[Bf-committers] Texture assignment workflow is confusing

[Charles Wardlaw]

I wanted to go back a sec to what Roger suggested:

> A quick thought is for the Outliner to be able to show
> 
> the textures within the search/filter context. This would 
> give us the ability to see the overall list of textures. 
> Selecting a texture would bring it up in the Properties window.
> Expanding the texture would show the users (parents) of that
> texture.

I think this is a good idea, but why not take it a step further?

This proposal has a few steps, and I'm not sure how popular it'll be, but bear with me:

- The Add menu is expanded so that it can be called over the outliner.
- The add menu gets a new operator, Add Texture.  This is the only way new textures can now be added.  (I find the double use of the plus button for adding and duplicating a bit confusing; even after using Blender all these years I end up duplicating materials by mistake when I really mean to make a completely new one.)
- The duplicate operator is expanded to recognize textures; textures selected in the outliner, when duplicated, bring with them all the settings of the old texture.
- Textures show up either as a new, special category (like RenderLayers) or as a special view type in the outliner.  This could also be expanded to include previews in the outliner.
- When object materials or the World are expanded, they show linked textures.  Selecting a texture there can act as a link to select the main texture in the outliner.  It could also show all other users by indicating other parents in some fashion. (Kind of how if you select an object's data you get the circle around the data icon, but not if you select only the object itself.)
- When in the special "textures" view, with or without icons, pressing the plus sign on the side of a texture will show another subgroup, "users".  This way you can easily show what's connected to the texture.  This is just a symbolic link, but allows the user to select the textures users quickly and easily.

Workflow could be as follows:

- User creates a new texture, and selects it in the outliner.  Modification is done in the object buttons, not the texture buttons.  Textures count as their own object type despite not having a place in the 3D viewport.
- When the texture is plugged into something, a texture panel expands below the area where it's plugged in.  For example, if you've plugged a texture into Hori in World, then below that panel you get a texture labeled "Hori: Texturename" with a link to the data.  This way textures can be modified on their own, or as a part of what they're helping to shade.  I have a feeling this part won't be easy. :)
- User drags texture from the outliner to any place that requires or could possibly use texture input, creating a connection.  When dragged into places that normally expect textures, the connection works as expected.  When dragged onto animation channels or channels that don't normally accept texture input, a PyDriver is created.
- User drags texture onto an object in the viewport. This has one of two effects: If in Object mode, the entire object is shaded.  If in Edit mode, and faces are selected, then only selected faces are shaded and a new vertex group for those faces is automatically created.  If nothing is selected, then the drop behaves as in Object mode.
- If dragged into a node view, the texture's node appears.
- If dragged onto a texture node in a node view, it replaces that texture.

There are some things I'm not sure of...  I think it might be nice to be able to drag vertex groups onto Nodes to limit their effect, or perhaps have another node that filters / masks based on vertex groups?  There might already be something like that; I admit that I seldom use vertex groups to limit textures.

The other thing is dragging in the node view.  For example, what happens when you drag a texture into its own node view?  I think it should duplicate the texture and all of its inputs, or at least reconnect the old inputs to a copy.

My main problem with texture workflow in every program is that it's often hard to find textures without first going through materials, and I often find myself wanting to access them as their own objects.  Modo's workflow got me thinking of the above, although the way they do it wouldn't make any sense in Blender.  Also, I find Modo's way of multiple materials referencing the same texture very confusing.

Anyway, what do people think?  This is just an idea, and I'm not sure it'd work, even though it works in my head. :)  If people like the idea, I can do mockups.
~ Charles