[Bf-taskforce25] Modifier Layout Proposal

[Matt Ebb]

On 06/06/2009, at 8:32 AM, Brecht Van Lommel wrote:

> With the current modifier stack, taking up a full tab, you can see and
> edit all modifiers immediately.
...

> Keeping the navigation hierarchy as flat as possible is a good thing  
> in
> my opinion.

+1

I would definitely not like to have to click on individual modifiers  
to see their settings. One of the advantages of Blender's modifier  
stack over Max's for example is that you *can* see everything at a  
glance. It lets you get a good overview of what's going on to your  
objects, and it makes debugging problems much easier. If you're trying  
to figure out why something isn't working (for example, an unbound  
mesh deform that you'd forgotten about), having to go through your  
objects, selecting each modifier one after the other to inspect it  
would be very tedious.

Simplicity is also the key here, some of these proposals seem very  
over-complicated with un-obvious rules that are not really consistent  
with other things in Blender either - "drag this here then click on  
this and shit click on this:. It's a lot of 'interface massaging'  
needed just to do something as basic as see your modifiers, and that's  
not even using them to get work done.

I'm not really sure what the problem is here that requires such  
complicated solutions. If the issue is just that you want to see one  
modifier at a time, it should be possible to do that easily with the  
current system. We already have collapsing for modifiers, we could   
just add a shortcut like ctrl-clicking (+ rmb menu) on a disclosure  
triangle collapses all other modifiers and opens the one clicked on,  
for example. This can even be a nice consistent thing in other lists  
like constraints too.

>  and even in that case I
> think a modifier grouping/folders type thing would be more useful.

Now we're getting into nodes territory ;)

cheers

Matt