nerdy experience while it should
be as easily as dropping a file in a pre-determined directory. Again, this
is not about what is possible, but about how approachable the task is.

All this intended as a constructive criticism. I know that developers are
donating their time for this project and we all appreciate the excellent
work that you are doing with Blender.

Best.
--
Paolo


On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Anyone can add a python extension which has a set of useful, premade
> UV grid images, these can be added to the image menu but have the
> disadvantage that they need to be distributed with the blend file,
> though if they are only grids, its not so important.
>
> But Id not make these default, images could take up quite a bit of
> space - one image could easily be bigger then python library :),
> rather stick with procedural for now.
>
>


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