Blender’s New 2.72 UI Feature – Pie Menus
Aidy Burrows of CG Masters shares a tutorial on the new pie menus upcoming in Blender 2.72.
Aidy Burrows writes:Don’t panic!! If you really don’t like them, you’re safe, this is an addon and it’s not on by default so you can rest easy.
However, let’s say you’re a little peckish and you do find yourself tempted to take a little nibble at the pie then launch your user preferences, head over to the addons tab, and type ‘pie’ in the search filter. Enable the checkbox and go crazy gesturing your way through tools, views and settings.
It’s early days and I’m sure they’ll be a ton of feedback and further options to customize them coming soon.
Great. Lets see how it goes then.
I really like the new Feature of pie menu’s,
-the one thing I really miss is a scroll function with the scroll button and a middle button to confirm selection.
And if anyone wants to bake their own pies: https://vimeo.com/103321600
:-)
Can you save this?
how to save
I’m starting to love this add on, really helps work faster !!!
I like the idea, and this is one of the GUI changes I approve of.
This looks great – once the Tab button has been pie-disabled ;-).
They have only merged the pie menu side of the equation into trunk sticky keys are coming much later. The are some pie-menu builds with sticky keys on graphicall and what happens in them is that keys keep their normal behavior when you just press them but spawn pie menu’s when you hold them down.
After watching Sebastian’s video(he has posted a link below) I started playing around with them and I’m writing some of my own the problem with no sticky keys is finding which short cut keys I am to change.
Once muslce memory (I think it takes 21 days for that to happen) builds up pie-menus can really speed up your work flow as you can select options through gesturing and not hunting down options like in a linear menu.
a new feature! now everybody can make pixar quality movies at home with friends
Either that is a poor joke or it is a mockery of people who are excited about this (which actually does not include me I only found out what they were today) either way it is in bad taste.
I actually thought it was poking fun at people who make the Pixar statement with regard to any sort of new feature. In that sense, I must admit, I did find it “mildly” humorous, as it doesn’t have any effect on the quality of the work produced. Until I see a response from endike, I prefer to think there was no malicious intent. Maybe he’s serious though?
That is a possible interpretation of the comment. However if you look at others of endike’s comments you will see a series if sarcastic, grouchy, and complaining comments (at least that is how they appear to me). It seems endike is trying to troll BlenderNation, or at least the new feature posts here. I could be wrong…
Best feature since bmesh and cycles.
Hate them, they cause a super slow workflow.
You’ve spent long enough for muscle memory to build?
In not trying to be rude but that is the kind of critisim and gut reaction the devs are going to ignore. If you said like “I don’t like them cause I don’t have enough space on my mousepad to move around on” that would be better. (That is a bad example but I can’t think why they would cause a slow workflow anyway, I haven’t tried them out yet though)
Anyway they are optional.
Wiked!
Is it just me or is this going to be a gamechanger for blender on tablet pcs?
So fast….
Why not? I’ll give it a shot & see if I like it.
Looks great. Unfortunately, have been having a problem with user preferences not opening so I don’t change them. Anyone else on Windows Vista having this issue?
Have you submitted a bug?
Will do, thanks.
I’m kind of not thrilled for these. I will probably use them because they’re better than the current system, but I have some distinct problems:
1: the current paradigm of tap-to-toggle is not possible with pie menus as implemented. If you wanted to turn TAB into a pie menu key to switch between 3D viewport modes, it would be at the expense of the current, very convenient, tap-to-toggle functionality.
2. Pie menus require eight degrees of precision, but also can’t be scaled beyond that. Personally (so subjectively I admit) I think that four degrees of precision are the maximum acceptable for mouse gestures, and anything beyond that is either too precise or conflicts with the rectangle-based window paradigm. But the pie many system also was not designed to branch (maybe it can?), so it is hard-limited to eight options.
3. Pie menus as implemented don’t seem to cop up to the fact that they’re a modal system, and by using them you actually move the mouse cursor, instead of just inputting a mouse gesture without it being interpreted as pointer input (contrast this with rotating the 3D viewport, which is a modal input activated by clicking-and-holding the MMB)
In the mailing list I proposed an alternate system I called gear shif menus because they took their design inspiration from cars’ stick shifts, but that’s a purely untested proposal so I can’t say it’s a better alternative, but I expect this system needs refinement.
I still frequently mistake the dark background from the tabs as being the edge of a space split that wasn’t collapsed.(on some blends I has left is split but scooted it to the side, thus when I see that I tend to try to correct it only to realize it’s the wrong size and actually the penal for the tabs). I guess I could change the background color though
This looks great and I can’t wait to try it… but forgive me now if this is something I missed and is all ready there, but..at first glance I feel that there are too many hotkeys for this to work well. It should have just one, it should be case sensative, meaning it will bring up relevant menus based on where the mouse is on screen and what state you’re in (object/edit). Also, sub-categories so you select one button that might bring up some relevant sub-categories. All with one hotkey to bring up the pie menu.
Anyway… great work.
:)
M
Is this an evolution of the preexisting pie menu addon?
If so, hell yeah. As long as dissolve works now :s