K-3D mailing list :)

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 10:45 pm

Ok. I, from time to time browse the k-3d mailing list to check on progress. Today, I found this little post entitled "UI thoughts after playing with new Blender":

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/foru ... um_id=7633

It's from some guy called Joe Crawford. I believe he has something to do with development of K-3D (responsible for new UI design I think(?). I just thought that his notes about the new release of Blender might be interesting.
I'll say that these guys are quite cocky, and really hate Blender's UI. Here's something I agree on, though:

"Having to click on release during tweak mode. Tweak (drag and
drop moving of verticies): Implemented perfectly in wings3d.
Implemented in Blender, but a horrible design decision that forces the
user to click at the end of te operation makes it confusing and almost
useless."

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 2:52 am

Is he talking about the widget?

You can do both press-drag-release and click-move-click so I don't know what he's on about.

You can also do that with the gestures (although the longer of the line after which it registers is way too long when dragging IMHO, but that's another issue).

Martin

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 5:02 am

He's talking about when you click+drag on an object or sub-object itself to select and move it. This is something that frustrates me immensely, too. You may remember Hos made a patch for it which you (theeth) committed to tuhopuu for a while (and was lovely!) but it's disappeared now.

No, the click+drag on the centre circle of the manipulator is not the same, because the manipulator is only on selected items, meaning you have to click to select it first, then drag to move, which (along with the current method of having to click to confirm a drag that has already started) completely misses the point of a quick tweak action, when you just want to nudge vertices around or something.

emack · Post by **emack** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 5:19 am

I understand the Blender UI desire to avoid click-drag behavior to avoid mouse strain, but this is one area where breaking that rule would work better. I've used tweak mode on Silo; it's just great. Really fast, and lets you sculpt vertices very, very quickly. Perhaps adding a setting or hotkey to turn this type of tweak behavior on/off would satisfy both sides?

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 9:25 am

First, thanks whomever moved the thread to the correct forum.

Yes, In this case adhering blindly to the Blender philosophy seriously hurts workflow. I do understand the reasoning, but at least giving a custom option to turn off "sticky" tweak, would be nice.

theeth · Post by **theeth** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 9:45 am

With the context argument in transform now, it would be trivial to make it use draw with tweak.

Nothing to do now, so I might as well try putting that in tuhopuu (competing in popularity with broken's latest commit

)

Martin

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:04 pm

theeth wrote:broken's latest commit )
Martin

Yeah. Saw that

Almost tempted to install cygwin again and make a fresh build.

Edir: or not

Cygwin failed to build it. I probably did something wrong of course, been awhile since i tried it. Ah, well, have to wait for some other kind soul to do it..

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 4:21 pm

off-topic: No, it was my fault, I forgot to commit a file. Sorry for leaving you all in the lurch while I was out having fun

back on topic: If you could do that, Martin, you will be loved by one and all (well at least some, anyway!)

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 5:48 pm

Great. Put up a build in the 'testing builds' forum, for those interested in trying the new stuff

ideasman · Post by **ideasman** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 2:27 am

I had a look at k3d 0.4x and it was quite capable but lots of blocking dialogs, 0.5+ loots realy nice, a GTK2 interface with a top tab bar like Lightwave.
Create/Modify/Filter etc

They have also moved from Javascript to Python..

Might port some of py scripts.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 12:54 pm

Hmm. You wonder why these self-proclaimed UI-geniuses chose to place vert/edge/face-selections as far away from the 3d-window as they possibly could. Pah!

Tim"s a bit bored by UI (he"s been working on it for
months and alone)

Yeah

I do like the Maya-shelf, though. And the option for fullscreen, which sadly is removed from Blender. Orientation within the 3d-window is weird, especially the rotate. What's up with that?

Blender's transform manipulators are way better.

And why is there no forum, where users can discuss the program?

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 4:03 pm

Now, now, there's no need to go down this path. They can do things their way and we can do things our way - we don't need any perceived rivalry or one-upmanship.

By the way, thanks Martin for the commit, and thanks Bellorum for the testing build! I generally don't post them myself because there's sometimes half-done experiments in own own tree, plus I'm on a Mac so it's not of much use to most people anyway.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 4:09 pm

broken wrote:Now, now, there's no need to go down this path. They can do things their way and we can do things our way - we don't need any perceived rivalry or one-upmanship.

Well, in this case it's mainly because I want to like his application - I mean, the more out there the merrier. I wouldn't check their mailing list frequently othrwise. And I really think they should put up a forum so people like me can nag on the developers, like I do here

Constant user feedback is important, and I don't see how they get it now. Ah, well. Back to writing a proposal.