October 17, 2013

Andrew Price's UI Proposal - My Suggestions

Just saw the latest video that Andrew Price came out with for the proposed Blender UI redesign. Really interesting stuff! Don't agree with all of it, but I think it's a step in the right direction.












I added my two cents to the argument, and that basically is the arrangement of tabs at the top that would define the different tasks one would generally want to accomplish. Here's my post in its entirety:

I actually think it would be more intuitive to make the tabs at the top (model, material, texture), organized according to the steps one would take to complete a project. They would essentially replace the "workspace" tab that currently exists.

So, my ideal order would be: Scene, Model, Rig, Texture, Animate, Light, Render, Composite. Sculpt could be a subset of the Modelling tab and Texture and Material could collapse into one. Similar to how you have it arranged now, there would always be an option on the top left part of the horizontal panel to switch to nodes if that is possible. The scene tab would be the area where you'd define the gravity, background color, ambient occlusion, as well as camera tracking.

The modifiers tab would exist as an option in the properties box on the right when you select an object.
As for the particles, hair, physics, those aspects would be available as a right click function when you select an object. It might show a tiny icon ("Make Smoke Flow, Make Fluid, Make Rigid Body"). This would then be available to tweak and adjust in the modifier tab which would now be in the properties box on the right.

As well, perhaps there could be physics objects available to select in the tools panel to get started, say a sphere that has the flow property applied. The bounding box for the fire and the fluid (for water sims) would be automatically generated, because why would it ever be necessary to manually create it?

These are all the suggestions I can think of now. Thanks for all your hard work!

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