I’m looking for a solution to a problem. I use blender to teach 3D modeling in middle school technology classes. One of my students is following a tree tutorial found on youtube and has found that the sapling add-on UI menu disappears a lot. It always disappears when he loads the saved file, and it often disappears when he deselects to tree object, but does not reappear after he reselects the tree. How do you find a missing UI? Has anyone else used the sapling add-on and seen the same results? Suggestions?
It always disappears when he loads the saved file, and it often disappears when he deselects to tree object, but does not reappear after he reselects the tree
This is the correct behaviour. Just like when you add any new primitive object (cube/sphere, torus etc) those options are only available when you add that object. Once you accept them by doing some other action those option are gone
How do you find a missing UI
Option with the sapling addon is to save as a preset, then you can always reload that preset and make any changes
Well, the problem is, students aren’t applying; they’re getting partway through an action and then saving the project and closing down. When they open the file back up, the add-on menu is gone and they’re no longer able to make edits to it. Is there really no way to go back into the primitive’s add-on menu and make changes to it?
No. Once any operation is done on the object, its vertexes are fixed and all parametric info is lost. If they want to further alter the object’s topology, they will have to use mesh editing or modifiers (assuming they are working on a mesh object).
Blender’s workflow isn’t based on editable primitives (that’s more of a MAX thing), but on create object, then edit.
As Richard said you export a preset within the addon , give it a name and hit export, next time you add a new tree to the scene load the exported preset from within the addon to continue working on the same tree.
Just to add to this, I believe I had heard that they are working on a way to correct this behavior, with a number of the add ons (not just the sapling one), but it may be a few iterations before it makes it’s way into trunk.