Campbell, sorry for belaboring this point but this issue brings up a major point about Blender. There is a difference about what can be done: "Anyone can add a python extension", and what should be done to improve usability of Blender. We know that the level of user-friendliness of Blender is its major criticism. We all know how to use Blender, how to add textures, write Python scripts etc. This is not about how easy or hard is, for developers, to dosomething but how friendly Blender is "out of the box" for the average user. We all work to make the program usable to the public at large. There is a point when technical considerations become secondary to what is needed to make the program actually friendly. That is why I'm insisting on this. I truly believe that a slight change of perspective is necessary. The focus has to shift on the "user experience" primarily and on the technical aspect secondarily. I know, I'm proposing "heresy" in this mailing list but it's that kind of "heresy" that makes Apple's product such a success. It's not different than the idea beahind Gaudi's "Sagrada Familia", the engineering underneath is at the service of the artistic experience that the public enjoys.
I don't care about the procedural textures. They are a minor point, although you just have to see what happened with ZBrush's UVMaster to get an appreciation of how people respond to that kind of user-friendliness. What is important is to make Blender an easily approachable tool that can be extended by the end user who doesn't know what Python or C++ is. It's important that we stop thinking about the Blender users as fellow coders. It takes a lot less to fire up Photoshop, or The Gimp, and make a new pattern and drop it in a directory than do the same and then convert it to C code and submit it as a patch. Including the fact that actually projecting the letters in the squares has been recognized as an obstacle. Why shouldn't we give that flexibility to the user? It's the same issue that makes installing python extensions, for 2.49, and incredibly nerdy experience while it should be as easily as dropping a file in a pre-determined directory. Again, this is not about what is possible, but about how approachable the task is. All this intended as a constructive criticism. I know that developers are donating their time for this project and we all appreciate the excellent work that you are doing with Blender. Best. -- Paolo On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Campbell Barton <[email protected]>wrote: > Anyone can add a python extension which has a set of useful, premade > UV grid images, these can be added to the image menu but have the > disadvantage that they need to be distributed with the blend file, > though if they are only grids, its not so important. > > But Id not make these default, images could take up quite a bit of > space - one image could easily be bigger then python library :), > rather stick with procedural for now. > > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
