[Bf-committers] blender UI state

[Jorge Rodriguez]

I volunteer for this UI business but of course it's up to the existing devs.

As far as William Raynish's blog post goes, yes. Oh my god. Yes. I'm going
to draw from that a lot as I work on this. I think I can implement many
things he suggested.

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 9:14 AM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:

> > * I would like to see a right click menu that provides copy and paste
> when
> > right clicking text areas.
>
> Currently ctrl v,c and (x?)
>

I know I know but it's good to provide another method.

You clicked it by mistake and do NOT want to save. I have done this many
> times.
>

Having a prompt does not solve this problem. If there's a prompt then
accepting the prompt becomes an automatic part of the user's muscle memory.
Then the user has saved when they don't want to and bam, same problem.

Unless you mean, the user was trying to Ctrl-D instead or something?
There's better ways to solve this problem. Incremental saves. Undos.
Version control. Saving is such a universal feature that Blender should
confirm to the norm, which is to only produce a popup dialog if a file name
has not been chosen.

Yep, done that too but I have never lost my work due to Blenders
> rather odd way of saving stuff.
>

Step 1. Open Blender
Step 2. Modify the default cube somehow. Move it around for instance. Do
not save.
Step 3. Click the window's X button.

This closes Blender without asking to save changes. I'm on Windows so
perhaps this behavior does not appear on other platforms. It's unacceptable.

I have tried a lot of ways and totally disagree. The outliner keeps
> you from getting lost


...


> You need
> the properties all the time, what would you do with them?


...


> The time line is small and does not take up much space and is
> needed any time you do animation or anything else with time like
> particles.
>

You need properties and scene view and timeline to do anything of
substance, of course. That doesn't mean that these things should be part of
Blender's default view.

The point of the default view is new user experience. I realize that nobody
here is a new user, so nobody here necessarily wants things that are only
good for new users. But I consider myself a new user advocate, and not so
long ago, a new user. I think that Blender can change and add new
functionality that doesn't stifle existing users while making it easy for
new users to learn. I get the sense that many people disregard the new user
experience in exchange for power and information, I think this is a
mistake. There are many more people who do not use Blender than there are
who use it. If you want to increase Blender's adoption, you need to start
thinking about new users.

New users are concerned about two things.

1. How do I control the camera?
2. How do I edit the mesh in the most basic way?

That's it. They don't yet care about animation, rendering, properties,
cameras, materials, anything. All they care about is learning how to make
an object worth animating, rendering, etc. Look at any tutorials, the first
thing they go over is camera controls, the second thing is basic mesh
editing. If you make these first steps confusing or difficult then they
will abandon Blender as junk.

Here are the steps a new user must go through to start editing a mesh.
(Note: Yes all of this information is available through tutorials, but
people don't like watching tutorials, especially if they're already
familiar with other tools. Everything needed to operate Blender at its most
basic level should be learnable through Blender itself.)

1. Change to edit mode. A new user doesn't know that this is necessary to
edit a mesh. A new user doesn't know that the mesh can't be edited in
object mode. The new user must look it up. It's not in a menu. It's in a
dropdown labeled "Object Mode" - the user may not know what that means, or
that it's a dropdown, or that clicking it allows mode changes. "Edit Mode"
in that dropdown isn't visible unless the user clicks something.
2. Choose an edit type. The new user doesn't know how to do this. There are
three buttons on the button bar that do this but they are buried in other
crap and not obvious. This is also not available in a menu.
3. Select something in the mesh to edit. This is a problem since the user
will try to left click and select is right click. It may not even occur to
some people to try right click. It's really damn frustrating not to be able
to select things.
4. Choose whether to Grab, Rotate, Scale. The user does not know these
shortcut keys exist. The buttons on the toolbar that provide Maya style
manipulators are not obvious, and not the recommended way of operating
Blender.

By now many people have quit. Even if they persevere, Blender has many
other similar interface problems. Here's what I would like to see:

1. Change to edit mode. There is a larger button on screen that does this
directly from Object mode. In fact, there should be four, one for Vertex,
Edge, and Face, and one to return to Object. They are by default present
until specifically hidden by the user.
2. Select something to edit. Using left click like everything else does.
Nobody cares that right click is superior - they already closed Blender
because how the hell do you select things? Really I have no idea how right
click select has persisted this long.
3. Choose whether to Grab, Rotate, Scale. Just like edit modes, there are
buttons on the screen that do this. They can be hidden later of course, for
when the user learns the advanced keystrokes.

So like this:

http://i.imgur.com/ErmDd.png

Simple. Clean. A great first impression. I did it before I saw Raynish's
version, but I love his too:

http://goo.gl/xUsfW

(PS the last link broke because the mailing list added a space. Here it is
on its own line:
http://i41.tinypic.com/8yuet5.png
Sorry :P)

Anything that the new user doesn't need to accomplish his first goal should
be hidden until it's needed. Once the user needs to assign a material or
find something in the outliner, they can just open one. The method of doing
so can be obvious or tucked away in a menu somewhere. ("Open Properties")
Once they want to animate it's easy to drag out a timeline. In the
meantime, showing too much on the screen is just information overload, and
will confuse new users.

Best of luck, you are fighting a lot of sticks in the mud, including me. :-)
>

Aha! At least you admit it! :) That's okay though, I'm not trying to get
these changes for you. You can keep using Blender the way you like it. I'm
doing these changes for new users like myself and a lot of people I know
who can't use Blender because of all these problems. The standard reaction
from existing Blender users is "No don't change it!" I think it should be,
"Sounds great! Just make sure we can do it the old way too." Cool.

Answer me this: Did I say a single thing in this email that can be done to
help new users that must change how existing users use Blender?

No, I didn't. Anything can be made an option, or a basic/advanced feature.
Nothing I have said is mutually exclusive with current practices. Buttons
on the screen can be hidden or ignored. A menu option to change between
preset viewport configurations can offer Simple, Standard, 3-view, 4-view,
etc. Keys can be rebound, etc.

Since we can keep existing user functionality and still make it easier for
new users, then that's what we should do.

-- 
Jorge "Vino" Rodriguez
jorge at lunarworkshop.com
twitter: VinoBS
919.757.3066