Tune Up!

This addons performs major modifications on top of Blender default settings in order to improve usability and provide a better workflow.

  • Keyboard: Allows you to separate custom key shortcuts from default Blender configuration in order to make it easier to port them to newer versions or other machines.
    You can edit data.json, inside the addon’s folder, in order to add your custom shortcuts and load them through the addon.

      - User Preferences:  You can edit data.json to store your custom settings and load them through the addon. 
    
       - Blender Panels: Lets you remove panels from the interface. Many  of them are innecessary or duplicated taking screen space, which can be  used for another new functionality.
    
      - New Menus: 
          - Object's specials menu (W key)
            has been improved so you dont have to access the properties  panel in order to perform common operations like shade flat/smooth or  change the display or make the object selectable...
          - Curve Menu (W Key)
          Added show/hide handles and normals
    
          - Quickly change layout (F5)
           You can enable this menu by pressing the loading keyboard  button. It display a pie menu where you can change the screen layout,  editor type or access any properties panel area.
    
          - Headers Buttons
           A button with a red crossed ghost icon is added to the 3D view,  Image/UV and  dopesheet editor in order to remove deleted data, like  meshes, materials, images, textures...
          These buttons are  contextual so the uv/image editor will only purge images or textures,  the dopesheet will delete animations and the 3d view all of them at  once.
    
      - New functionality.
          See "Operators Loaded" section below.
          This functionality is optional as soon as you dont bind it to any shortcut.
    
      - Profiles:
          Loads/Saves Blender current configuration. 
           - Save: it will create two zip files and store the local and user  profile files. These are the startup file, user preferences and  installed addons.
          - Load: It  will replace all those files. The addons wont be overwritten so if you  are moving to a newer blender version, the addons will be respected but  it will install all the missing ones.
          - Open Configs: Opens the folder where the profiles are stored.
    
      Configuration:
          It will read the file "data.json" and pull user preferences or keyboard setup or panels to destroy.
    
          - Load Keyboard: Loads keyboard setup from data.json.
          - Load Preferences: Loads preferences from data.json.
          - Load Panels: Loads panels names to destroy.
          - Open Config: Opens the file data.json
    

Operators Loaded:
Description of all the new functionality.

v 0.6

  • Profiles doesnt save addons

  • Layout menu split areas

  • Toggle quad views

  • Fixed smart mark seam and smart pin

  • Sync Filenames

  • Edit Externally

  • Make texture

  • Mesh origin set (not mine)
    SEQUENCER

  • Zoom to active

  • Change name

  • Hide and mute

  • Arrow keys

  • PageUp/PageDown

  • Alt Navigation

  • Move clips

  • Align clips

  • Video In/Out

  • Slip Clips

  • Copy Trim

    v0.5:

    • curve.primitive_bezier_curve_add: “Adds a bezier curve as a straight line with automatic handles”
    • curve.select_path: “Allows to select intermediate points between 2 selected points”
    • graph.show_toggle: “Shows/Hides/Solo selected animation curves”
    • mesh.select_pair_rings: “Select rings each two or more loops” (in development)
    • mesh.smart_mark_seam: “Toggles mark seams”
    • uv.smap_pin: “Toggles pin uv”
    • uv.smart_select: “Allows sync Uv editor with mesh select modes”

Download Link

WATCH CAREFULLY BEFORE UPGRADE INSTALL!
Upgrade from 0.5 to 0.6.

TuneUP 0.6 Video

Tutorial:

View/Download video on HD

Awesome!!! This is ingenious!!!
Tested with 2.75a
Thank you for sharing!!!

Ton needs to see this.

Thanks for the comments, please update the file if you have it, i forgot to change a variable and may fail on other computers.

The error was at utils.py, line 4, set dev = False to fix it or download the addon again.

hi i really like the remove panels and clean up unused unassigned material ( ghost icon )
thank you for this plugin im able to cleanup/remove the panels easily without touching the python code

This is insane! I have been dreaming about a script like this for years! This is exactly what Blender needs!

Okay i got an error when i was trying to save my profile

.


First, I just want to say, great add-on!
At the moment, I am getting the same error on this end…

Ok, you can try this.

First:
Check lines 4 and 6 at utils.py, it should read as:
dev = False
path = os.path.dirname(file)

Second:
its weird that an installation directory has a folder called “modules” in between scripts and addons. Ive checked blender 2.75 and it doesnt have such a folder.

Your addons folder should look like as C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.75\scripts\addons

And third:
You are getting a “permission denied error”, thats not an addons problem but a windows one. Once steps 1 and 2 are ok try to start blender as administrator.

Hope it helps.

Ive updated the addon, now is a little more reliable getting directories.

You were right, for some reason i needed to start blender in as administrator (i did not install throught the settings menu).

here are some more questions:

  1. I can’t remove Transform from the “n” panel, how can i do that?
  2. same with UV vertex in the uv editor.
  3. What new features are included in this script regarding the uv editor? I found that you can mark seams with “m” but no shortcuts seems to work for me, also i know about 1234 for modes, thats about it. Is it something extra that might be useful?
    4.Is it possible to somehow take away things in Blenders Menus that i dont need?
    5.I can’t get the keyboard shortcut from your script to work. Is it anything more i have to do to activate them?

Thanks a lot for the best addon in the universe!

Program Files is also a protected folder. Basically all folders that you didnt create are protected somehow, some of them requires less permission than others.

  1. I can’t remove Transform from the “n” panel, how can i do that?

1.-There are a few hardcoded panels where it doesnt work… yet. The one that i knew of is the grease pencil at 3dview “N” panel and now transforms and uv vertex. Ill look into it.

What new features are included in this script regarding the uv editor? I found that you can mark seams with “m” but no shortcuts seems to work for me

3.-Is up to you to enable the functionality you want. To do this open the config file and uncomment the lines you like, for smart mark seam goto keyboard section and its arond line 75 for the 3d view and line 97 for the uv editor. Once its done press “Load keyboard”.

NOTE: Be aware that map names are hierarchical, for example Window or Screen will register keys before any Editors, this means. If theres a shorcut at Window assigned to “m” and then you set a shortcut for “m” at the UV editor, this last wont trigger beacuse the one assigned to Window is first. Make sure theres no key conflicts.

Is it something extra that might be useful?

The video explains a lot of useful operations that i could think of. Check it out, keyboard section

4.Is it possible to somehow take away things in Blenders Menus that i dont need?

4.-No. its not posible unless you reprogram the entire menu, which is easy but requires coding. Its a good idea, ill do some tests but i dont think so.
5.-Same as step 3, my key setup was an example but is disabled by default, uncomment the lines you like at the config file.

Thanks.

I will try all of theese things. Do you think its possible to make the uv editor always display an selected objects faces/uv lines inside the uv editor as soon as you enter “edit mode” in the 3d view WITHOUT having to select everything? (i never use the “sync” option because is just to backwards for me.

By the way, i can remove both grease pencil and translate on the “t” panel but the other ones does not work for me.

again i can’t thank you enought. I have waited for this script for so long. It will make freelance work so much easier!

Keep up the awsome work!

I get an error when trying to activate the keys in the data.json. Since i have no clue what i am doing you are probably gonna fall of the chair when you see this, have a look:


:slight_smile: ye its ok. that data is array like. this is comma separated between elements. Because you only have one element, just remove the comma at the begining, theres nothing to separate. If you were to add more keys add a comma on the subsequent keys.

Surprisingly enough, the error message is very accurate, line 116 column 4.

Worked great, thanks!

Hi Mackraken, super nice add-on, thanks, cause it was a pain in the a$$ to always copy manually the add-ons to another version.

where can I find these two zip files, because my addon/tuneup/config/ is empty,but if i load config the saved config files show up, i am currently using 2.75RC1.

This looks really promising but I have a couple of questions/comments:

  1. I’m not a programmer so I’m afraid of crippling Blender.
    B) Instead of “destroy” which sounds bad, could you call it “Hide” or something less… permanent sounding? Just a suggestion.

Thanks for creating this.

@DERBENDER

the right path should be addon/ui_tune_up/configs/
Download the addon again and overwrite preferences.py. That will make the addon save the profiles at the right place.
To find the profiles you already have open blender go to scripting and at the console type bpy.utils.script_paths()[0], the profiles should be inside that folder, cut them and paste at the right config folder (which is the one inside the addon)

@Safetyman

Ill think about it, actually the technical name should be “unregister” the panels.

I’m not a programmer so I’m afraid of crippling Blender.

I encourage you not to be. Blender use to be a very stable program in general. If something goes wrong its easy to recover and the addon’s error handling has been carefully taking care of.

that worked, but the add-on created a new folder under …/scripts/modules/addons/ui_tune_up/configs/ if I save a new config
the add-on should use the existing folder under …/scripts/addons/ui_tune_up/configs/

also the files it created were huge,LOCAL.zip USER.zip were 17,2GB and the backup 4,3GB.