See, that’s why you’re the UI designer and I’m not :D. In all these years of clicking the splash I never found that little region where nothing is highlighted and nothing happens either! I have to say that a lot of programs open with a splash that has to be clicked to go away. But maybe all of those have a special region as well!
Also I thought in AP’s video that it was you he said he had a long conversation with about UI. But that was Duncan and you’re from Duncan, even though you are both UI designers with the same years of experience etc… Or maybe it was you?
I’m not sure if this the right thread to post, but since this one seems to be mostly about conference stuff, let me reply here:
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I think there are many good ideas in Andrew’s proposals, it’s great to see a proposal that approaches things from the perspective of making things easy to learn, he’s certainly thinking out of the box on this and that’s valuable. I consider his proposal a good inspiration and hope he will continue to be involved with Blender UI design.
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Both Andrew and the developers seem to agree that his proposal is not a full design that you could implement as is, and that there are various things in it that would not work well in practice. We also seem to agree that it is not realistic right now to overhaul the entire interface, and there many different opinions on how things should be done of course. But note incremental changes do not mean that you can’t do major improvements.
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I will try to get more volunteer developers involved. Also in Ton’s keynote he mentioned that if there are another 100-150 contributors to the development fund we could hire a developer dedicated to the UI. Finding enough volunteer developers who have time and passion for UI work and can get a deep understanding of Blender and 3D is the most difficult challenge I think.
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I’m not sure where this idea of Ton rejecting the UI team concept comes from, might have missed it somewhere, but Ton and I discussed this before the conference and he has long been pushing to get module teams organized. I think his main objection is that if you bring in external people who do not understand 3D and workflows, it is not going to work well (and I agree). Just like for users the learning curve for 3D software is longer than for word processors, the same applies to UI designers.
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If you think Ton is not open to UI changes to make things easier for new users, then you need to read the last section of his article on code.blender.org. This whole new users vs. advanced users is blown up way too much. But that kind of debate comes with open source I guess.
Also for reference here are the videos of the UI talks:
I thought Andrew’s story about the monkey head was made up. Susan is second to last on the list of meshes to choose from. And why would you need to press “Shift+Delete”? Just press “Delete” or “X” and then confirm with “enter”. At ITT Tech, when an instructor was giving step by step instructions, I had never seen anyone make those kinds of mistakes. I don’t think people using Blender for the first time are that dumb. And even if the whole class was dumb enough to make that mistake, how hard is it to tell them to right click the object and then press delete and then enter? I don’t buy it.
I like Andrew a lot. I’ve been following his tutorials and blogs since “How to make a car wheel” in 2009. But, I think he needed to talk to more people who know what goes into changing the UI before making his proposal. I think the youtube vids was his attempt to get some attention before the conference. He would have been better off talking to people at the conference, one on one before being so vocal.
Andrew did come across as doing a lot of finger wagging at Ton and the developers in his presentation and the youtube proposals. It’s no wonder Ton took offense. I’m glad Ton stood up for himself and the developers. Reading a bunch of books on UI design doesn’t make one a pro at it. My dad refers to people like that as “knowing just enough to be dangerous”. They think they know more than they do and end up making bad decisions or giving bad advice, ignoring those with experience.
Based off some of Andrew’s words lately, I could see him buying another 3D package and learning it, while still doing Blender tutorials. Then, in a couple of years, leaving Blender. I think this backfired on Andrew and he knows it. I didn’t feel the backtracking was sincere. It came across as, “OK, I’m out numbered here. I got to save face and make an exit strategy.” A simplified UI would have benefited Andrew by drawing in more beginners, keeping the money flowing. But now, a lot of those claiming to jump on board if Andrew succeeded to change the UI is going to walk away leaving Andrew without his big bump in BG traffic. The only way I could see him turning things around is if he came up with funds to hire a developer or group of developers to create a fully functional version of his UI proposal and it was a hit. I just don’t see that happening though.
And his claim that Blender’s user base growing slowly conflicts with what Jonathan said about the huge growth he sees at Blender Cookie. I really think Blender is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the near future. I’m very optimistic about where it’s heading and I think Ton and crew are doing a great job. Seeing more press attention, like front page coverage on 3D Artist and Tony DeRose’s comments on open source and Blender shows that Blender is turning heads.
Whats wrong with liking a UI feature that you would like to see in blender? Since its not in blender it means its sh*t?
Price has gone too far by saying blender is broken, that’s like saying hip hop is dead. But I wouldn’t talk down to the guy as if he isnt an active contributor to the blender community; As if he just opened up blender for the first time. Although I disagree with his proposal in whole, he used numbers and tried to gather information. So far, those with vitriolic responses uses no data, just gut feeling…
Annnnnd…Don’t forget to donate to the foundation! If you are able, please support the foundation through your hard earned cash!! And set up an automatic donation so you can just set it ‘n’ forget it!
Huh, what? Seriously, what version of the presentation were you watching? He was upset that Andrew didn’t come to the BF with his proposal. He may have been uncertain about Andrew’s proposal of what the UI team should look like, but that’s hardly being against.
In fact, in between talks that may have given him enough time to consider it and be more descisive. Because you know, that’s how people work when they are confronted with new ideas.
As for the rest conspiracy theorying away that Price wasn’t being honest or that what happened in that video was Roosendaal being vitriolic, and he’s patting himself on the back over that now: You make me sick.
Edit: I’m starting to think the majority here just can’t understand Ton’s thick amsterdamish accent, so they just make up what he says.
Why is this turning into daytime soap opera? Does everyone have too much free time on their hands? During the v9 cycle the UI changed for Houdini also (evolved to be more exact). They had similar problems and solved them pretty nice and without all this drama. All the things Andrew/Brecht and all the other mentioned SideFX was concerned with also. They found a few solutions that worked and implemented them. End of story.
To be honest, I too do think that Andrew’s idea has been confronted with some hostility. It was an idea after all and it should be respected as such. Besides Andrew is not someone who is ignorant about Blender and he has all he right to propose such ideas.
As to his new ui proposal, it has many points that has to be taken very seriously… even if should not be a total change in ui. Making Blender more easily accessible and more versatile is something that should be a goal of all the community.
+1, office power politics at its worst.
This coin has two sides. When there would have been a visible GUI development ,then Andrew wouldn`t have needed to start his topic.
Just curious, what was the reason for stopping the UI development for nearly two years now at all when everybody was so aware that the UI is half finished and needs more work?
Anyways. I`m more than happy that the development at the UI has started again. Best of luck to the involved developers.
I support everything Andrew says. To be honest I haven’t heard any convincing arguments against him. Everything people said boils down to “I learned it this way so it’s the best way”. Clutter of settings and unfamiliarity are the biggest hurdle of the UI and what Andrew says is very much true. A lot of people there had extremely narrow minded elitist opinions about how the UI works based on their experience that they teach to others (did you notice all the people who commented aside from the chairman, were tutors of some kind?).
I have seen people leave Blender. Many times. I have spent much time learning it and it’s not easy. I would be sad to see that knowledge need a replacement. But I wouldn’t think twice before doing it, as I know it will not only improve my performance in the long run, but also make it such that I am LESS likely to have to relearn something to adapt to a different environment in a different studio, as Blender would follow the common standards. I also know that it will mean more people around the world will USE Blender instead of 3Ds Max or Maya, which is in itself a great thing.
I think there has been talk of putting together a UI team long before AP even did the Blender is ‘broken’ Video
After looking at Andrew Price’s presentation on the conference I think certainly he hasn’t to be flamed,he has simply made a proposal.
But it’s the kind of thinking that I find arguable.
Easier UI = more Users = More donations = Better Blender.
It’s utopian.
Given your word choices, I cant help but interpret your reaction as being fueled by an emotional response, which is a good way to have a knee jerk reaction that may not be entirely accurate or objective. This is quite common sadly, usually with topics that people feel strongly about and have a bias they will confirm in the process.
Saying “You make me sick” is a bit too much dont you think? More critical thought is needed, not an angry emotional driven response.
In this case, I specifically used comments like “It does make it sound like he wanted to “put andrew in his place” in front of everyone, maybe not though, it just appeared that way to some extent.”
This is not some absolute proclaimation attacking Ton’s character. It is an observation based on one perception, which I leave quite open for it to be wrong. I use quotes around certain word choices to imply they may not be literal, and word choices such as “appeared that way” to imply its at face value. In the part you quote, I used the word “seemed” to again illustrate a perception that may not be set in stone.
I dont think you are being fair by not acknowledging that and thus jump to another conclusion entirely, one in which I am just sitting here with ill intent creating “conspiracy theories”. Thats quite an assumption on your part, one tied to a confirmation bias and is simply not true.
There are no conspiracy theories being presented here, and at least from me, no ill intent.
It shouldnt be lost on you that I am not the only one who saw what appeared to be Ton using the basis of opposing a UI team to admonish Andrew (or what appeared to be admonishment), which he specifically called out as not being a good approach for Blender. The very same topic of having a UI team was presented by Brecht a few hours later in his UI discussion and Ton seemed to suddenly support and be on board with this “create a UI team” concept. This isnt a conspiracy theory, its an observation that lead to a mixed message being presented. Not everyone might see it that way, given your response.
As for going to the BF before releasing a proposal? I want you to think about that for a second. Should the BF have to green light any mockup or proposal a user gives as a means to generate ideas and contribute to the discussion? Do I need the BF’s greenlight to post mockups in the UI thread or give an opinion on something? How is this healthy to an open source community and mindset?
To be fair, Price did meet with and talk with the developers on numerous fronts, even having Ideasman (Cambell) and DingTo (Thomas Dings) (sorry if misspelled names) on to talk about the UI with him (which lasted a good 2 hours I believe). He has been in contact with the people building blender, he has participated in forum posts and even twitter convos (even with ton himself). Lets not assume he is just going off on his own with no feedback or dialog between the development side of things. He had an idea, came up with a proposal and generated a discussion from it. Why attack him for that? Maybe Ton was upset he created a CGtalk thread about why top tier professionals are avoiding blender, if so thats not what was presented.
In short I think there are a lot of people attacking Price for being a part of the discussion and contributing ideas, merely because he has a much larger audience (that he built) which has access to his ideas, that for some reason it paints a larger target on his back. Is this the kind of message we want to send? That we attack (almost childishly) certain users (known users) because they offer ideas and discussions? Is that really going to help Blender’s image? I dont have to agree with everything Price presented in his concept in order to support his right and expectation to contribute to the discussion. Visually it did look awful, but who really stopped and discussed the thought process, the concept, behind that choice? I cant think of many. It is sad.
I hope in the future you can avoid the “you make me sick” type of reactions. You are free to use that if I start going around advocating the mass slaughter of kittens for their fur, but in this case I think it was a bit to far off the mark and emotionally fueled.
Indeed, there was talk about how to address future improvements to the UI and even putting it on the table. What I believe lead Price to start joining in on the topic was a few UI threads, a personal feeling on teaching the UI to his audience, and Ton’s 2.7x and beyond blog post. I dont believe I ever implied the UI subject or even teams, originated with Price’s recent inclusion into the discussion.
Perhaps it was poor wording on my part that leads to this assumption. To be more accurate, Price presented his talk which included his belief in a UI team, not that it wasnt around before he gave that opinion. For context, I tried to create a distinction between Price’s presentation, Ton’s response, Breckt’s presentation and Ton’s response.
In short Price became a pretty big target for certain people, and its my opinion that it lead to certain inconsistencies.
Here are a somewhat condensed version on Ton’s stance on the UI team from the two talks (Andrew and Brecht) made.
I think what Ton is saying is that he is objecting to having a ‘centralised’ UI team dealing with all the communication between users and developers about all interface issues.
It is more like users should have the option both to talk to (for instance) modelling module developers about the interface. But also could talk with the UI team about this - the team with the ‘global’ expertise with the UI in Blender. And probably the team with the final say on greater UI inconsistencies.
But I think Ton could have been more clear in his words (but he is off course talking from the top of his head). And some of his words are unnecessary critical (example - 50 sec. into the video linked to above). I mean - since the UI team right now is inactive - of course something is not available in the Blender user/developer communication right now.
And I think Ton is flat out wrong when he (later in the Andrew talk) says this.
I mean - in Ton’s own words - Blender is a true community effort. So what is the problem with a community member getting ‘out-side’ opinions about the UI. Making podcasts talking to UI professionals, or persons with a broader view of the CG community. Or asking for feedback about ‘Why are you not using Blender’ in the broader CG community. Or a survey about RMB / LMB ?
This is called research - what is wrong with that ?
To people who flame Price for his suggestions:
Regardless of what anyone thinks, here are facts:
- Blender has a high learning curve
- Blender has a lot of quality of life issues when it comes to tweaking settings (collapse/reveal, switch, scroll, collapse, reveal, scroll… 5 minutes later you got your smoke spread over a slightly larger area…)
- Blender has a lot of menu clutter (comes in hand with the above)
- Blender has barely any graphical elements in UI (which help save space by not having text, which doesn’t scale well)
Andrew’s solutions work for all of these things. You can have your subjective opinions about what kind of issues the solutions may themselves create and suggest improvements that optimize his proposition (and really that is what constrictivity is about, which NOBODY at the conference has provided), but here is the run down version of it:
There are issues. He provides solutions. Instead of flaming someone who’s obviously put a LOT of work and research into the subject, come up with something better. Flaming takes no effort. Constructive criticism does. If you think Andrew is so full of crap, how about you go ahead and come up with something better? I did not expect such an unprofessional response and so much personal bias and negativity from what is supposed to be a community of content developers.
Sainthaven, you yourself are just as ‘guilty’ of emotional response. It doesn’t just require ‘strong words’ being used. Your misreading of the post as me directing the ‘you make me sick’ at you specifically shows the cracks in your objectivity mask, if the tangential unstructured way you write hadn’t done so. An objective un-emotion-driven person writes differently. Besides, I don’t know why you seem obsessed with ‘objectivity’ in this case. There’s few objective things in the world, and realising that the discussion you’re having is emotional driven and subjective is probably going to bring you much further than to pretend you can have an objective discussion. Do not forget, humans are capable of emphathy, which allows the comprehension of subjective arguments.
Okay, I’ll give you that if multiple people feel the same way, there might be an argument to made. However, untill people say why they feel this way, I can’t help but feel people think they are in some kind of war with eachother and are trying to villify and deify each side. And to me, to see two hardworking men being called names like that is indeed sickening.
I don´t get all of this.
I come from Modo, Lightwave and Max. Blender´s UI needs some clean-up and more “button” presence of shortcuts. LMB selection is already in there.
Apart from that, it´s not better or worse than all the other proggies.
So yes, after the struggle the 2.5 revision was I sort of understand Ton feeling a bit miffed about Andrew´s approach, especially the “broken” comment.
But for people in the audience to be so hostile…I don´t know. I was shocked,I thought there was better energy flow between Blenderheads.
Equating user-friendliness to calling beginners stupid is not constructive. The changes that could be made immediately simply got drowned out by all that noise.
Oh well, back to bsurfaces…the reason I started to use B and configured it to look and work almost identically to my modo. Took me 5 minutes. Yep, true story.
I’ve proposed it several times before. So bummed Ton didn’t give me any credit at the conference… 
Originally Posted by Therahedwig Huh, what? Seriously, what version of the presentation were you watching? He was upset that Andrew didn’t come to the BF with his proposal. He may have been uncertain about Andrew’s proposal of what the UI team should look like, but that’s hardly being against.
In fact, in between talks that may have given him enough time to consider it and be more descisive. Because you know, that’s how people work when they are confronted with new ideas.
As for the rest conspiracy theorying away that Price wasn’t being honest or that what happened in that video was Roosendaal being vitriolic, and he’s patting himself on the back over that now: You make me sick.
Edit: I’m starting to think the majority here just can’t understand Ton’s thick amsterdamish accent, so they just make up what he says
.I don’t think anybody disrespected Andrew because of his proposal but rather for all the dissention and the flamewars it caused. He could have gone to Ton first and asked him what he thought before just putting it out there and starting all the controversy, knowing full well that pleasing everybody is impossible.
Any specific examples? Spending some time in the behavioral sciences while I was achieving one of my bachelors degrees helped me identify and weed out any emotional response based reasoning. While I am not perfect, and I am sure there are times I dont catch it, I do find it hard to believe based on nothing more than a claim by you of an emotional response being present on my part here. You will have to make a more well reasoned argument with details if you want to go that route.
Do you have a confirmation bias then? Meaning you have a bias based on my subject matter, poster ID or what not, and seek to confirm that your belief (bias) is correct despite information that would prove otherwise?
Your misreading of the post as me directing the ‘you make me sick’ at you specifically shows the cracks in your objectivity mask
How does one misread “you make me sick”?
Please, explain. How does opposing such wording “crack” the supposed “mask” of objectivity? Cmon now. Read what you are typing here. You are bordering along the lines of ad hominem, seen here and in the quote below.
if the tangential unstructured way you write hadn’t done so. An objective un-emotion-driven person writes differently. Besides, I don’t know why you seem obsessed with ‘objectivity’ in this case.
“An objective un-emotion-driven person writes differently”
This is exactly what a confirmation bias is. By making that claim you have admitted to such. A bias in this case is the interference of rational thought. You are trying to prove your bias by giving clearly subjective statements in the guise of objectivity.
Feel free to elaborate on how an “un-emotion-driven” person has to write.
Do not forget, humans are capable of emphathy, which allows the comprehension of subjective arguments.
That is mere sentiment. What does it objectively mean? Especially in this context? Are you trying to prove your subjective response true with empathy? Empathy is the ability to recognize the emotions of another. What does that have to do with anything outside of perhaps, me recognizing your post for what it is, and responding accordingly. Empathy is closely tied to compassion, so you will have to then explain what compassion has to do with the nature of our discussion…in which you said “you make me sick”. Doesnt that show a lack of compassion? Really I dont think you are arguing anything substantial here with the empathy comment.
Okay, I’ll give you that if multiple people feel the same way, there might be an argument to made. However, untill people say why they feel this way, I can’t help but feel people think they are in some kind of war with eachother and are trying to villify and deify each side. And to me, to see two hardworking men being called names like that is indeed sickening.
But see, what you are admitting to is error on your end. You are approaching comments with emotion rather than reason, and seek to confirm the bias that people “think they are in some kind of war with eachother and are trying to vilify and deify each side”. That is not rational. You are creating a “war” by categorizing certain posters as being on one side or another. If you havent been paying attention, I have been trying to encourage critical thought, not side based warfare.
As for name calling? Who am I calling a name that makes you sick or is deemed “sickening”? How much are you really assuming here? If you are unsure, isnt it smarter to ask a question instead of burn someone at the stake because you perceive them in a biased manner? You are usually better than this based on what I have seen.
What I am bringing to light is the inconsistency being presented and the bit of irony tied to it and the UI discussion. Read my post(s) again, perhaps with an open mind and a lessening of the bias which lead to the categorizing of people into sides creating a form of internal war. While I am certainly not the poster child for poster behavior, I do make mistakes after all, I do not think my responses in it are off or categorized in the manner you have done so.