There are also similarities to how layouts and buttons function within panels. Registering a widgetgroup for an editor, will make any editor of that type display the widgets the widgetgroup creates. Blender developers and plugin authors alike, can register widgetgroups to a certain Blender editor, using a system very similar to how panels are registered for the regular interface. Widgets can be grouped into widgetgroups that are task specific. Clicking and dragging on a widget will tweak the value of a property or fire an operator – and tweak one of its properties. Widgets are clickable and draggable items that appear in the various Blender editors and they are connected to an operator or property. It’s really not the time to wrap things up yet, but we’re getting closer.įocus for the next days and weeks will likely be animation workflow oriented widgets, like face maps or some special bone widgets (stay tuned for more info). The next steps would be to polish existing widgets, create more widgets and slowly move things towards master. Quite a few widgets were already implemented and the basic BPY implementation is done. The low-end core can be considered as quite stable and almost ready now. The spot size widget (GIF – click to play) In Blender, there are many buttons that can be widgyfied (as we like to call it): Spot-lamp spot size, camera depth of field distance, force field strengths, node editor/sequencer backdrop position and size, …Īlso, a number of new features becomes possible with a generic widget system, like a more advanced transform manipulator, or face maps (groups of faces) with partially invisible widgets, similar to the ones from the Apollo demo.Īctually, all these are already implemented in the wiggly-widgets branch 🙂 It’s also known that Pixar’s Presto and DreamWorks’ Apollo in-house animation tools make heavy use of widgets. And, we want the same to be accessible for Add-on developers and scripters. But w e want to take this a step further: We want to have a generic system which allows developers to easily create new and user friendly widgets. Directly.īlender already has a couple of widgets, like the transform manipulator, Bézier curve handles, tracking marker handles, etc. Without any unnecessary interfaces in-between.
#Make timeline 3d widget software#
This is how users should be able to talk to the software and the content they create in it. It is simply more intuitive than having to tweak a value using a slider button that is in a totally different place, especially when the tweaked value has a direct visual representation in the working space (for instance, the dimensions of a box).īeing able to interact with properties, or in fact with your content, directly, without needing to search for a button through a big chunk of other buttons and panels, is like UI heaven.
#Make timeline 3d widget movie#
The difference is, that they are accessible right from the working space of the editors (3D View, Image Editor, Movie Clip Editor, etc). This of course, is similar to how ‘normal’ widgets like buttons or scrollbars work.
Here, the widgets come into play! Widgets allow to tweak a property or value with instant visual feedback. This however, is an ambitious and challenging goal. We have to rethink adding buttons and panels radically and bring back the UI to the working space – the regions in a UI where you actually do your work. Attempts to menufy, tabify, iconify, and shortcuttify this, have only helped to keep the disease within (nearly) acceptable limits. Just to avoid confusion.īlender suffers from an old disease – the Button Panelitis… which is a contagious plague all the bigger 3d software suites suffer from. Sidenote: Since I’m currently also working on normal widgets like buttons, scrollbars, panels etc, I actually prefer to call the widget project ‘custom manipulator project’. Especially, to justify why this project is important for the Blender user interface. It seems like it’s still unclear what the widget project actually is and what it means, so it’s really time to make things a bit more clear.
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