Actually, all the time. Your basically making a selection set for UV seams. I absolutely love this feature and can’t imagine modeling without it. I often will UV unwrap a model several times at several different stages of the model. Why on earth would I want to have to reselect my seams every time I want to re-unwrap? And for the record, maya does almost the same exact thing for it’s workflow, only in maya you have to make garbage uvs on the model before you can start defining seams.
I’m all for suggestions to improve blender. I’ve made tons myself. But be careful in assuming that your workflow is the only valid one and everyone else’s is just inferior. That makes people grumpy around here. I know, I’m guilty of doing it myself.
For example(!), I feel your pain Blurrymind! Severin coded an awesome feature that worked just like Maya’s implementation and it would have been a huge productivity boost for working in the graph editor, but someone disagreed and now the code has been left to rot all because someone thought that adding 1 toggle switch to a menu would add too much clutter(!). Gee thanks for dredging up that painful memory! /rant. <insert irony here>.
Actually it’s not, Hadriscus. It’s a massive pain in the ass to have to do that every time you select a curve or set of curves. As was stated by the OP, 1 or 2 extra clicks x 1000 per day adds up to a lot of frustration.
Oh, and Chris, I’m also not sure why anyone would want to disconnect their selections between UV editor and the 3d view, but I know there are many who love it and depend on it. And it’s also something I can “set and forget” so it really doesn’t slow down your workflow once you’ve tailored blender to your liking. Plus, it’s nice to know the feature is there if I ever run into an instance where I’m happy to have it.
That’s one thing I absolutely adore about blender. It’s SO customizable! I’ve tailored my controls and UI to behave very close to Maya, while keeping all the strengths of blender intact. It feels so good to me now that I’ve taken the time to customize the UI.
One of my biggest pet peeves on the modeling side is the inability to edit more than one object at a time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to edit 2, or 5, or 20 individual models together at the same time, but couldnt because I can only go into edit mode on one object at a time. I can combine the objects, but then I lose their pivot info and that’s very rarely a good thing.
How do you want Blender to behave ? Usually when selecting a controller it has multiple channels so how do you specify which one you want active without clicking on it in the list ?
Me and Fahr wrote very specifically on that at the bug tracker and at the thread about improving the animation workflow in blender.
basically its about how the f-curve editor behaves and how it could be a little bit smarter - save the user lots of clicking and button pressing. This design already exists in Maya and is even partially the default behavior.
when you select a controller - no channels are yet selected - show all of its channels and normalize their curves
when you select a channel or multiple channels -upon the selection- Do:
1.(optional tickbox) Automatically hide all the curves of channels that are not selected (no need to hit SHIFT-H every time)
(optional tickbox) Automatically normalize it’s curves (no need to hit Numpad dot every time)
Maya does those things by default and is much better in terms of design that way - because the software removes a big chunk of the redundant boring and repetitive task of displaying curves
This was done as a patch that combined both features into one- but some of the old blender developers/animators were against it and started convoluting the design with more redundant steps that defeated the purpose. Then we came to a middle ground and since then this was forgotten by everyone along with the thread. Basically they want to make it so you have the option, but to get the shift-h behavior, you have to click on the eyeball icons, rather than the channels. And you have to click on the channels to get the automatic normalization. This is of course done in two steps. This way in my opinion maya still has it better- as it is just select the channels and its done - it does both things.
Here I added the point:
This to me is like the holy grail of redundant workflow steps in blender in terms of animation. It still has some really nice things that other software lacks though. Not saying its not good as it is. It just could be so much better with two simple tickboxes that enable those features.
You’re of course absolutely right. I didn’t mean to assume everyone else’s workflow is inferior. Apologies if I came over that way.
I just genuinely couldn’t see why the Mark Seams thing would be deemed necessary.
Good to know. That’s going to be a tough pill to swallow coming from MODO where I’m definitely used to being able to enter Component Mode (MODO’s equivalent of Edit Mode) while having several objects selected and changing all of them at the same time.
Shouldn’t it be possible to write a script that upon entering Edit Mode while having more than one mesh object selected cuts and pastes the mesh data from all objects into one object, so they can then be edited together - and upon returning to object mode move the data back to their individual objects? I’m not familiar enough with coding nor with how Blender works to know whether or not what would work but it’s the first solution to that problem that would come to my mind.
Also, I have no doubt that Blender’s customisability will be something I get tremendous use out of once I’m more familiar with the ins and outs of Blender and where to adapt Blender to my workflow and where to adapt my workflow to Blender if it’s beneficial. This is one of the things that brought me from Maya and C4D to MODO after all - the malleable UI, hotkeys, pie menus, form editor, macros and the ability to build your own tools via the Tool Pipe (docs).
I would also like to see multi-object editing, but it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon because it will likely require major changes in the way the various Blender modes work.
The fact of it being a rather sizable project assumes that it is done properly and not a hack (because not only do you cover multi-mesh editing, but multi-mesh UV editing as well. Then you would need to support such tools as the bridge operator where you need to decide what happens when the selection goes across multiple objects). Then you throw in sculpt mode and the painting modes which further increases the scope. I know a lot of people are open to the idea of throwing a hack in the code to work in the meantime, but it could cause more trouble down the road than it’s worth.
No, I wholeheartedly agree - something like this should be implemented on a general and fundamental level instead of as a quick hack that only works in one specific instance but leaves a million edge cases and exceptions open.
I hate to sound like a broken record but this is why I think MODO is so brilliantly designed - tools are implemented on such a core/general/generic level that they remain extremely solid and work as expected in pretty much any situation and tool combination. That approach is much more challenging on the developers than just slapping hacks and exceptions on top because every single tool and change to MODO has to remain consistent with its fundamental concepts and principles but it makes for an astounding and intuitive interoperability across various tools throughout the software. Which then allows for very creative workflows that even the developers hadn’t planned for.
When snapping is enabled and you extrude an edge, it doesn’t automatically snap to the surface (for example, for retopology). You have to select each vertex and press “G”. All I want is some shrinkwrap-modifier-like behaviour without having to use a shrinkwrap modifier (because it limits you in other ways, for example when you don’t want to follow the sculpted mesh).
Proportional editing is always a circle. I know, this is a feature request, but an oval proportional falloff would be nice. Maybe with X and Y controls in the properties.
I don’t see the sense of the RenderLayers “Exclude” option. The problem is: Everything ticked on in the “Exclude” option doesn’t affect the render. It’s EXACTLY the same as the “Scene” option, just you have to tick the reverse buttons. Meaning the “Exclude” option is pretty useless, and if you forget to tick the reverse buttons, some objects will be missing in your render. So you have to test render, look if the render is right, adjust, render again… it sucks.
In my opinion, the “CTRL+T” (showing Texture Space) shortcut should be removed. The reason for this is (for me) the keyboard. It’s too close to the “CTRL+Z” (Rendered View), which I use a lot. And it is annoying to have to tick on “automatic texture space” again and disable the “view texture space”. You can achieve the exact same effect in the Node Editor. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s annoying.
Importing a texture (like an alpha map) in to the sculpt mode. Why do I first have to import it into the textures tab, and then choose it from the sculpt menu? There should be an “open” button right in the sculpt menu, that opens the texture and then automatically adds it to the textures tab. I mean, there is a “new texture” button already, an “open” button right next to it wouldn’t hurt.
What is the sense of “Use Nodes”? Of course I want to use nodes when I open the Node Editor, that’s what it’s made for.
The curve modifier. There is a reason I’m scared of using it. Because it does everything except what it should do. What do I want when I use a curve modifier? I want to duplicate/extrude something along a curve. What I usually do not want is it to create some abstract art in my viewport. MODOs “curve extrude” is one of the best examples of how it should behave. Activate tool, click, click, click, adjust curve, done. The cool thing is that MODO automatically aligns the geometry with the curve and you don’t have to worry about the rotation of either the curve. Here is a video of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFJWSuG6Ysc
This is a personal thing. When I set a loop cut in Maya, and the loop cut goes behind the geometry, it’s dotted, not a solid line. It just helps you to visualize where your loop cut is actually going. In Blender, its confusing because it’s simply a solid line and sometimes, for example when working on a character, you don’t know if your topology is layed out bad or if it’s just Blender doing his thing…
The preview for materials in the dropdown menu (not in the material editor) is pretty much useless, because it’s a 16px * 16px tile. How should I recognize my material from a 16px16px image? Either increase it to at least 6464px or just leave it out for the sake of performance. Because I can’t tell if my material is shiny or not from looking at a tiny tiny image. With textures it’s about the same. I know it’s “to fit it seamlessly in the UI”, but if you can’t properly see what material you choose (except for recognizing it by the name) then this is useless.
KINjO: I got the #1 (thanks). But I think, you understood the #2 wrong. It’s not about the proportional falloff being smooth or random, it’s about the area of the falloff. The curve (like “Random”, “Linear”, etc.) is always round. Like, when you scroll with your mouse, it’s always a circle. What I’d like to have is an ellipse. In MODO for example, you can adjust the area, this operation effects by squishing and stretching a circle.
To make it clear: When you set the type to “Constant”, than grab faces from a highly subdivided plane, the faces that are pulled will form an exact circle. It’s not possible to make that an ellipse with the tools currently in Blender. That’s the problem.
Scene layers enable and disable layers for the whole scene… regardless of the render layer you’re currently working on. Exclude layers ensure that specific layers (although active for the overall scene… for other render layers) are excluded from the current render layer. It’s a very useful feature.
Showing texture space is Shift+T. Ctrl+T is a shortcut for adding a Track to modifier. Rendered View is Shift+Z. Undo is Ctrl+Z. But you’re welcome to change the hotkey for showing texture space. Are you on an QWERTZ keyboard?
There are times, after setting up a node network, that you want to see the raw render without the influence of nodes at all. This check box allows you to do exactly that without changing anything in your node network. Should it be enabled by default? Probably wouldn’t hurt… but the check box does make sense.
You’ve misunderstood the purpose of the modifier. Notice that it’s under the Deform column. It’s actual name is the Curve Deform modifier. You use it when you want to deform a mesh using a curve.
Sure it would be nice to have larger material icons. But in their current state, they’re far from useless. They could be more useful, but I know I personally use them all the time.
Agreed that we did indeed convolute the design at first in our attempts to preserve something else that is useful in other workflows. But the final design we landed on fits all of the considered workflows well (I think?) and is a better design than what any of us had initially proposed. It was a compromise of sorts, but I think in the end it was really more of a win-win than a compromise. But I may well be missing something.
Basically they want to make it so you have the option, but to get the shift-h behavior, you have to click on the eyeball icons, rather than the channels. And you have to click on the channels to get the automatic normalization. This is of course done in two steps.
That wasn’t the final design as I understood it. If it was the final design (and I simply misunderstood) then I agree that is bad, and I’ll happily argue to change it.
But my understanding of the final design was that both visibility and normalization would be optionally tied to the eyeball icon, so it would still be single-click to get both behaviors at once. And selection then stays decoupled from visibility/view changes, which was the primary thing I was trying to preserve.
