[Bf-interface] UI Workshop topics

Sebastian König sebastiankoenig at posteo.de
Wed Nov 16 17:39:19 CET 2016


Hey all!

Thought I'd share some of the topics that I would love to see tackled in 
2.8 and in the upcoming UI workshop.

Since it's supposed to be the "workflow" release I think one of the most 
important things is a super easy customizability together with some 
solid presets (probably not the best word for it though).
One idea I really like is to have an additional area in the editors 
where we can drag panels, settings, buttons, macros etc. Because I do 
think it is good to have the toolshelf and properties following a 
logical and semanic order, so that it is easy to find the stuff you need 
for the task if you have to search for it. E.g. the AO toggle in the 
Display panel. However, I don't want to have all the panels open all the 
time, or having to open and close panels for that one setting that I 
frequently use. Instead I would want to be able to simply drag the tools 
to my own custom panel/area/pie in order to have the stuff I really 
often use quickly accessible. Currently I think of it as a third, 
horizontal toolshelf. This toolshelf could also have tabs, where we 
could configure several tools, settings, buttons configurations, ideally 
categorized for different workflows. Maybe there could even be 
pre-configured tool-sets?

Speaking of pre-configured toolsets:
I think Blender's current keymap might be overloaded, but at the same 
time it is for the most part remarkably well laid out and thought 
through. The way it uses alt, shift, ctrl together with hotkeys based on 
the toolname (E for extrude) makes it easy to discover new hotkeys by 
pure logic, which I think makes it easy to learn and pleasant to use 
(for the most part ;). I know that there will be a new keymap, which is 
supposedly stripped down to the bare minimum. I would say let's not 
strip it down too much and keep the key inner logic of it! Because 
coming up with such a system that works in so many editors is probably 
not that easy and is a task the user should not have to do himself; a 
good designed core keymap can be a great help for the user to learn the 
software quickly and efficient.

I think pie menues could play a key role improving workflows. Users 
should be able to easily create and configure their own pies. But more 
importantly I would like to see some core workflow related pies, that 
are not just a menu re-arranged as a pie as in many of the "official" 
pie menues in recent Blender releases, but rather a set of operators and 
mini-scripts/macros, that will speed up the most common tasks. I would 
love to discuss during the workshop how to design such pies and how to 
incorporate them into different workflows.

Anyway, I think it doesnt make much sense now to think about that stuff 
in detail, but it illustrates my main wish for Blender's UI: Better 
workflow related customizability and better accessibility of tools, 
together with some well designed pre-configured 
toolsets/workflows/presets or whatever one might call it. :)


Looking forward to the workshop!

Cheers,


Sebastian





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