Blenderheads! New Blendigo GUI.

[benn]

I've taken some time to start tidy up the blendigo GUI. It's mostly all behind the scenes stuff - but there will be some visual changes to make Blendigo easier to learn for newbies - and hopefully have less errors.

Attached is a screenshot of the new camera settings dialog.

[benn]

Please keep on topic re the layout and functionality, not color schemes.

[Doug Armand]

Firstly it's too spread out and takes up too much space.I keep Indigo in a smallish window. This would take up a good part of the height on my 1920x1200 display.

Use a coloured line under the top buttons to show what page you are on - will save space because no header text is neeeded and is visually easier to see.

Can we also have the render buttons at top and always in the same place. At the moment certain pages can be quite long, materials for instance, and I'm constantly have to scroll down when doing test renders.

I've done a naff mock up to show what I mean. But even on this there is too much wasted space. Lots of this stuff could be closer spaced and on the same lines like Film ISO,Exposure and F-Stop could be all on the same line. and do we even need autoexposure? does it NOT work if you select anything other than Rheinhard?

I guess what I'm really saying is that with a small amount of tweaking the current Blendigo sems to work quite well as is

[Doug Armand]

Also some more bits on this.

#1: The shift options should be titled
Up+/Down- and Right+/Left-.

2:# Having the 1/ in front of exposure won't work if Blendigo allows exposures longer than 1 sec which Ono has said Indigo can easily.This is because 1/30th of a sec will display as 1/30 and a 30 second exposure will also display as 1/30 - or am I wrong?

How about using small icons for some items? be more visual and probably take up less space.

Maybe merging some of the pages to have less buttons at top. For instance both the environment and the tonemapper have relatively few items on a page - maybe merge?

And finally, and you probably won't like this, but take a look a luxblender exporter for some 'ideas'

I particularly like their use of collapsing buttons so you only see options for the stuff your working on. Helps hide the scary stuff from noobs too

[benn]

Doug.

I agree with all of your points. ;D I'm working on this largely because lux is so good compared to Indigo. I don't disagree with any of your points - except I won't be putting multiple things on one line - the 'button-jumble' look of the current Blendigo.

The new GUI is written all using some helper methods so I can change only 1 line of code to change color / spacing / etc.

Ben

[Doug Armand]

Doug.

I agree with all of your points. ;D I'm working on this largely because lux is so good compared to Indigo. I don't disagree with any of your points - except I won't be putting multiple things on one line - the 'button-jumble' look of the current Blendigo.

The new GUI is written all using some helper methods so I can change only 1 line of code to change color / spacing / etc.

Ben

Glad we agree
Fair enough about a line for everything but try and keep the script window smallish though and well all be happy. Maybe use those collapsing buttons?

[Borgleader]

Tbh, I would change the Aperture Diffraction button to a radio box, or wtv you call them. And put it next to the title instead of under it to save some vertical space. On my desktop it's not so much of a problem but on my laptop it sometimes happens that the GUI is so long/high that it doesnt fit in my blender setup so either i have to reduce the button window's height or i have to maximize the scripts window or wtv.

(Off topic for one line, Orange & Blue >> Pink & Light Pink)

Oh and for the camera settings sections maybe put it on two lines, it seems to go outside your image atm (and if you're scare people will think both lines are for separate settings just capitalize the OR)

[benn]

Yup I've changed how aperture diffraction works to a checkbox - and i'll change camera settings to a drop down - I'm still getting my head around how some of the options work before I can fix them up.

Finally - the pink will probably be gone on the final version, make it something a bit more socially acceptable. ;D

[benn]

I'm adding a scrollbar too so you can scroll if we have to (im developing it on my macbook).

This is fun! I hope I manage to get it all working

[Doug Armand]

This is fun! I hope I manage to get it all working

so do we!

[Borgleader]

This is fun! I hope I manage to get it all working

so do we!

Yep so do we!

(Off topic a tad again, but... Blender 2.5 GUI yes? )

[benn]

Doug Hammond is working on 2.5 - that'll be a complete rewrite, so there's that to look forward to as well. But we don't know when Blender 2.5 will come out do we? :/

[Jambert]

do we?

We don't know, but I'm working with 2.5 and works fine, no crash here...

[Godzilla]

Blender 2.5 is available now, but the official version is going to be released along with the 'Durian' film, in Q2 2010.

[Borgleader]

Blender 2.5 is available now, but the official version is going to be released along with the 'Durian' film, in Q2 2010.

There was supposed to be a release candidate this month afaik, but anyway, I recently "undertook" a modeling project of my own in Blender 2.5 and I haven't had any problem besides the fact that numpad isnt emulated (I'm modeling on my laptop...)