[Bf-committers] blender UI state

Mike Erwin significant.bit at gmail.com
Sat Jan 21 00:13:21 CET 2012


There are many ways to make blender less aggravating for new users,
but as has been said, anything this powerful will have some kind of
learning curve. It's a hassle, it's to be expected, and it's worth it!
If you read a few paragraphs, I promise to make a point or three.

Photoshop for example -- when I started with version 4, it was a bit
overwhelming. Over the years and versions I picked up skills like
painting, layers & color channels just by using the software. The
biggest jumps came when I picked up a book to get a new perspective on
issues (the power of selection & masking for example). And how to use
the pen tool, which for some reason I never could figure out on my
own.

Same goes for driving a car! It has only a few controls of course, but
even so there is no expectation that you'll be an expert driver the
first time out. By the time you get behind the wheel, you've probably
observed hundreds of hours by being driven around during childhood.
And there is probably someone beside you saying "that's the
accelerator, that's the brake, don't touch those." When the windshield
wipers are swinging back and forth when you meant to use the turn
signal, you could say "f*** this, I'll just walk from now on!" Or you
could say "oops, wrong lever", remember that for next time, and keep
driving. To reward your patience, you get a free open-source car with
a lifetime supply of free gas.

Same for any musical instrument. The first time you pick it up, it's
going to sound pretty bad. If you never play again because music is
hard, well... ok. This metaphor is a bit loose, since blender has
competitors. It's like blender = guitar and [other 3D software] =
piano. They both make music if you know how to move your fingers the
right way! And they both take practice to get to that point. If you
already know the piano, and expect those skills to transfer to the
guitar, get ready for a shock. But if you don't know either, might as
well go for the one that's portable and let's face it, way more cool.

Ok, now it's blender's turn -- without the silly metaphors. Blender
2.1 was my first encounter. I played around with it a little while,
found the interface confusing (and kind of ugly compared to the rest
of MacOS), and quickly went back to PiXELS 3D. Next encounter was
blender 2.3 -- got the book this time (which was awesome), learned a
tiny bit more but soon went back to Lightwave (which also had a book).
A few years ago I had to digitally recreate a football stadium from
its plans and by visiting the site. After a slow and painful start
using Sketchup, I gave blender 2.48 a shot and actually liked it! But
by then I was serious about learning and got the Essential Blender
book, which helped more than anything. After that I would just search
for specific things and always found someone who had run across the
same issue and written about it. The interface in late 2.4x was very
different and very nice. After a custom layout, color scheme and style
it looked awesome and worked well. And yes, I switched it to LMB
select.

I have no specific gripes with the current interface, but as I stick
mostly to low-poly modeling there is plenty I don't ever see. 2.6 is
also very different and (mostly) very nice; I've even switched back to
RMB select! My own default layout discards the timeline, and shows
"object data" instead of "render" on the properties panel, but
otherwise is standard. That works for me, but I wouldn't dare force it
on everyone. Having the "render image" button there on the screen is
essential for the brief time before you know what F12 does. The
spacebar addon is great, don't know why it's not part of the default
setup.

Any changes need to be well thought out and explained -- more than "I
think X is better than Y so obviously everyone would like X." Why is X
better? Prove it or demonstrate it or otherwise make a solid case.

Many people do like to learn by trial & error, so make sure the errors
are harmless, obvious, and reversible. I haven't kept up with the undo
system recently, so maybe this has been fixed... but it used to fill
up with system-initiated snapshots, so undo kind of lost meaning.
Whenever you pressed [button], blender would do 5 things, 3 of them
undo-able. So you press [button], say "oops", undo, then wonder why
the stuff on screen doesn't look exactly the same as before you
pressed [button].

Reasonable default values and ranges for things are easy to implement
and make things just a little nicer for new users. No idea how well
this is done throughout blender, it might already be perfect. Same for
basic interaction settings like turntable mode becoming default (a
good move, even though I usually use trackball). Making "rotate around
selection" default? My initial impression is "yes, of course!" but
like I said above, we still need to answer "why?" in some convincing
way.

Remember Ubuntu had its "papercuts" project to fix many of the rough
edges and little annoyances for desktop Linux. This thread (and
similar ones before) sounds like a call to do the same sort of thing
for blender. Of course their path led to the Unity desktop... a great
example that making things simpler for new users can also make it
infuriating for people that know what they're doing. The designers of
Unity have the best intentions -- they're just not right.

In the end, blender's UI is for people who use blender, not for people
who don't. There were things about blender that kept me in this second
category for so many years, so I fully understand the original point
of this thread. Of course we want new people to use blender. Some
things have changed for today's potential users -- the sleek/modern UI
appearance is one less barrier -- but how you get things done once
inside is different from other apps. I got past this, so it's hard for
me to single out what is or isn't difficult for a newcomer. I'm in the
semi-new-user category: comfortable with general usage and a limited
set of the available tools. So more important to me (and I imagine
others in this boat) is how to grow, the path to becoming "more
expert". Nothing inside of blender is keeping me from doing this, from
my particular point on the learning curve. We also need experts on the
high end to show us what can be done with this great software in the
right hands. I don't think today's top users would walk away from
blender if we add some new options or change defaults, as long as it
doesn't mess up their flow. So let's do this in a way that doesn't
mess up their flow.

I'm interested to see what new options come out of this discussion,
and which of these are chosen for defaults. But I'd also like to keep
the overall number of options small, with meaningful differences
between them. One shining example of an interface that keeps things
simple, has limited options, all while remaining powerful for experts
is MacOS (8.6 and 10.6 being the finest). MacOS 10.0 had some serious
UI gaps, just like blender 2.5 at first, but both are growing up
nicely. Brainstorming 1000 options is great, let's make sure only the
best ones make it into a release, and are implemented based on these
discussions and properly tuned after some hands-on time.

Also, +5 on monkey head in default scene!

Mike Erwin
musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire



> On Friday 20 January 2012, Jorge Rodriguez wrote:
>> I'd like Blender to be learnable without people having to go watch
>> tutorials.

> Not possible (IMO). Blender, like any other 3D software, is far too complex to
> be picked up on the fly.
>
> I can't understand why reading docs or watching tutorials is so awful. If
> somebody opens Blender and feels lost (as did I many years ago), what's so
> hard about clicking on the help menu, choosing the first entry and starting
> to read? While the manual also needs work, the introductory chapters should
> be enough to get anybody started. If not, the community provides free help.
> That's how open source projects work.
>
> If somebody can't do that, I don't think he/she has enough drive to learn a 3D
> software anyway.
>
> As a user, I'm very grateful for Blender and also for the documentation we do
> have. People really should use it.
>
> Regards,
> Sanne


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