Almost all software has a proper loading screen that provides the user with feedback within reasonable time, which makes me question why blender doesn’t already have its own loading screen?
IMHO popping up with a console about “reading new prefs:” (with no percentage or any indication of completion), doesn’t seem awfully professional. I still have no idea how this information is of any use to the user, let alone communicating to the user that the program is loading.
Blender in general looks very professional in my opinion, and the website reskin/upgrade has also added to this, however opening the program with a console can confuse and scare users.
Now while Blender does open reasonably quick (on a fast computer) it can take a while on say a 6+ year old laptop, at which point “Reading new prefs:” doesn’t help tell the user whether the program has frozen, or still loading.
Unity has a loading screen
cryengine has a loading screen
photoshop has a loading screen
HECK even Gimp has its own loading screen (with a progress bar)!
So why does Blender not have a loading screen, and why is it necessary to bring up a console with some meaningless (to the user) text??
Maybe the developers have SSDs so they haven’t really noticed? I have got one in my system and Blender loads to the splashscreen in 2 seconds at most. Closing and reopening it again is even faster since the OS caches program content into system RAM. I’ve never really thought of this, though.
GIMP loads much slower on my pc so a loading screen might actually be needed there to give the user some feedback on what is actually happening.
These programs have splashscreens, just like Blender. You’re asking for useless information to be rushing by, while Blender is loading? Doesn’t sound like a great feature to me.
Programs like GIMP need a progress bar, because it just takes forever to load. Blender loads almost instantly on my system.
My personal opinion: If Blender takes more than a 1-2 seconds to start (it’s near instant for me), then the solution is not a loading screen… it’s to make Blender start faster.
Also note that I’m talking about Blender with the default scene. If you double-click a 200MB .blend file in your file browser and it auto-launches Blender, it’s not Blender that’s taking a while to start… it’s your file. Now… should there be a loading screen or progress bar for opening large files? That might be worth considering.
Blender launches almost instantly ok my ssd. Even on my hdd it’s quite quick. Dont think a loading bar is necessary. A minimal user feedback “that something is happening” is provided by the visible console.
Btw, with an ssd even the photoshop loading screen rushes so fast by that you cant read anything anyway.
Even when I ran Blender from an external HDD over a slow-ish USB connection (I build to my SSD now), Blender’s startup was so fast that I never even thought about it. Not sure a screen that would show up for a whole 0.1 seconds for many users is worth the effort, and in fact, this is the only complaint I’ve ever seen in nearly 10 years with Blender.
Thanks for the replies, sorry about the additional thread, I don’t check this part of the forum very often.
Most of the ideas/comments given seem reasonable, and as blender opens up so fast I can see how the loading screen, or even splash art would be barely visible for very long either.
Originally I was just thinking of something small like the Blender logo popping up in the middle of the screen while its loading (sort of like league of legends does before going full screen), but I didn’t really provide the right examples in the description.
One of the impressive things about Blender is how fast it loads. Im using an IBM thinkpad and Blender barely takes more than a second or two to load. Gimp on the otherhand is painfully slow.
When I use Houdini or Maya to open large project files (using workstation computers), the computer practically freezes. No loading screen, no visual indicator, just a minute or two of unresponsiveness. I think a loading screen for huge scenes would be great even in Blender, but the industry doesn’t appear to see the need. It would be cool to have it in Blender (and in Maya/Houdini), but I don’t think it’s fair to make Blender look like it’s “behind the times” or “unprofessional” in this regard.
Blender in general looks very professional in my opinion, and the website reskin/upgrade has also added to this, however opening the program with a console can confuse and scare users.
Now while Blender does open reasonably quick (on a fast computer) it can take a while on say a 6+ year old laptop, at which point “Reading new prefs:” doesn’t help tell the user whether the program has frozen, or still loading.