New official "industry standard" keymap and interface for Blender 2.8

guillaumehaerinck

Maya, 3Dsmax, ZBrush … They are different beasts but they do share (a few) practices like orbiting the camera with  "alt + left click" or allowing you to extrude your mesh.

I would like to hear your thought on uses that you consider to be equivalent (as it is rarely equal) across the major 3D modeling packages. It is to help the completion of a new official keymap to be released on Blender 2.8, along with a revamped interface and other tweaks to make the software more user-friendly.

The details about the keymap can be found here https://developer.blender.org/T54963 and the other improvement are described inside of the developer’s blog https://code.blender.org/.

sprunghunt

the obscure keyboard setup is why blender for artists exists in the first place

https://www.bforartists.de/

it's about time blender tried to be more industry standard.

Udjani

Maybe 1,2,3 to select vertex, edge and faces, i think that modo and 3ds uses it.

PolyHertz

Yea, both Max and Modo use the number keys to select component type.
But Modo also optionally lets you select the component type by simply middle mouse clicking over it (so if over a vert it'll switch to vert mode, same with edges and faces). I wish every 3D app let you select the component mode like that.

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

Seems like a good idea. Although most programs aren't consistent with each other. For example in 3ds, 1-5 is subobject selection whereas in maya it's like smoothing and wireframe functions... pretty big difference. So it may be hard to define standards to match.

One common meme is QWER for select-move-rotate-scale. Unfortunately it's very inefficient to take up 4 different keys just to change the manipulator when shift-ctrl-alt exist.

I've always rebound everything or written scripts for contextual macros and bound those instead, so as to cram everything into the lefthand side of the keyboard. 

Having a good default layout would be cool but probably hard to achieve given the different use cases every program has. Ease of customization is the most important thing imo

musashidan

@PolyHertz Max has a hotkey feature to switch between sub-objects in screen space as you hover the cursor over them. It was added a few releases ago. Can't remember which.

@Amsterdam Hilton Hotel  In Max I use a script that cycles translations by hitting space. The same as UE4. Very useful.

thomasp

1. left click selection as default
2. maya style viewport navigation
3. add to/remove from selections with shift/alt (perhaps that's the default already? i confess mine is all custom)

interface-wise: proper on-screen gizmo, ability to customize the tool shelf with drag&drop/GUI editor, preselection highlight for components in edit mode, backface culling per object - not a global setting per viewport, selected object outline highlight should draw always in front in viewport, vertex normal display in object mode possible, hidden line display mode in object mode, too.

the outliner is also pretty confusing. looks standard but behaves like quite the different beast (certain selections not mirrored in viewport, hierarchy hide/unhide not what you'd expect, etc). a look at maya outliner or preferably max scene explorer (merge of outliner and layer view functionality) would do good.

also even though i have been using blender for two years now i just can't get used to the UV workflow at all. i don't think there's any other package where UVs display only in edit mode and you have to do that weird selection-sync dance depending on the functionality you're after?
i'd expect UVs to display for selected objects at all times - even in object mode, any selected subobjects to be highlighted within the full UV layout and editing multiple objects to be seamless.

(i know blender 2.8 already addresses a few of these)

PolyHertz

@musashidan If you're talking about "Preview Selection: Multi" then yea I completely forgot about it. The problem is it shows all components from all modes at the same time, which I have never found a use for in Max, and just clutters up the screen with visual noise. Ideally you'd just have a button that turns it on, fires a ray to get the new component and subobject mode, and then turns it off again, but as far as I can tell it still hasn't been exposed to maxscript so there's no way to use it like that.

frmdbl

@guillaumehaerinck
I hate that I'll have to relearn stuff, while I'm perfectly fine with the current way (I'm mostly thinking about the TAB key),
but please at least make it quick and efficient, not necessarily oversimplified and perhaps make it possible to use the old keymap.

The more 3d apps I use and the older I get, the more I seem to observe that UI that are initially simple and user friendly can be annoying when you want to do something quickly so the key shortcuts are super important.

Blender I think up to this point has been an example of a UI that's hard to learn initially and relies heavily on muscle memory, but I don't think
there's a modelling software that would let me do what I do more quickly.

Michael Knubben

"ATTENTION: This will not replace blender's default keymap. This is an alternative keymap that will make blender behave more like industry standard apps."

So no, @frmdbl , you won't have to relearn anything.

frmdbl

Ok, I just downloaded the latest 2.8 and was searching for settings to switch to the old keymap and didn't find any, so
I assumed it's going to be the new default at least.

I have to admit I don't have time to be up to date with Blender's development anymore.

musashidan

@PolyHertz No, it has nothing to do with preview selection. It's called 'sub-object pick' Assign your hotkey and press it in the viewport over the different sub-objects to switch to that mode. It is a bit buggy, though and was never really perfected after it was introduced.

PolyHertz

Oh, Yea I hadn't heard of that at all. I'm still on Max 2016 and it looks like that feature was adding in 2017. Thanks for the tip

musashidan

Yeah mate, 2017 it was. I don't use it myself as it's a bit buggy. I prefer quad menu for sub-object switching. Or all on a single key with Keyhydra.