[Bf-taskforce25] New tools mockups

[Michael Fox]

Why not just have a tools section in the buttons window that is context
sensitive and can be grouped into sub regions like the current textures
for shading, that way the tools will be nicely grouped together, people
can orientate it how they wish to, the big problem with this is you
cannot access the tools while in fullscreen mode, so maybe having the
subsections in the 3dview tools area, so they are nicely grouped easy to
access.

for example, for a mesh , you would have the global view, which is what
we have now, subdivide tools, transform tools, Primitive tools (add
mesh), mesh manipulation tools, etc etc , but no object related settings
at all, they must remain the properties editor (buttons window)

and for repeat last action i like the floating panel idea as you can
close the tools area and still use hotkeys (on that note i think William
had it the wrong way, hold to extrude without transform and tap to
extrude with transform+mouse) and still be able to tweak the tool that
was just used, and can be hidden anyway and you are not going hunting
for the panel in a sea of buttons and contexts


On Fri, 2009-04-24 at 18:10 +0200, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> 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
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bf-taskforce25 mailing list
> > Bf-taskforce25 at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-taskforce25
> >
> 
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-- 
Michael Fox 
Developer and user of Blender3d
www.blender.org

mfoxdogg at gmail.com