[Bf-gamedev] UI; Improvements and Customization

[Colin Knueppel]

Thanks PLyczkowski and Brecht,
And Thanks PLycskowski for the complement on NS2. I'm primarily anim, but I
can keep my ear out with Cory, our art director.

For UI,
I've been trying to be very active in the discussion, and I've been honing
what I hope is a persuasive and compassionate argument for UI refinement
that can both leave the program intact for existing users as well as
improve learnability and customization. I have come to discuss it here as
well, due to someone linking this as another way to bring about some
change.

http://www.blendernation.com/2013/10/06/developer-meeting-notes-october-6-2013/
Here is the latest revision of my argument in the comments.
It has been refined after some discussion with a Blender Institute
representative. His concerns were that a lot of the UI discussion was
directed at making Blender a clone of other programs. Upon reflection, I
don't believe the hotkeys are necessary, and it is kind of disrespectful to
ask Blender to just adopt other program keys, when we all struggled to
learn Maya, Max and ZBrushes funky keys. I have instead shifted my focus
upon a feature I described here before, a prominent task oriented UI
loading menu option. Below that, I then describe concerns that I believe
should be kept in mind while designing features, or redesigning, in Blender
that would probably also address Blender's learning curve for new users.

I don't wish to belabor this too much, but the UI element alone would be a
hundred times better than Maya's beloved shelves system, and it would allow
studios like Unknown Worlds, perhaps Wolfire Games and other indie studios
to pool resources and design friendlier environments for new hires, speed
particular tasks or maybe even innovate new features. It takes pressure off
the core group about conforming to other programs, too.

As for the second point, I consider usability really a concern that we all
should have as we age. The perspectives I put forth are perhaps extreme,
but should be considered while designing a program. They are also
representative of the many shades of difficulties that exist across the
user base of any program. I think we all can identify people in our lives
that aren't senile but have difficulty keeping on track, and are especially
burdened by disorganization that requires searching. We probably all know
people that don't have trouble reading but navigate almost primarily by
landmarks. These sort of problems are what I consider the bigger issue to
Blender's usability.

These two items would make great strides towards addressing core
difficulties of learning Blender.


On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 6:34 AM, Brecht Van Lommel <
brechtvanlommel at pandora.be> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 10:40 AM, Paweł Łyczkowski <
> pawellyczkowski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> @Colin @Aubrey
>>
>> Hey
>>
>> An UI refresh is planned for the 2.7x series, and the commutity has been
>> very active recently in proposing what the refresh could consist of (you
>> can see the biggest thread about it here -
>> http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?298932-Blender-UI-Mockups-and-Ideas-Requested
>> ).
>>
>
> To be clear, there is a lot of activity around this topic from users, but
> as far as I know, no developers have announced any big plans to refresh the
> UI.
>
> Ton mentioned something about refreshing the default settings in the
> roadmap, but that's not the same thing.
>
> http://code.blender.org/index.php/2013/06/blender-roadmap-2-7-2-8-and-beyond/
>
> Maybe with all the activity there is a good change that developers will
> get interested in working on this topic, but I wouldn't say that it is
> actually planned yet.
>
> Brecht.
>
>
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