Feature proposals (updated aug 12)

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 10:33 am

Made some proposals in the "what do we want for Blender 2.xx"-thread a while ago, and thought it would be best to make a more extensive proposal-page.

Now, I finished the bulk of this late last night, so errors are a given.

Topics

An 'extrude along normals' that works like it should
Inset scale
Cut threshold
Merge/collapse edges
Widget icons
New knife code problem

So quite a lot to chew on. Hope something is of interest

I'm working on presenting some other ideas as well, so the page will grow with time.

Go here:

http://bellorum.50webs.com/feat_props.html

kitsu · Post by **kitsu** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:51 pm

Very good proposals! These are many of the issues that keep me going back to Wings3d.

BTW have you used the Wings3d connect tool? I think this is the optimal behavior for the knife tool. You are allowed to start at any vert or edge and from there you can connect to any other vert or edge in any polygon your selection belongs to. The only problem is that this always produces either tris or ngons...

It might also be useful if there was a quick (automated) way to jump back and forth between Wings and Blender.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 10:14 am

Thanks!

I'm glad at least someone commented. Figured a Wings user would feel right at home with my proposals. I might not have been clear enough for the rest of the people though, since only one has bothered to comment as of yet. Especially the inset tool is somewhat problematic to explain to an outsider, so that they realise what a great tool it is.

kitsu · Post by **kitsu** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:22 pm

IMO one of the oddest and yet most useful features in Wings is how it treats contiguous vs. non-contiguous selections. If you select a bunch of elements that form an island then whatever operation you perform will work on the group as if it was one thing. If however you select two islands then each is operated on independantly.

Ex:

For the extrude region>normal problem I think what Wings is doing is moving each new vertex along the normal of the vertex it came from. If you select some faces in Wings and do extrude region without moving anything, then switch to verts and do move>normal the result look the same as extrude region>normal. This also makes it easier to understand how you can extrude multiple regions along their individual normals with correct results.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:34 pm

No one else interested? Ok.

poutsa · Post by **poutsa** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:56 pm

Hy Bellorum!
Your Proposals and Ideas are Great! Great Done and Explain!

seeYa

Vassilios Boucer

ElBarto · Post by **ElBarto** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 9:28 pm

Hi Bellorum,

about merging things i added a chapter to my proposal too. It is not what kind of things to merge (btw. an excellent idea), it is about more merging options:
http://www.neeneenee.de/blender/features/#26

I added a link to your proposal too.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:04 pm

Hi again. I've been thinking about the new modifier stack. The latest version in CVS is much better, but it's somewhat cumbersome with horizontally aligned buttons. I think it would be a good idea to separate the 'stack' and 'modifier properties' into two panels, somewhat like this (quick copy'n'paste)

So you select a modifier from the stack, and the other panel updates accordingly. Whatcha'll think?

I also think that panels that 'automatically fit', according to chosen alignment would be nice. Like in the example above, the panels would take up quite a lot of space in vertical mode for just a few buttons. I think a recode in this area is certainly called for.

pildanovak · Post by **pildanovak** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:24 am

Hi, your proposal is nice, but I don't agree with your critics of the new subdivide code - I think what counts, is that no not tneeded vertices are created. In fact, a quad will always be 2 tris. old code - 3 quads = 6 tris, new code 2 tris, 1 quad = 4 tris.

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:58 am

pildanovak wrote:Hi, your proposal is nice, but I don't agree with your critics of the new subdivide code - I think what counts, is that no not tneeded vertices are created. In fact, a quad will always be 2 tris. old code - 3 quads = 6 tris, new code 2 tris, 1 quad = 4 tris.

Mathematics have never been my strong side. All I care about is good modeling workflow. Problem is that the new code produces not only more tris, but also non-wanted edges, in places that destroy faceloop flow, especially for organic modeling. Have a look at my headmodeling tutorial for a good example of where this would be catastrophic, and I'm not the only one modeling this way. With the old behavior, I cut and then just tweak the vertices like I want them. With the new behavior, I will have to reorganize the edges, which is tedious and shouldn't be necessary.

Like I said, most of the new subdivide code is great, but in this area (knife), the old behavior is preferred. But whatever, prepare for more complaints, once there's an official release. I still say that a 'keep quads' option is needed, until we get n-gons.

Edit: I'm not the first one complaining either. I don't know who first showed this example, and I couldn't find the post anymore, but it was something like this:

New- 8 tris, 4 quads. Old - All quads. With the old behavior it was easy to create a rounded hole on a surface, for extruding a pipe, for instance. With the new behavior, that takes quite a lot of reworking.

Caronte · Post by **Caronte** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 1:20 pm

kitsu wrote:IMO one of the oddest and yet most useful features in Wings is how it treats contiguous vs. non-contiguous selections.

Ex:

Thi's (for me) one of the most needed features

I hope some coder take it in account

-efbie- · Post by **-efbie-** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 1:41 pm

Bellorum wrote: Edit: I'm not the first one complaining either. I don't know who first showed this example, and I couldn't find the post anymore, but it was something like this ...

I also don't really like that new behaviour, i tried to complain in #blendercoders but i think that my credibility account has gone negative.
Ton and guitargeek are for the new behaviour, so maybe some more ranting on #blendercoders might help

Caronte · Post by **Caronte** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 3:51 pm

I don't know why some times we doing the things at dificult way

Why not keep the two metods and ask the user with a popup?

Mode:
[Only Quads]
[Mixed]

Bellorum · Post by **Bellorum** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 7:31 pm

Caronte wrote:I don't know why some times we doing the things at dificult way

I like to call it "The Blender way"

Azrael · Post by **Azrael** » Mon Aug 22, 2005 8:13 pm

Bellorum wrote:
New- 8 tris, 4 quads. Old - All quads. With the old behavior it was easy to create a rounded hole on a surface, for extruding a pipe, for instance. With the new behavior, that takes quite a lot of reworking.

Well, all you'd have to do is connect the edges to the vert then "Spherize" This brings up another suggestion; a slider for how "shpered" your selection becomes.

But Basically, what I think Bellorum is saying that, the new behavior gives the sculptor MORE control over what he is doing.