[Bf-funboard] Blender Gui for 2.5

[Nathaniel Dickerson]

BF-FUN FORUM -

 Alot of honest and great replies! Thank you! I have posted things in other forums and hit deadends.. everything seams to be alive here, a refreshing change as well as a total honor to get replies back by all of you. To clarify a couple of points:

- I very much so agree a that a single image can not replicate a complete GUI or the experience - actually the experience is one of the key motivations for a gui rework for me - JP wrote (What count is the interaction methods and how they construct a flow)! thank you, you are preaching to my choir!. I have to stress that this is not a static design. Yes, I agree more images to help explain what is going on here. Alot are still in progress as I work them out I will post :-). I am hoping to get all up as quickly as I can for the 2.5 release.

1.     Nathan Letwory - "I think it would be good if you explained your layout, and give
    > arguments for your design decisions. That way it's much easier to
     give
    > focused critique."

    > NLD. I think my biggest argument from a standpoint of a artist 
     would be that most of the blender gui tools ( buttons, tabs, etc) seam cryptic by 
     nature. This is not to say they don't work. I like blender alot and 
     it has an amazing toolset, but still find my self hunting for alot of options. So for 
     me spelling things out clearly is a solution - it still needs work and I agree 
     that this may not be the case for alot and none want to "read a book" on screen :-).
    
    > NLD The second biggest point would be - the Library. I really think this has been a staple of blender. You have been able to pull data from one central .blend file that would acting like  a library. Bassam wrote ( 1- content library on the right looks like "new feature" not "new gui/interface on old feature"). Would a central .blend file not act as a library of materials, objects, scenes? I just would like to increase what can get accessed through a nice U/I without having to choose a .blend file all the time and be able to export it to others (ok so version tracking on Library Components would rock but :-) maybe another time). maybe to a Blender Repo-like site for "Libraries".

    Bassam Wroet (4-scenes as tabs on 3d view only- this looks like a bad idea: 
    scene affects every window in blender, not just 3d view- besides, what if you
    have multiple 3dviews? tabs on all of them? anyway, it's not clear, you need to explain what you mean by it.)

>This is just a mock-up of a example file. it could be one scene it could be 100 The idea really is just redefining what blender already does. just at a different visual level. Tabs could be a D.N.D component like they already are from one "pane" to another. yes the rest of the GUI would change around the scene. But the library would not. Multiple 3d view would be sub sets within the tab or on other tabs if you like (tab focus > right click >"duplicate tab") it would up to the end user and also what your working on if you like.

    >NLD Materials - I choose the material editor due to its complex nature. Material editors always seem to be a hangups for 3d apps. I used 3ds Studio from R4 dos to Max 7, for literally years and it never really got good for me. Microstations was even more complex as I recall. So I wanted something simple the would contain all needed objects and still stick to Blenders ethos ( it is very much a WIP ) the vertical tab are more or less "fly out" panels. The fly outs would work much like that of some that are already in blender's materials section just larger.

    >NLD Timeline with time code - totally a WIP 

    Bassam Wrote ( Just another idea for UI mock-artists: 
    often I see a ui that has very little ( a cube, or some cut and pasted images). 
    It would be a nice/illuminating challenge to take your most complex scene 
    (animation, big nodes setup, etc) and do your mockup around that, thinking 
    how it work for things you are actually doing) 

    >NLD This is why you see so many scene tabs and lines I just have to mark it up. Its a mock up of a very complex project with many scene's, many layers. I like to populate a potential design with what will actually "live there" to see if it "breaks" or is unusable..

    > NLD Conclusion  - I am not a change for sake of change person either. I don't believe that I have gone beyond the scope of anything blender already does. even the gradients. Blender has them on every button right? I just put it in a different wrapper.

    Thank You Nathan Letwory, Jean-Luc Peurière, Gustav Göransson, and Bassam Kurdali for any help that you can give. Please let me know if something is still unclear or I have missed something. I will post more images in a day or so to help clarify what is in my head.

-cheers,
Nathaniel










Bassam Kurdali <bkurdali at freefactory.org> wrote: 
On Sun, 2008-03-02 at 18:08 -0800, Nathaniel Dickerson wrote:
> Hoping to get some feedback on this sketch of a new layout for Blender
> from the functionality board. Any crits comments would be great.
>  
> Link below..
> http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg181/runlevel5/?action=view&current=BLENDER-25-SLATEDESIGNVERSION05.jpg
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
Just another idea for UI mock-artists: often I see a ui that has very
little ( a cube, or some cut and pasted images). It would be a
nice/illuminating challenge to take your most complex scene (animation,
big nodes setup, etc) and do your mockup around that, thinking how would
it work for things you are actually doing. Or conversely, download an
(for example ) Elephants Dream scene, or (soon) peach scene, and try to
see how it would work with your new ideas.

Again, this is not meant as negative criticism, I think doing interface
mockups is very cool, and even if the entire thing is "not perfect"
there may still be one or two ideas in each mockup that inspire/interest
the developers. At the very worst, it cannot harm, and at the best, it
can lead to something good.

Cheers
Bassam

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