[Bf-taskforce25] New tools mockups

[Samuel Nicholas]

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
IHMO this belongs in the buttons window, ordering of subsections by 
favorites should be solved for all areas that have multiple subsections, 
rather than have a special case.
>
> 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
This I think is the right way to go for adding tweak to the workflow. 
having it fade slide whatever. and turn offable. even after making an 
operation have it dissapear after a timeout(timeout time configurable).

 From reading other responses I think a lot of people are forgetting 
that the addition of tweak is simply to reduce the undo/repeat that 
happens a lot and it doesn't interfere with current work flow at all.
>
> 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
>
> ;)
Perhaps instead of making a special case here, allow regions/areas to be 
collapsed and uncollapsed leaving their header? or an icon like what you 
have in that mockup. then you can have all operator tools in a buttons 
window and collapseable etc.
>
> 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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cheers
Samuel