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Quick Tip: Undo History

43

http://youtu.be/4fQL6fPU2cw

Did you know that Blender has an undo history? Check out this quick tip by Benito Buchheim.

Benito writes:

A few days ago I discovered Blender's "Undo History" funtionality.
I think this is very useful.

Sorry for my bad English ;-)

43 Comments

  1. Sweet, I'll have to remember that. Would be nice to have some sort of a panel for that, so people can find it easier, but a keyboard shortcut is fine for me.

    Thanks for the tip!

      • A good help system that documents all the functions of an application is one of the most important parts of a user interface.

        • even better than a good help system is, if you don't need it to often because of a consistent and well designed UI.

          • Smart points you mention. But, as Brian Lockett said here, we all must to be more careful and avoid make user interface a war, speaking about it every place.

            Blender is a wonderful software, with a enormous toolbox or rather an enormous workshop. Over time, Blender team - with our help - will organize this workshop.

          • That is true Roberto. It is not appropriate here.

            Where is the best place to contribute to this discussion?

        • Hi, Mbresciani!
          We can make a post, maybe here. But it's good to wait some time for two reasons: 1) to reduce the war atmosphere that was created. Afterall we are a community, and 2) to give to Blender Conference the time to produce some results about this theme.

    • One does not necessarily negate or supercede the need of the other. We've long needed some re-evaluation and improvements concerning multiple aspects of Blender, both in software design and community effort.

      Though honestly, let's not start yet-another UI dialogue here and relate it to every going article forward. Since we've proven that we can talk about this issue for weeks, it's just best to keep the discussion in more-appropriate (specified) spots and not bring it up at every chance.

    • Do you people even use blender? I mean right there on the 3d view tool shelf two buttons "repeat last" and "history".

      Maybe the should place a dancing girl on that button and than people might see it.

  2. Blender is a powerful software. Now it's time to, step by step, organize this power in an even better UI, without sacrificing the incredible flexibility that current UI has and that no other 3d software has. By the way, this work already started on version 2.5, 3 years ago.

    • I definitely agree with that sentiment, though, maybe it's best if we don't use this and subsequent unrelated articles as points made for the UI discussion. We'll just find another comment war here, and pretty soon, reason will get lost to the noise.

      The community seems pretty bitterly divided on the issue, and at large, more agitation gets expressed than poised objective reason, so it won't merit us to bring it up beyond the original discussion thread dedicated to the issue. I think it'll do the community some good to just act like a community again, focusing with dealing with Blender as we have it currently.

      (Yeah, as tempting as it is even for myself to not exploit the opportunity to make a case for a re-thought UI design, but I've come to have a Sebastian Koenig mentality about the issue lately--just avoid the "UI war" wherever possible.)

  3. I knew about this feature since its introduction, but it's just one of those "out of sight, out of mind" features. I've always known about it, but rarely think about it. And I also notice that I often avoid tight three-finger hotkeys as much as possible, for ergonomic reasons. Ctrl+Alt+Z isn't the most comfortable key combination to use a lot..

    Perhaps if a kind developer might be willing to make the Undo History its own editor type (such the same type as 3D View, Properties and Outliner are), so that users can optionally replace the default Outliner with a new Undo History window, that might provide a simple solution to this otherwise "out of sight, out of mind" feature.

    • Yeah. That's right. There are many of these shortcuts such as Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C but I think the set origin function is a needed function. I use that very often but I can arrive this good with one hand.

      The editor type is a good idea. Maybe this is something that Andrew Price wants in his new Blender UI Proposal.
      In my opinion only a button is needed in a dropdown or rightclick window, so that especially new users can see that if they are clicken on the Menu entrys to see what happens.

  4. I would like that the history could change the number of vertices of a mesh at any time. By the time we add a sphere for example, we can change the number of vertices, after move, rotate, etc... we can't.

    • Hi, Savio.

      I'm not a code expert, but I guess this is an almost impossible dream.

      At least, there are the subsurf option for increase the number of vertices. Ok, it's not the same but, it's something...

      • Maybe. I think it not complete impossible, but almost. That's right. I think these options could be available after: Rotation, Scaling and moving the object. So in the code, Blender could add a new Object change the vertices and redo the moving rotating and scaling, BUT: After you have made changes in Edit mode. It is impossible for the developers to redo these changes with a smaller or higher density of vertices.

        • That's right, altering the mesh means it is no longer a parameterized object and therefore the options don't apply anymore. As you correctly point out, actions that take place outside of edit mode don't impact this. While code changes are rarely non-trivial to do, this one would be on the relatively mild side as far as how intimidating of a refactor it could be. The panel was already created, the challenge is figuring out a reasonable amount of time for it to be kept around as accessible.

      • What is being asked here, if I read it correctly, is being able to change the "rings" and "segments" parameters before going into edit mode but after positioning the object in object mode.

        I will address this here, but first I want to point out this is /not/ intended as a continuation of the UI discussion. It's more of a workflow issue related to the topic at hand of undo/redo and does not imply any changes to the layout of the user interface.

        Being able to access the panel that controls the number of rings and segments of a sphere, and for how long it is possible to access it, is a matter of what is called "persistence" if I remember right. It's a matter of storing the panel and being able to recall it so long as the mesh itself has not changed. As an example, say you add a new sphere, then click on a tile in the layers panel to make something else visible. After doing that, if you want to change the number of rings and segments in the sphere as an afterthought, this is not possible because the settings panel now says "Layers -- Number: 5" for example. Deleting and recreating the object itself is necessary. Not strictly because of UI layout (remember that's not a can of worms I wish to open up here), simply because getting that panel back is not a part of the order of events. That's the history issue in question.

        • Exactly that. When you add a mesh, the controls to change the number of rings or segments of a sphere are accessible. After you click on another object e.g. the controls disappear. It would be very useful if they stayed longer accessible.

        • A relatively easy way of solving this problem is to keep Sphere, Cube and other "primitive" objects a different type from Mesh. Then you'd be able to open a panel for editing number of rings and segments whenever you clicked a sphere, a panel for changing the number of vertices when clicking a circle, etc. The convertion to Mesh could be either explicit, like when converting curves to mesh, or implicit when first editing a vertex.

  5. People, what's happening with you?!
    I'm using blender for less then two years (I've used Maya, Max and 3DS 10+ years before) and I know this hotkey since the beginning. From manual and/or google search (no adv.!).
    Ctrl+Alt+Z isn't ergonomic hotkey?! Are you mad? How lazy should one be to say such things?! I don't understand, honestly! =) Take look: thre thingers of relaxed palm: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25108066/DSC_0034_2.jpg

    And the last question: is this useful tutorial in any mean?! Okay. There is another one AMAZING VERY USEFUL TUTORIAL (no video!!!!!!!):
    1. Hey, people, there is "X" button on the right upper corner, I discovered you can press it and then Blender will close!!! It's amazing!!!!!1111OneOneOne

    Pathetic.

    Please, do something useful, not declare about yourself to the world. Or do not anything. I suppose such "tutorials" are not useful, they are useless, they are harmful for the worldwide knowledgebase as a noise.

    PS Sorry for my bad english ))))))))))))))))))

    • Well, that's right.
      But blender is a tool with very good functionality and it is very hard for the developers to document all these functions and make a nice UI with these functions. This is what Andrew Price wants with his discussion.
      If you come from maya maybe the undo history function is better implemented or documented. But if you only had worked with blender you don't know about the undo history. So I agree with you that Ctrl+Alt+Z is an ergonomic hotkey but you said that you got it from the manual or from google search. Blender is open source and has a great community so why don't help other users by sharing the knowledge with them. I think these short quick tips help so many users without killing much time. If you have to google that, it will take longer than watching the first 30 seconds of a video. Blendernation is an international page for blender users so this is the best place to share these quick tips and ideas. Why don't do it?

      • One and only thing, that makes me cry is that such tutorials are everywhere. No doubt they are useful for the beginners. But on other hand there is lack of more mature tutorials about more complicated things, not "about buttons", but about technics, workflows and so on.
        One can say that if I'm so worried about this, why I don't make such tutorial myself? And they would be right! =) So, I will make one about armatures and importing mocap data - I had very strong headache with this topic about year or two ago and suppose it will be useful for many artists.
        But this should be great for community to make more such intermediate and expert-level tutorials and less beginner-level siblings. =)

        • But there are very many workflow tutorials.
          How you can see on my youtube channel. I tried to make these tutorials, but it is very hard. Especially when you aren't fast because you need these Quick Tips which saves a lot of time.
          Blendercookie, blenderguru, blenderdiplom they make such tutorials but i know this is hard, so everyone can make a quick tip but not everyone can record a good tutorial.

  6. jcduplessis100 on

    Hi Benito!

    Thank you very much for this excellent tip! It is much needed for someone like myself (who keep making mistakes and then banging the Ctrl+Z until I've undone almost too much!!)

    PS- Your English is better than most peoples German!

    Kind regards!

  7. With every respect for the author of the video and the otherwise good tip (I also only discovered it a few months ago, as it is nowhere to be seen in the interface)! But this is a prime example of the whole video-tutorial-thing going too far. Why oh why do we need a video tutorial, instead of just writing "Hi everyone, if you didn't know, Blender has an undo history and you can access it with Ctrl-Shift-Z. Cheers." I hope this is not the future of software documentation.

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