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PLEASE SIGN YOUR POSTS! Or else this page will be illegible. Sign your post with four tildes, like this ~~~~ Vino 19:15, 23 January 2012 (CET)
Hi, I agree totally with the idea of giving New Users a good start.
I do not agree about your meaning of 1. Camera things ...
First of all if a new user starts Blender hi/she is confronted with the splash screen! So first action is: REMOVE it! What it is for will be told later!
Next: A warning has to be told: if there is no Cube in the center, no Camera and no Lamp you are already in a special situation and the user should get advice how to get the DEFAULT! etc ... PKHG 07:05, 23 January 2012
- Can you be more specific about which "Camera things" that you don't agree with?
- Also, what is your problem with the splash screen? I think it's helpful, it lets the user change the interaction setting and view the manual. I want to put a short introduction tutorial on it later. Seems like it's useful to me. Vino 19:22, 23 January 2012 (CET)
- Splash screen should stay as is now, but requires at least 2 more things: The ability to change to the beginner/advanced/cutom setups (e.g. what you propose/what we have now/what the user changed), and a little option in the lowest part of it that reads "Don't show me this again, use these settings always". I think this is more consistent with the rest of the world way of using splash screens, and you have the best of all worlds. Stargeizer 00:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
- Good points, I added a section to the document to cover the splash screen. Vino 09:13, 25 January 2012 (CET)
I like your mockup for the default, very consistent with your view of the new user. I would add a big floating render button to the right, though, so the new user will successfully see a first render quickly. Yoff 12:53, 23 January 2012
- Great idea. Vino 19:22, 23 January 2012 (CET)
"I believe that powerful tools and ease of use/learning are not necessarily mutually exclusive,"
While this is a wonderful theory, the practical real world evidence simply disagrees.
Final Cut Pro X is the latest furor over interface elements.
It is fundamentally a poor choice to lump audiences into a polemic of new user versus experienced. Every individual comes to the table with different knowledge and context. To believe that you can appease someone seeking color space implementations, imaging composite operations, and other nuanced details with someone that has no imaging experience is not only folly but entirely delusional.
Hiding those details pains a veteran imager, while exposing them pains a hobby grade imager. Larger buttons might be wonderful for a new individual, but may equally repulse an experienced imager that arrives with expectations, never to see them return.
Just as you cannot put guard blades on a surgeon's scalpel, it is utterly redundant given the nature of the activity and experience level implied.
Attempt to please all and please none.
http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2010/09/simplicity-aint-so-simple-or-even.html
Sobotka 21:43, 23 January 2012 (CET)
- I find I must disagree with your premise.
- "Larger buttons might be wonderful for a new individual, but may equally repulse an experienced imager that arrives with expectations, never to see them return."
- If we adorn a somewhat larger button with ugly icons then yes, I can agree with you, people would be turned away. But the premise that making a button somewhat larger than the tiny, unnoticed buttons that exist currently will offend people is a bit silly from my point of view. The purpose of making buttons larger is to present to the user what the user wants, making obvious the most immediately important things and tucking away other things. The goal is to facilitate the learning of Blender, so this prospective new user would more likely appreciate than feel repulsed by larger buttons, which upon clicking do what he wants do get done.
- "Just as you cannot put guard blades on a surgeon's scalpel, it is utterly redundant given the nature of the activity and experience level implied."
- I think the scalpel analogy lacks legs. A scalpel is easy to understand to someone who has never seen a knife before. It has a sharp side for cutting and a round side for holding. You don't need to explain to someone how to use a scalpel. A 3D art studio has none of these qualities. It is more similar to the airline cockpit from your article. The problem with presenting an airline cockpit to users is exactly that - who the fuck knows how to fly an airplane without training? And the problem is apparent with Blender - a first class 3D art studio with very little adoption.
- Blender doesn't need guard rails to be successful, it just needs to present itself in a way that is easier to understand for new users. A new pilot doesn't learn in an airline cabin. When learning to fly an airplane, you start in a single Cessna with the basic controls - control yoke, stick, rudders, elevators. You learn simple steering. Then later, after these concepts are mastered, you graduate to the airliners with a hojillion buttons. All I propose is to show new users a simple subset of controls, so they can learn without the distraction of advanced concepts.
- Vino 09:09, 25 January 2012 (CET)
The idea of leaning to fly a plane is a good one, though a Cessna is already 'complicated' ;-).
--PKHG 10:45, 25 January 2012 (CET)
About object/edit mode: You don't really need to remove object/edit mode. Just need to make clearer to the user what mode you are working. Remember Blender is not just a mesh modeler. Object mode is required for: Animation/bone modes, Shapekeys, physics operations (bullet, cloth, particles, etc), many modifier operations, booleans operations, and others. Other packages have the same distinction, but different names. There's no real way to remove these, until you start removing features of Blender. On mesh only modelers, you can easily remove al differences betwen objects and meshes (Wings 3D, nendo). Even Silo makes diferentiation between object (called "components") and meshes (what "components" are made of), and tools are offered according. As i said earlier, no need to remove, but to make clear where are you working. - Stargeizer 15:38, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
About "Users are idiots...": I don't want to start a flamewar, but this statement belongs to gnome only, since they instead of fixing features, removed them because "were too complicated to the user". The idea is to make working on 3D (which is an already complicated subject, no matter what package you are using) more accesible to users, not removing features based on personal asumptions, or without replacements. Sure Blender devs removed some useful features from older versions, but they offered better features that provided similar results with less effort. Blender itself is a tool designed to do everything inside the program: Modeling, animation, physics (with upcoming node physics under development), rendering, game engine, UV edition, rigging and skinning, sculpting, video editing, compositing and VFX. All related. So is natural some things can be somewhat complicated or users are required to read a manual to learn to use it. Giving a starting point from where all users can start is one great positive thing, but remove features becaus of it, isn't, IMHO. Stargeizer 15:38, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
