[Bf-taskforce25] New tools mockups

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

Thanks for the mockups. Semi transparent "overlapping" regions are 
already in the code, but need some Brecht magic still. :) Whether 
transparent or not, i'd like it when such toolbars can appear without 
changing the main view.

I've today tried some toolbar already, but I'm much struggling with the 
very big variation of:

1) Amount of tools (can go in 50ies)
2) Amount of tool properties (dozens for transform)

Probably this 'toolbar' would require a fixed split for tools and 
properties, so things at least stay a bit on the same place. For tools 
we can also provide menus (like add-primitive with 10 choices), or just 
fall back to using more icons?

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute BV  Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam The Netherlands

On 24 Apr, 2009, at 16:08, William Reynish wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> One of the main large hurdles left for 2.5 is the tools system. How
> the tools work, and how to present them in the UI.
>
> We've talked before about adding a 'Tools' subregion within the 3d
> view for common 3d tools, and putting them in there. It'd be nice if
> there was some way of customizing the contents of this, however.
> Perhaps users can press a special key while using the menus to make an
> operator a 'favorite' or a discreet '+' icon within the tools pane can
> give a menu full of operators.
>
> http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/tools_region.png
>
> One of the questions is also what to do with active tools that aren't
> in that list. And what if the tools pane is hidden? Where do we then
> tweak the tool settings? After all, these are vital options, and are
> needed for everything from adding objects to subdividing. One idea is
> to then have a transparent panel within the 3d view that presents the
> settings for tweaking the current tool, like so:
>
> http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/tools_collapsed.png
>
> Since I love slick feedback, it'd be lovely (and useful) to have these
> sub-regions slide in and out gracefully:
>
> http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/tools_anim.mov
>
> ;)
>
> Slightly related to tools and operators is also presenting a sort of
> history stack of all operators, where things can be repeated and made
> into macros. To avoid adding too many new view types, this can
> probably nicely go into the same view as the new integrated Console
> View:
>
> http://www.reynish.com/files/blender25/console_view.png
>
> Also here, you could perhaps tweak the last operator used in any view
> - could be useful for non-3d tools, like doing stuff in the Graph
> Editor, perhaps? Or does that even make sense? Come to think of it, I
> think only 3d tools have additional settings...
>
> Cheers,
>
> -William
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