This week’s update from the Blender Developers!
Ton Roosendaal writes:
Here are the notes of today's meeting in irc.freenode.net, #blendercoders
1) 2.69 release status
- Release targets.
- LOD for Game Engine review; Brecht van Lommel contacts Mitchell Stokes and Joerg Mueller. He volunteers to help reviewing this week.
- Bastien Montagne works on splitting normals for OBJ export. See more here.
- Sergey Sharybin and Brecht have been working on film response curves, a large list of presets which you might apply as a part of CM pipeline will be added.
- All attention further should go to the bug tracker!
2) Other projects
- Sergey worked on a new lock free malloc for Blender, allowing to build releases without the "guarded" allocation feature Blender has (reporting overwrites, leaks, etc). It should result in much faster memory allocation, especially for use in threads. Is being reviewed and gets applied in his Summer of Code branch.
3) Google Summer of Code
- Ton Roosendaal reminds all students to get their wiki docs updated! In a week is "soft pencils down". A week later final evaluations will happen.
- Alexander Kuznetsov explained a bit what he's doing for Sequencer now. Most work went to the internal sequencer engine. He'll make sure svn is testable for others this week.
- Sergey proposes to open a staging branch now, for students to merge work in for everyone to have a go with their work. Ton will check on the SoC mailing list which students will participate.
Thanks,
-Ton-
37 Comments
Blender in practicality unusable to myself or the gaming community until they address their UI. They need to:
1. Make controls as industry standard as possible. (Eg: Left mouse button selects. Right mouse button gives contextual menu. Ctrl+c = Copy, Ctrl+v = paste, w = translate, e = rotate, r = scale.) This brings down learning curve, so individuals can jump in, and with less lost time, it makes it possible for studios to consider deploying the software.
2. Every tool should be accessible by the following ways: Menu for learners. Toolbar for visual users. Scripts for techs. Blender defaults to over use of hotkeys, which makes Blender terrible for users that have trouble remembering hotkeys. Please keep in mind that some really good people have impairments, so don't discount this factor.
There are some other issues that could use addressing about the UI, but these two factors make Blender hard to learn and uncomfortable to use. Fix these, and you open blender to a much wider audience.
1. I agree on mouse buttons. I've never used a program with those hotkeys though (scale is always S, and rotate is R).
2. There's buttons for most things in Blender, look at the bottom toolbar in 3D view or the side panels. Also, you can press space and search tools/actions/etc.
I fully agree with the left mouse button. Its the first thing I change.
As for the move scale rotate, that sounds like 3DsMax to me, but I think Maya is different, I dont remember. If you are coming from 3Dsmax, just change your interface presets to 3dsmax instead of Blender (it's in the preferences) and it should fix all that for you (including having to hit B to drag and select).
I do miss those menus in 3dsmax and Maya by right clicking. you can setup your own custom menus and assign them to a hotkey, its a little work and a new user wouldn't do this though.
Maya has those sweet custom shelves that I used a lot.
Personally, I sent about 10 years in 3dsmax and a year in Maya, it was cumbersome to learn Blenders interface, but I made the decision to not use the 3dsmax interface option because the Blender interface and hot keys were made with Blender in mind and work best for it. Also, if you watch tutorials, this is the setup they use and it gets hard to follow if they are clicking different buttons ect.
If you do use multiple programs in your workflow, it might be beneficial to change the settings in your preferences.
I strongly disagree.
As mentioned, the keybindings and mouse input preferences can be customized to one's liking.
The 2.5 update introduced a python widget toolkit that makes modifying the interface a trivial task. However, the layout is still very similar to that of the 2.49. The design and arrangement of the UI could be improved, but it is very usable in its current state.
Not using Blender on account of the interface is a poor excuse. Zbrush has, perhaps, the worst interface of all modern 3D applications, yet that doesn't stop many from using it. A less than ideal UI can make for a more frustrating learning experience, but it becomes a non-issue once learned.
The greatest limitation of Blender for use in game asset creation is, in my opinion, its inability to lock and manually edit vertex normals. This must be a priority if the devs want to push Blender to game developers.
The current version of Blender is still a fantastic pipeline tool. It makes for a great companion to Zbrush and, being that it is available to everyone, any artist in any game studio should have the option to use it as a such.
Don't plan on basing your production pipeline around Blender anytime soon. Blender is no replacement for 3ds Max or Maya--and may never for those studios that have very rigid pipelines that have been based around Autodesk products for years. Nonetheless, it still has its place as a pipeline tool so long as the asset eventually ends up in 3ds Max or Maya.
Nicely stated. I think I'd agree with this. While many do use Blender as their production pipeline tool of choice, I do think Blender has a nice place as a pipeline tool for many studios.
If it has the best chance to grow as a main tool of choice someday, it's probably as growing up through the ranks from being a reliable pipeline aid. It'd be nice to have (largely) a one-stop shop for all (or most) production work--esp. with game assets.
It lets new users use Blender for what it excels at doing, but gets them used to the software as it strengthen in other areas, growing as a bigger (and more efficient) use more and more.
I think Blender already excels in many respects with modeling, it's got a much more robust native sculpting system than most other 3D packages, and eventually, it might see a 3D texture painting improved on par with Mudbox or BodyPaint (or even better).
I think Blender's heading towards being that pipeline sidekick tool that grows into a production superhero in its own rights, once it grows some more.
Though, you should know that locking and manually editing vertex normals is already on the agenda:
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=127&aid=34762&group_id=9
Correction: "...I do think Blender has a nice place as a companion pipeline tool for many studios."
If Blender is to be a real "pipeline tool" for professional work, then it makes all the sense in the world to mimetize it's basic modus operandi with that of the currently "in place" applications such as Maya or 3ds Max by default.
And by that I mean specifically viewport navigations and transformation shortcuts.
I say "by default", because just being able to change them (but not being the default mode) doesn't count, as everyone that has used several packages knows that leaving the standard ways of doing things in a package *always* leads to problems or severe limitations. Sorry.
A two-second solution:
http://oi39.tinypic.com/2wmjo6h.jpg
Want quad view, too? Ctrl+Alt+Q.
Among the first things any newcomer should do is check out the manual first, so see if perhaps these issues are addressed:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Preferences/Input
Apparently, many people coming from Max or Maya to Blender are people who for some reason no longer have access to Max or Maya--otherwise, they'd remain with using them.
So that means that they obviously should take a little time to learn something they now need to rely on using.
If they're so new that they run into issues of usability, simply because Blender is new to them, they should look for answers instead of quickly making demands for change. Googling "Maya controls in Blender 2.6" takes five seconds.
By the way, mapping view navigation to the middle mouse button is probably one of the smartest designs out there.
It makes complete sense to map something so frequented as view navigation largely to the hand that's already on your mouse.
You rotate your 3D view far more than you pan your view, so mapping rotation to clicking the MMB, zooming to scrolling the MMB, and panning to Shift+MMB makes total sense. It's more ergonomic and it's faster.
Max and Maya have been doing things their way for many years, but it doesn't necessarily mean a given design of theirs is efficient. It's familiar, but not necessarily efficient.
Those same navigation designs are part of what make Mudbox such a rigid program to sculpt in--you need a keystroke just to move the view, only because controls are designed for long-held familiarity than carefully-rethought efficiency.
Meanwhile, professionals all around the world have no problem learning ZBrush, which is about esoteric as 3D software come, but is still smoking Mudbox as a competitor.
Same is true with modo, which sees a steady growth with new users. Like Blender and ZBrush, modo has its own way of doing things, but all for careful reasons behind their designs. Many people flock to it from Max and Maya, since it's half the price but twice the functionality, but those people have been willing to learn their new tool.
Apparently, people can adapt to a program's design centered around efficiency rather than long (and rather dated) familiarity--that is, when they care to learn their tool and a bit about the reason behind its design.
This view navigation is only inefficient to you because you've been accustom to the Max/Maya's design. It's an issue of unfamiliarity--not necessarily one of inefficient design in itself.
But just for one's convenience, the solution to making Blender behave more like Max or Maya is literally the first thing one can do when opening Blender.
(And if one makes the Max or Maya preset their default and they won't even have to do that much at the start screen when starting Blender.)
The Blender dev team are a very small group of guys comparatively, so their attention can only focus on so much.
Better to save our breath on small solvable issues like "left mouse button controls by default" and focus our voice more sincerely on much bigger design issues. A little patience is needed, too, because while our voice is often heard, the plans are often queued.
There are many things I could say to this, but I'll keep it short: Once you learn Blender, it's not really too difficult. It just takes a little bit of effort.
It's different, but once you get the hang of it, quite a lot of its design makes a lot of sense. Blender tries to address issues with a focus on workflow efficiency for itself. Since that's not particularly the goal of Maya or Max (they focus more on long-term familiarity than actual workflow efficiency), you're not going to be used to Blender's design philosophy after coming over from Maya/Max.
One thing I personally don't like much about Maya and Max is that they're both quite rigid with using menus and toolbars for modeling. The benefit of learning hotkeys for any program is that it saves you tons of time navigating through a series of menus and toolbars, which is key for experienced users to streamline their workflow efficiently.
What I can model in Max or Maya in 20 minutes using hotkeys in conjunction with menus and toolbars, I can do in Blender in 5 with mostly just hotkeys alone. It's similarly true with animation in Blender. Being able to quickly keyframe nearly any property in Blender with the I key is very efficient. I can even access many of Blender's menus and modes with just simple hotkeys, which is nice.
I should note that Blender developers are working on ways to make Blender more easier for new users to adapt to using, as well as provide some new options for streamlining production--namely, the active work on Pie Menu system. Other improvements are on the way, I'm sure.
That's one good thing about Blender---it's constantly undergoing consideration and improvements towards a better design. It takes time and much effort (sometimes met with impatience by those many who know nothing about developmental work, sadly).
But the developers do listen to the needs and ideas of users. I've seen a few of my own suggestions and recommendations met. It's a growing effort. You can't really say as much for Autodesk there. To me, that seems like reason enough to take some time to properly learn Blender, and patiently wait for gradual improvements in the meantime.
...regarding Blender's usage of mouse buttons I'll say jast that.
No other barely popular computer software (be that a end user program, an OS, whatever), uses the Right Mouse Button to Select items.
Period.
The line of thinking that lead Blender to adopt that kind of "unique" behaviour completely escapes my mind, but being against such a strong common place behaviour for such a frequent task cannot take Blender other that farther appart from the general computer user community, and never closer to it.
All in name of what single benefit...?
my two cents
http://oi44.tinypic.com/4q6iu.jpg
Next?
well, thanks, but I already knew that.
What I'm saying is that I think default options should be set just the opposite way as they are nowadays.
that's what I'm suggesting.
What if the 3D cursor worked like any other object in the 3D view? I mean, instead of using a mouse click to position it you could just select and move it (G + X/Y/Z) like everything else. Then we could have left click to select, and right click action to show the add menu (or maybe a Pie menu?).
that, or having to press a modifier key to place the 3D cursor with the LMB.
...practically anything could be better than the current behaviour. :)
Sometimes solutions are simpler than you think.
http://oi44.tinypic.com/4q6iu.jpg
Thanks, that's not quite what I was talking about. But you made me look deeper into the input settings and you can actually set the right click to show the add menu :D
Positioning my 3D cursor is now shift+C.
Blender rules!
I've recently gained a whole new perspective on this issue as myy brother and I have recently started a project between us, a small design studio. He's a long term Maya user while I've been using Blender for a while. For this project, we'll be using Blender so he's had a bit of learning curve, even though he's actually been using the VSE for comp work for a while - he's never done any modelling in Blender before.
We haven't found the Maya preset all that useful in moving from one to the other. The issue is that all the tutorials, teaching materials and manuals are created with Blenders default layout and without knowing how the functionality has been mapped it's almost impossible to translate the key commands. It's also highlighted just how different the underlying workflow is between the two applications - I'm not saying one is better than the other, but they're very different and trying to create things in Blender as you would in Maya is going to be an exercise in frustration.
The input editor is very powerful, but it does a very, very poor job in making commands discoverable. Attempting to reverse engineer what key is assign to what function is painful - I'd pay good money for an add-on or script that could read in a preset and produce a nice, visual keymap. You need a far deeper understanding of Blenders input system then a neophyte could be expected to have to really make the most of the editor. I'd say that the Maya preset is only really useful to someone who's experienced with both Blender and Maya, who can adapt to the differences between the applications and really just wants to use musle memory for those interface commands where there is a 1:1 overlap.
Our experience has been that if you're going to switch to Blender, you have to commit to doing so and interact with Blender the way it was designed to. You have to relearn how to plan and construct geometry - it's a far more fundamental then just learning the commands. This does NOT mean that you're existing skills and knowledge is valueless - clean topology is clean topology - but you have to work with the program. This is true for all applications too, not just Blender; a Mudbox user moving to Zbrush would be expected to learn the Zbrush way for example.
This to me also means that the idea of just "making controls industry standard" is a non-starter. It would basically mean that every current Blender user would have to re-learn how to interact with Blender from scratch and there's no value that I can see to Blender itself or to the Blender community in doing so. It's frankly up to the person or company who's planning on using Blender to make the commitment to learn how to use it.
I disagree, Blender is a complex tool which needs to be learned to fully appreciate. It's designed to work fast for people who know how it works and know the keyboard shortcuts.
Besides you can change the left click selection under Preferences anyways, so what's the big deal?
I griped about Blender being too complex to learn too when I first used it. Later on I discovered that 3D is HARD, you really need to invest time to learn it. It's not something which you can make 'intuitive' with some UI fixes.
Hi,
I'm sorry what part of
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Preferences/Input
you did not particularly understand? :-)
Sadly, man, with just about anything in life, those who make just a little effort to make life convenient for themselves are the minority. Never mind if the answer just might be simpler than they think, if they'd only just look.
The first thing I do when I get a new software is READ THE MANUAL. It takes a little time, but it pays off every day in the long run. Yeah, I'm with you. With some things with Blender, it's as simple as reading the manual.
it's not about people closely understanding how to use Blender settings,
it's about us to understand how to set Blender closer to the people to use it.
I think.
Film response curves !
That's a GREAT addition !
In my opinion, Blender navigation and selecting systems are far more fluent than 3ds max one. Let me explain why I think so.
1. When I want to move object in 3ds max, I'll press W, than find gizmo on the screen (in cluttered scene shown in wireframe it requires some attention), then drag certain axis on that gizmo (left mouse button is pressed all the time), then release mouse button.
In Blender I just press G, then move mouse and left click. Or constrain movement to certain axis, pressing X.
2. IMHO, right click to select object is cool - without it you just slam repeatedly one finger. It's like playing guitar with 1 finger.
Anyway, as it have been said, you can customize left and right click behavior in preferences. "Industry standard" of W-E-R, left click and gizmo isn't ideal at all.
(Q)WER shortcuts (originally introduced by Maya) are smarter ones and are better for 90% of people (righthanded people) because they are on the left side of the keyboard, and they are close together. So you can just keep your left hand over that part of the keyboard (one finger over each key), while the right one is on the mouse and you never have to look to the keyboard to activate any of them. Helping maintain focus on what you're doing.
On the other hand with Blender's shortcuts (GRS) you should constantly look at the keyboard to find the right key.
Please make default like Factory Settings 'Left Mouse' with 'Continuous Grab' and 'Release Confirms', also 'Import Images as Planes'.
Will be helpful to have highlited manipulators under cursor and better outline windows boundary. My respect to Blenders creators, please help begginers to dive easier. Sorry for my English
Those first suggestions are some of the easiest things you can do yourself, just by going to User Preferences (located under File menu).
Go to User Preferences, toggle 'Continuous Grab' and 'Release Confirms,' go to Addons and turning on 'Import Images as Planes,' and then hit the 'Save User Settings' button at the bottom of the User Preference window. It'll save all of those as your default settings and be set every time you open Blender.
As for the other suggestions, Blender developers might see this page, but this blog news site isn't really the proper place to make formal requests. This blog isn't the developers' blog--it's a news site that independently reports on Blender news. I've come to realize the importance in treating this news site as a news site, rather than a request box.
I see a lot of people make formal requests and point out bugs (and I myself have done this before), but there are more appropriate places to make such (and the developers appreciate it). Here's one such place: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Requests#Features_.26_Proposals
I fully agree in changing the default button for select to the left button. It only makes sense.
I have never used Blender with the right mouse as select, this just makes it impossible to switch between it and any program (even non 3d programs)
As for other things like w for move, that is NOT universal for all programs, so changing Blender to be that way would make no sense.
I rather like Blenders interface and greatly prefer it to Maya, which after a year I still didn't like it. Only thing i like about Maya is the custom shelves, but I rely mostly on hot keys in blender, so it really doesn't matter.
Also, changing Blender to be more like Max or Maya would then alienate all of the Blender users that never used those programs. it is not a "better" way of doing it( and once again I used Max for about 10 years and Maya for 1, so i'm not just a Blender fan boy) it's just different. In the beginning, I never thought I would get as proficient in Blender as I was in Max or Maya, but after about 2 years, I think I am more proficient than I was in either.
It seems to me that the left mouse button issue is the simplest problem to solve, just by switching the left mouse button's function to the right mouse button's function in the Input menu under User Preferences.
Just go to "Select With" and choose "Left" and then simply hit Save User Settings. It's so simple, even a newcomer can do it. It solves the problem completely.
As for Blender using the right mouse as select making it "impossible" to switch between it and any program, I don't see how something so simple to fix makes it "impossible." When I'm in a program, I personally just remember the controls to that program.
Also, as someone with some experience using ZBrush, I have to say that ZBrush is about as lone wolf as it can possibly be in terms of controls, and yet it most certainly hasn't stopped the entire 3D graphics industry at large from using it.
ZBrush has its own controls to fit its own functionality, nuances and conveniences. I would say Blender has some of the same kind of thing, though to be honest, it's controls are far easier to tweak than in ZBrush.
People in the industry don't complain about ZBrush's controls--they learn them and adapt. I've never heard a professional say, "I can't use ZBrush with Maya because it operates completely different from Maya." But for some reason, when it comes to Blender, a simple thing as the LMB not being select by default is an entire showstopper with some.
I'd say that any software worth using is worth taking a little time to learn. If some aren't even willing to check if there's a simple way to adjust the usability with Blender, I really don't think things with Blender ought to be catered to their demands.
...of course if Blender developers would feel so proud of their creation and believe in its utter perfection, as to not listen to what most people are saying, well... then there'd be nothing to do, I guess, and Blender would keep being the center of their (unique, small, unknown) universe.
But, if reaching out people is the task at hand (and I believe it is), then developers should take serious note of the fact that most newcomers complain about the RMB selection system in Blender.
I teach Blender and I know statistics are clear about this point in particular.
I'm not saying Blender is unusable because of it, it's just an unecesary annoying behaviour, in my opinion.
Simple idea for hotkeys:
Add a TAB or HOLD function for hotkeys.
How this should work:
TAB a hotkey would be the same as the current situation.
HOLD a hotkey for a short moment would bring up popup menu with extra options.
( In the user preferences you should have the option for how long you should hold a key before the menu pops up. )
Lets take for example the R ( Rotate ) key.
Tab it would just immediately rotate the object as normal.
Holding it would bring a popup menu with some options like:
-Rotate around X axis
-Rotate around Y axis
-Rotate around Z axis
-Rotate around Pivot Point
-Rotate around another object
The same would go for Extrude in edit mode:
Holding it would bring a popup menu with some options like ( depending on what you have selected offcourse ):
-Extrude in X,Y or Z axis
-Extrude region
-Extrude individual
-Edges only
-Vertices only
Changes to do Blender for newbies, my opinion!!!
- Change the "select object" to left mouse button by default (the first thing that I change)
- Include de click and draw by default as all 3d software that I know, I would leave the shortcut with the letter B also, because is very usefull too.
- Chance the shortcut of "move view" to middle mouse button by default, this is common in a lot of 3d software.
- Include in "properties panel" a sub-panel for diferents views of the camera: left, top, bottom...
- Include in "properties panel" or in "3dviewer" a few button for rotate, pan, and zoon the view.
- Check by default de option "Prompt Quit" in Blender User Preferences.
That's all. On the other hand I must say "I LOVE YOU BLENDER", "BLENDER TEAM YOU ARE MY HEROES" :D Thanks a lot for do this amazing soft :)
Switching the left mouse button’s function to the right mouse button’s function is too simple.
Just go to the User Preferences under File, and then to the Input tab, then go down to “Select With” and choose “Left” and finally hit Save User Settings to save it as your new default. It’s so simple, even a newcomer can do it.
If a newcomer won't even check the User Preferences for solutions, they're not worth catering an entire redesign to, just to cater to laziness.
Also, changing the shortcut of “move view” to middle mouse button by default would make me and many other users terribly sad. Sadder than puppies left out in the rain. :(
It just makes a whole lot more sense to map the majority of your view navigation to the middle mouse button. You're rotating your view far more than you're moving your view.
Since you navigate your 3D view so much in modeling, sculpting and 3D texturing, it makes sense to make it largely a one-handed operation.
You still need the Shift key to do move your view, but the most important view navigation functions are one-handed work mapped to the middle mouse button.
Personally, I absolutely hate having to holding down the Alt key just to rotate my 3D view around. To me, that's one of the worst designs in programs like Maya, Max, and esp. Mudbox.
Holding down the MMB to rotate the view makes complete sense as a default, as well as scrolling the wheel to zoom in and out around the selected object.
Mouse button clicks are much easier on the hand than keyboard strokes, so if I can reduce a couple hundred (or thousand) Alt key strokes a day just with navigating my 3D view, I'd much prefer it.
The idea is down the MMB as you say, sorry my english is basic. Keet blending (y)
My thoughts on the off-topic of changing mouse.
No thanks, RMB select for me.
I like knowing that when I press RMB it will select, not do some action like drag an object or toggle between selected and doing action.
RMB is for select (or cancel), LMB is for actions. There is reasoning behind it all.
As they say selecting is such a frequently used task, Blender has chosen to give it its own (almost exclusive) physical button. No fiddling around toggling between selection mode or do-action mode here.
What it also means is that you can share the strain of 10000's of clicks a day over two fingers instead of one. Personally I find the RMB finger sits in a much more relaxed position on the mouse than the LMB finger does.
Blender does not work the same as other applications, and changing to LMB select doesn't "fix" that (some sort of idea that blender is broken)
Blender is not a word processor for grandma's nor is 3dsmax, these are highly technical, complex and hard applications.
It would probably take at-least a year to be anywhere near fluent with these applications, plenty of time to 'learn' a different way to select.
...but then, you can drag with the RMB to move an element in Blender. That's an action... with the RMB... ;)
The real thing is that Blender should be comfortable to people working in a flexible environment, where several different apps are used.
Standards exist for a reason: Take advantage of pre existent knowledge.
I don't mean Blender should mimic all functions in other 3D software, but it'd be beneficial for the adoption of Blender that users could find a friendly environment when they first try it out.
For that to happen, the defaults should be carefully chosen, probably there would be presets for many usual things, just to ensure fast, nice results could be obtained with relative ease.
But most important of all, Blender should not help short-circuit users brains when the go back to other apps! And believe me this is something currently happens, especially with the RMB-Select thing.
"- Include de click and draw by default as all 3d software that I know, I would leave the shortcut with the letter B also, because is very usefull too."
I second that one too.
Why having to activate a shortcut, when you could just click and drag in an empty space to select? (as with any other piece of software, by the way).
Also, regarding the frame selection mode, the option to work in Crossing/Window modes (as in 3ds Max/AutoCAD) is VERY useful.