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Today is facing Blender 2.8 and now the question is how it will affect BFA. Lots of new ideas as well as UI update. And how much BFA will take over from Blender?
Hi EmilsVFX,
Yes, they do some really nice modifications at the moment.
First we have to wait how far 2.8 really goes. It makes no sense to even start with modifications at this point, since everything can still change. And this means that the core development of Bforartists is currently stopped.
A first incarnation of 2.8 will appear at the Siggraph 2018. And then we will see
Kind regards
Reiner
From the looks of it, the Toolbar is taking after BFA – icons that can toggle and resize in a toolshelf, with some extra oomph. BFA may need to add more tools and use it’s own icon set to be consistent with rest of UI. I assume many tools in headers won’t be in the toolshelf – and will need to be placed there some way or another. Hopefully they still keep some of the tab system from 2.79 – but iconize them also. Fingers crossed.
The layout switching will be updated to 2.8, taking after a concept in BFA – quick switch of layout on mouseover in a header row, with extra creation/deletion. Another victory and less work for BFA. BFA may need to figure out how to fix the default creation proposals or start with some layouts already built on default. We’ll see what they finally do.
The render engine placement is taking after BFA, so that’s less work. But the properties panels and advanced zip menus may still be needed.
The headers will still be a mess – BFA will still need to move these to the properties shelves and clean up the menu entries.
The iconization will still need to be ported, hopefully they don’t break too much in the process.
VSE won’t get love.
Node workflow and addition won’t have all the love of BFA, so that will still be needed.
Floating menu’s won’t change, may need some love in BFA.
Window view toggles in BFA should persist, can be improved. 2.8 seems to have a weird proposal for that which I’m definately not a fan of. The quick icon toggles in Animation editors and the Outliner/Properties have become indespensible in my daily routine.
I personally hope the toolbar in BFA can be adapted or still used in BFA. I also can’t live without it.
Outliner is a good addition/upgrade, but the rclick menus may need organization.
The brush settings as float menus in a header was discussed in BFA, so that won’t be needed. Any good UI improvements is just less work here. But even then, may need some improvement – like unselectable things hide away/toggle…. which I love.
In general, I can still see a lot of improvement needed. Including defaults, hotkeys, addons, default setups, etc. I just hope they do a great job, which will be less work here, faster updates and dev here.. and let the indirect feedback UI design loop to Blender source continue.. I love this fork.
I think I can celebrate a lot concerning UI, mostly with the toolbar, very much like trueSpace – my first 3D love – and multi object edit/settings, the new Outliner collections system, the viewport updates, the new way to use tools and widgets.. finally. Very thankful – but I still think BFA after the next cycle will still be a couple years ahead of the Blender source. The hundreds of little details making life easier is.. hard to implement in the source. Hope they keep getting applied.
And.. we’ll see. I am looking forward to 2.8.
:dance:
I have been trying out 2.8 builds lately, and folloing the Blender Devs logs quite closely. I have noticed they are tending to go for a “drop down” system for most options instead of toolshelves options. I have mixed feeligns with that. I hope Bforartists will develop the toolbar more. I can see myself needing it more and more.
:dance:
I am no friend of the dropdown menus neither. It will introduce lots of unnecessary clicks. The tab system was better here. Seems that we have our reason to continue with the fork
But let’s see how things goes. Nothing is really nailed at the moment.
I just gave the Blender 2.8 Alpha a try and what they did to the user interface actually blows me away.
They went from totally quirky to a really fresh, modern and usable interface. I applaud their braveness of changing the face of their product this radically; I guess long term Blender users will hate it for that, but for anyone else there are major improvements everywhere. – I was actually able to open Blender and intuitively navigate all of the functions. It definetely looks as if BforArtists was one of the inspirations, they even chose to match the color.^^On the drop down menues: I actually like them, because they structure all the comands in a very intuitive way, without cluttering up the screen space. The only thing that should be changed is that the roll outs open automatically on mouse hover without the need to click them to speed up the new workflow. – And of course I am used to much more icons, so those I miss, but overall they did a phenomenal job on the new release. – Let´s see what can be improved in the details once it is officially released.
Yes, definitely a big improvement in many areas. When there wouldn’t be the right click select, then i would even consider to stop the fork at this point. But it is, they still have right click select as the default. And lots more. The other editors …
Looking forward to being useful on the next cycle. Yes, most of the other editors are still not ready. The Node Panel and Icon Toolbar that is customizable and all the icons everywhere (and collapsable advanced options) are some of the key things I would still use BFA for.
How.. would the Tool Shelf work now? That’s being completely removed no? It’s something completely new.
:dance:
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