[Bf-funboard] Blender Pie Menus Prototype Addon

Alberto Torres kungfoobar at gmail.com
Tue Jan 29 09:59:45 CET 2013


I just tried it, some suggestions:

- Try press, left, release; then press, right, release... this should be
very natural. A problem that sometimes arises is that with few options you
still have to be as precise as having 8 options. In the mode menu for
armatures, pose mode should be at the top or the bottom (i.e. replacing
sculpt mode or texture paint) to have a wider space selecting an option.

After testing it a bit more I noticed the problem is the left/right options
(which should be the most frequent ones) have too little area: it seems it
was changed to accomodate the visual space of the menus. I also prefer the
round menus because the areas are much clearer. My proposal: to put icons
only when pressing the key with the 8 slices clearly in view, and then
drawing the text when releasing the key, at the further side of the icon.
That also has the advantage of cueing the users that fast selecting is
possible without releasing the key.

- Some actions (such as wireframe/solid) are better with a default action
(when pressing-releasing the key without movement). It would be nice to
have a checkbox in the menu (a bit far from the rest and selectable only by
clicking) that enables or disables the "default mode" (it would mean e.g.
cycling between the last two options). I would use it for mode change and
probably most of the non-destructive menus.

Cheers!


2013/1/29 Sean Olson <seanolson at gmail.com>

> Again - Replying inline.
>
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 5:29 PM, Matjaz Lamut <matjaz.lamut at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > >From your screenshot it looks like you are using a very very old build
> of
> > >the menus.  A lot has changed since then.  Try a new build, from here:
> > >https://bitbucket.org/liquidape/blender-pie-menus/downloads
> > > (always grab one with newest date)
> >
> > Ah yes, I was indeed using an older version. I tried with a newer one
> > but I can't enable it in the user preferences, the tick box simply
> > doesn't work and only for the pie menu addon. I tried the newest
> > version of the addon with Blender 2.56a, on Linux Mint and on Windows
> > 7 and I get the same result. It appears addon related, but maybe the
> > cause is elsewhere. Is this a known issue?
> >
>
> A few people have had issues - all people who have had prior installations
> of the pie menu.  Make sure to reset your userprefs and default blend to
> factory default (back them up first if you want to keep them intact).
>  Also, make sure you are using a new trunk build or a build from
> builder.blender.org.  There have been recent API changes that make using
> the new addon incompatible with old blender and vice versa.
>
> >
> > >True & False - It true that a strength is to select options very
> quickly.
> > >Another big advantage though to having sliders and other widgets in the
> > >pie is mouse movement.  With this setup you can quickly get to relevent
> > >settings with very minimal mouse movement.  Currently, in the sculpt
> mode
> > >brushes, the 'V' key is set to bring up a pie with options that are very
> > >nice to access very quickly.  This pie menu greatly speeds up workflow
> > >because you don't have to constantly move over to the side menu to
> modify
> > >settings, minimize/maximize tabs, and scroll up and down.  It's a lot
> > >faster.
> > >...
> > >Round menus have a big downside of lack of space.  You can't fit nearly
> as
> > >much text & icons in them.  They are also limiting in that layouts are
> not
> > >as dynamic and are limited to 8 total slices.  You go past that and you
> > >really have little to no space.  We try to limit each pie to 8 slices,
> but
> > >sometimes it just is not practical for given situations.
> >
> > I always imagined pie menus to be strict and spartan 8 slices, hence
> > my opinion on the matter. I feel the added options, sliders and other
> > widgets could also reside in some other menu-shape, not just the
> > current radial. Thinking about it, I wonder whether there are any
> > other possible solutions and prior examples how other applications
> > solved this.
> >
>
> Pie menus of course don't need the 8 slices, but they have just been shown
> to be faster with that stipulation.
> We have actually gone with a hybrid solution that allows a combo of pie &
> floating menus.  On most of the menus, the pie works with the button
> down->swipe direction->button up, but there are also external buttons
> available.  This allows for the quick angle based interaction of a
> traditional pie, but if you need access to an often changed item that is
> not changed as frequently as the default 8, you have access to that too.
>  These work by placing your cursor directly inside the button, instead of
> being angle based like the core pie.  For instance, on the view pie, the
> default 8 slices are the orthogonal directions, camera, and object view.
>  External buttons on that pie are local view & a perspective/orthogonal
> toggle.  Before the adding the external button functionality it was our #1
> request to have those extra features in the pie.  The choice is to crowd
> the pie, or have external controls in some way.  We chose the latter and
> are quite happy with it in practice.
>
> About the round menus, I should've been clearer with my question. I
> > was actually wondering whether there are any technical issues
> > preventing their implementation. The lack of space was already
> > apparent to me when making the mockup, but I'm still very attracted to
> > the idea. Perhaps some design solution could solve this to an extent.
> > I'm not asking about this to expect it to be implemented, but
> > exploring what the possibilites are.
> >
>
> There is no technical issue with implementing pies like that, and in fact
> we already did in test code.  It is just that they did not work very well
> in practice, for the non-technical reasons I mentioned above.
>
> Thanks for the feedback!  I hope to get more from you once you have the
> recent version working on your system!
>
> -Sean
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