State of the UI - Blender Conference 2024

[@trinumedia]

Lot's of little details go a very long way. Thank you so much for the new color in icons! Couldn't have progressed with a colorful iconized fork of Blender without it.

[@david_airapetiann]

wow, you guys make a stunning interface tweaks, i don't know any other software with such unique, complex, functional and convenient interface with such amazing control. We are very happy to see how it improves from build to build and how deeply and conveniently different elements and blender systems are connected to each other. Also your presentation skills are amazing :) love you

[@isiaqagboluaje7203]

Cinema4d 👀👀

[@david_airapetiann]

@@isiaqagboluaje7203 they are great too :)

[@xanzuls]

@@isiaqagboluaje7203 like c4d 1-1 copying blender's ui ux, icons, layouts etc.

[@MrXorrito]

The new move/split area operator feels so nice and smooth. Assigning a shortcut is fantastic, no more pixel hunting those corners!!!

[@slothsarecool]

Fake User was one of the biggest “WTF” moments for me when initially using Blender FWIW

[@krzysztofdeoniziak5618]

im still dont understand it fully, maybe its intuitive for programmers, but for artists, not so much

[@NicCrimson]

@@krzysztofdeoniziak5618 Basically it's saying. Save this thing inside the Blend file when I close it.

[@globglob3D]

​@@krzysztofdeoniziak5618 data blocks that are not used for anything are not saved unless you assign to them a fake "user". A data block can be an image, a mesh, armature, action, etc. It's just a button to tell Blender to save this in the .blend file even if it's not presently in use.

[@jeremybaker5205]

@@krzysztofdeoniziak5618 No it's for artists. Every data block (mesh data, material, etc) has to have at least one user it's attached to, otherwise you have random data hogging up your scene (less of a problem in small scenes, very much a problem in large scenes). Blender deletes orphaned data in a saved file on close. It's a way of having data be not attached to anything (maybe you'll use it later?), and not get automatically pruned when Blender is set to automatically get rid of it. It's scene and memory management for ARTISTS!

[@tyagagerson]

For example I made a material called RWQFSFASXC I use it for 2 usages (to set material on object 1 'n' 2) They called the usages "users" If there is no users, material or whatever has the dropdown_name_number-of-users-or-shield can be not exist if you save and reopen back. To keep that thing, u should set it fake user to think the thing has a usage even though no usage to keep it

[@dzibanart8521]

Bmenders ui is so flexible i love it, there is always improvements to be done that doesn't mean the tool is bad.

[@jendabekCZ]

Polishing is probably important, but what about basic things like not being able to resize some UI, so we can read the actual items? Take a look for example at attributes selection in Vertex Paint mode, there are just first 3 letters from the attribute name followed by "...". Why I can't simply drag & resize the whole box? I would also vote for getting colored icons back since we have the support for that now - like in 2.79 where the World icon was represented by blue / green globe and not a red sphere which makes no sense to me (and looks almost identical to the material icon). Same with Light icon which is currently green instead of yellow - why? Maybe it wouldn't look that "cool", but it certainly makes the navigation in the UI much more intuitive = faster. But don't get me wrong - Blender is amazing and the progress in the last years is really great (especially GNodes are very powerful) - big thanks for such amazing piece of free(!) SW.

[@nosirve9458]

put this in right-click of blender community :)

[@thefynn]

The current Icon colors do make sense and are better then a colorfull mess. World, material and texture icons a red because all of them reltate to materials/rendering. Having a world icon in blue/green makes no sense, blue is for modifiers/modifications of the object, green is for object data. the light icon is green because all of the object data tabs for each object is green to beconsistend. object data in the outliner is also green, objects are orange. That is intuitive. In addition, Property tabs are seperated by scene, collection, object and texture relation In the Tool bar, operators to add geometry are green, operators to deform are pink. Icon colors are to tell their function, not an accurate depiction of their real world inspirations

[@spiralingspiral72]

please do something about the KNIFE TOOL having ALL OF ITS TOOLTIPS at a NARROW space at the BOTTOM OF YOUR SCREEN

[@ybned-ed8rz]

just remember them💁‍♂️

[@coinopanimator]

​@@ybned-ed8rz I would like it if you didnt have to press ESC before switching to another tool from knife. Unless there's a shortcut I'm missing :)

[@camerbot]

they are doing something about i think

[@krzysztofdeoniziak5618]

first, they need to fix knife behavior, choosing knife from the toolbar, and by shortcut is two different things. If you use it by shortcut, you have nice snap to vertex, but you cant change angle snap(A shortcut) anywhere, if you use it from toolbar, you can change angle snap, but forgot about snapping to vertex. BOY, ITS SOO ANNOYING

[@lucdina5118]

My issue is you can knife by angle correctly like, 45 , 30 , 35

[@RoboThePanda]

i love everyone who makes blender thank you :)

[@CGFun82]

Good to see Svg icons as standard across entire UI. These small tweaks makes the software cohesive.

[@coinopanimator]

The windowing inprovements are so good. I still get so frustrated with splitting windows. I am loving Blender.

[@jeffsfolio]

Keymap and Quick Favorite Editors take my priority vote. Would make it so much easier as a teacher.

[@aiamfree]

we should have an option for accordian or tabs for sections I hate scrolling up and down endlessly for Cloth and Physics

[@Tolkfan]

That icon website is amazing! So much better than staring at the tiny Icon Viewer and trying to find a nice icon for a button in your addon :P

[@IsaiahSugar]

♥️ love pablo

[@NicCrimson]

24:10 I hope they add an alpha output to the color node. 26:48 Option to add the asset shelf to any location, top, bottom, left right. 28:16 Something like Krita's Pop Up Palette to add brushes like in a pie menu. There are already a ton of addons that does this but native would be nice. Oh and custom colors for collections. Not the themes, I mean but any color not limited to a select few.

[@sabongdotnet356]

I have low vision. I noticed these things. Thanks for that detail!

[@gurratell7326]

I would so love to get the viewport render status (as in "Updating Mesh", "Sample 139/1024" etc) down in the status bar. Having the overlay enabled while rendering some stuff is unfortunately not always desired or feasible so getting it down in the status bar would be so nice!

[@SanOcelotl]

Grande Pablo

[@kevinhouse7143]

Yay Harley! I am a longtime Blender user from Victoria BC. Thanks for everything you all are doing for the UI. Go Canada! Go Blender!

[@quadrivium1600]

Guys, you rock! Am i the only one to see the potential of dockable window panes as a way to turn Blender into the most amazing real-time VJ (resolume-style) software??? I mean for mapping and stuff. Please go that way conceptually, the tool is already there. You bunch of geniuses. Blender should be a mandatory software in schools around the world. Period. (I taught 10 year olds to make models of the solar system with geometry nodes in Patagonia last year) . This is a one-of-a-kind software/community/human endeavor. Thank you dearly for everything you put into it.

[@stephen-boddy]

I didn't realise actor Alan Alda was moonlighting for Blender!

[@jeremybaker5205]

Mash or Mesh!?

[@stephen-boddy]

@@jeremybaker5205 Canadian accent pun, eh?... Doh... Now I geddit. LOL

[@jeremybaker5205]

@@stephen-boddy no no no

[@u1over]

Please think of adding customizable shelfs for plugins, like in maya.

[@anonymousd5582]

BForArtists adds colour to modifiers and it makes finding the right modifier 100x faster than with just monochromatic ones, they know their stuff

[@theftking]

What are they talking about? Blender doesn't have a _UI._ It's just a series of tubes.

[@coinopanimator]

I thought Blender had taken the antibiotics for the UI.

[@SpicyMilk2005]

I saw your comment.

[@king_niddler735]

I dream of the day when i can have colored modifier icons again. Make my brain sane again!!!

[@EmrahUncu]

When I saw the thumbnail I was expecting a link in the description for free brush assets.

[@唐筛]

Hello, may I ask if Blender has a scrolling carving mode for brush strokes, similar to ZBrush brush strokes

[@SquaaProductions]

The new docking thing is amazing!

[@ROVideos]

Hear me out. From the Outliner... Right click > Add selected to new collection > a pop-up comes up [Enter new collection name] > Click Ok to confirm. This is very much needed. Thank me later. 😅

[@alejandrovargas1171]

Please listen to Blender Guru's conference. I don't know if it's the best in terms of UI, but the tools he proposes sound extremely powerful.

[@thethruthchannel]

The Asset Manager

[@Levi3D]

Fantastic that the pen users are getting some love!

[@Desopolis]

Why does the module say it is in maintenance mode and has no owner?

[@Fozz84]

Id love to be able to open folders in my systems default file manager. including assets. perfect for managing a large asset library.

[@luluskuy]

Nice to know

[@rechroniclePlays]

still trying to get used to the new sculpting brushes icon

[@Caprice_08]

We're going CORPORATE ready with this One😂

[@SpicyMilk2005]

Just to know I downloaded the old version of blender 3.6 to had no flickering bug when I move the camera. If I use the grease pencil for animation, and to had old extra blender brushes.

[@jbdh6510]

It's crazy how great OpenSource can be with funding! Absolute great work of all contributors and of course the good funding strategy from the Blender Foundation!

[@felixxcatus]

brush assets is the way of the future and I can appreciate your hard work, but I'm still going to have to complain to my friends and family while I get used to them and I will change the icons, they are too distracting

[@Gorion103]

Yes for guidelines! Addons are now a consistency mess. Why on earth does every addon creator when crating new function have to put in some not searchable place? You made Eg. new select operator? Cool, dont place in in [your name] tab in [N] panel, just place it under Select menu like sane person would do and search for it :p.

[@Kaapstad420]

Shiny head on the guy front row.

[@hardwire666too]

Please for the love of anything NO TELEMETRY OF ANY KIND EVER! Telemetry CAN be helpful in some specific situations, sure. However what has a more important impact is purposeful implementation. Meaning when a developer has an idea or suggestion and they intentionally flesh it out, and build or DEVELOP, that idea into a fully realised feature. Telemetry breeds stagnation and lazy development. Telemetry shows no change in habits so we change nothing. This is the approach Microsoft has taken with Windows and is a big reason why Windows 11 is not usable to a lot of people without the use of third party software, or hacks. If an addon developer what's to collect telemetry on their own, fine. But I would absolutely hate to see that in Blender itself. Also I used Windows 11 as an example when in reality they are not alone on this and may applications have suffered from stagnation because of it.

[@krzysztofdeoniziak5618]

i wish to know in the name of god, why when i hidding parent in outliner, children are still visible, and i need to press shift on the eye button to hide them as well. This is counter-intuitive, and should work the other way around, That is, I press shift if I want the children to remain visible. Also, blender should not compare in the topic of learning curve to other 3d programs, only to graphics programs in general, and here I think photoshop is the king, they have in the topic of UX design years of experience, and it is probably the program that knows, or seems to know, everyone, precisely because of the low entry level and a very pleasant learning curve.

[@AlexandrUkraine]

The Blender developers took a wrong turn somewhere, they stopped adding new features for modeling.

[@annekedebruyn7797]

I mean, they kind of were forced to. Where modeling is in a pretty decent state right now, a lot of places needed some much needed love. The compositor and animation were two things that felt neglected for years, both of which are seeing some major love right now. New features and improvement will come to modeling. But sometimes other parts need a bit more attention too.

[@mz4933]

Sadly I don't have time to watch the whole thing but I'm going to guess the state of UI is: No proper long term Qt support No floating, dockable windows for addons N panel clutter UX for addons Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't point me to a third-party github project since official support is what I'm talking about here When it comes to plugins and animation/rigging, doing in Blender what I do in Maya is far from plausible for me sadly, so at the moment I limit my use of Blender to modelling mostly, and even UVs I do in either Maya or Houdini

[@sounddifferent3752]

No floating or dockable windows. Those folks keep murmuring that mantra what "floating windows occlude the UI!". I have no idea how much time should pass when they finally realize what all normal people move floating windows where they want and not occlude anything important.

[@saran2.020]

Floating windows are a thing in Blender right?​@@sounddifferent3752

[@mz4933]

​@sounddifferent3752 yeah, not to mention they are meant to be dockable, and they allow you to use multiple monitors. I never understood that argument

[@ax777-k2p]

We need Pablo to stop touching the ui please, he doesnt know what he's doing, it's painful to watch and use.

[@sanyi9667]

do they plan to bring back the "add modifier" whole panel? if not I'm not interested in anything they say.

[@Mikefiser]

man, there is an addon that brings it back. If you dont care about the hard work of these people who make a lot of lives easier and they think about the UI wayy harder then you, then probably dont spend the energy on writting hateful comments.

[@sanyi9667]

@@Mikefiser yes yes a simple critic is now a hateful comment. thanks comrade, I will now go and cancel myself.

[@Arjjacks]

No, they're not bringing it back and it would be stupid to try. The old modifier UI could never have fit all the new geonode modifiers coming down the pipeline. There are 26 new hair modifiers alone, and any attempt to jam them all into the old modifier menu would've resulted in it exploding across the screen like a beached whale.

[@jbdh6510]

the new menu is much better and more flexibel. It just makes sense. You can bring back the old menu with an add-on. Just get that. You can also contribute or spend some money to get your ideas into blender

[@Udayjeet_singh]

wish they add some texture brushes like we only have a circle but like having brushes of different shapes and grunges like dirt crack damage would be so fun while texturing

[@ybned-ed8rz]

you can import textures and texture masks

[@semaph0re]

I hate the Blender UI so much. Outliner needs to be rewritten from scratch and become a simple list of objects. Other areas that suck are the action editor, dope sheet, NLA editor, graph editor... I can go on.

[@jesusmora9379]

a whole lot of nothing

[@eobet]

State of the UI is 💩 and will continue to be so for as long as UX issues are not accepted as bug reports.

[@nosirve9458]

instead of saying that you can get involved and try to fix what annoys you

[@andiroo42]

43:50

[@eobet]

@@nosirve9458 Not everyone can code. Also, I've been trying to talk with the developers for years but given up by now. Years ago, they opened a "paper cuts" thread, and got literally hundreds, if not thousands of issues reported. They decided that was too much of a hassle to fix (or even analyze the replies), so they closed the thread and asked everyone to instead post their issues in separate threads (which they then ignored too, but at least the most popular thread on devtalk was no longer the one filled with complaints). Plus, when they do pretend to care, they ask you to contact them via any of no less than five different channels. No, Blender devs caring about UX is all gaslighting.

[@eobet]

@@andiroo42 Ahahahaha, read my previous reply THIS IS SUCH A LIE! Should I post the literally DOZENS of UX issues I've reported as a bug as receipts? SCREW YOU PABLO YOU GOD DAMN LIAR!