Monday, October 24, 2011

The turntable vs trackball wars...

It's taken just under 3 months, but I see that someone finally noticed that the change to the viewport rotation default.  For a while there, I was beginning to suspect that finally, after so many years of endless, heated debates filled with personal attacks trotting out well worn battle lines like the blasted blackbirds patrolling our garden do everyday, that finally we'd see some peace when this change occurred.



Hope started to blossom that perhaps those who had been campaigning for it for years would finally be able to down the banners and be able to get onto some serious work in comfort; that some of the "opponents of all change" would actually discover that this works better for them in many (though perhaps admittedly not all) scenarios (but really, there isn't such a thing as one-size-fits-all optimality anywhere for anything, so bleh!); and that seasoned users who already had strong preferences for one over the other were happily coping and moving on as they always do.

Personally, it would be one less setting to tweak on any foreign Blender install/setup, and I'm sure many converting users would also agree. No more queasy and disorientating view rotations when doing a "run with factory defaults" to check out some bug reports... yay!

Alas, it appears that we still had to have yet another flare up. A vocal minority has taken it upon itself to view even the slightest comment as an offensive attack laden with inaccuracies ripe for criticising, correction, and "you-are-an-idiot-if-you-don't-do-this" evangelism, all the while ignoring the polite requests of moderators and other sensible and respectable members of the community trying to diffuse yet another incarnation of the religious flamewar dead in its tracks. (It's interesting also that the traditional post-release flamewars this time are playing out on "local" turf instead of the "global" arena, which in some ways is a pleasant change, at least from a PR perspective).

GAH!

9 comments:

  1. Now blender is more user friendly to the ones who open it for the first time :) I like that.

    After teaching/converting a few guys to blender in the last few years, using the internet, was thinking how bad a default was trackball. It even scared me away at first as well.

    The advanced users who use this weird rotation system should be advanced enough to be able to fine tune blender as they please...

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  2. The more Blender embraces standard interface conventions, the better for everyone in the long run. Less confusion all round. I have used Blender for quite a while, but still prefer left select and turntable rotation.

    Speaking of which, is the problem of having to use the right button to drag the timeline when in left select mode ever likely to change Aligorith?

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  3. i've used turntable before it was mainstream (hipster me)

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  4. jamez: I have a draft post on the problems involved with this in the works... just lacking on the whole "time" thing to finish it off right now ;)

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  5. next step this freaking right mouse button and I'll be able to use the factory settings.
    I don't GIVE A DAMN if its a more logical way to select by right clicking, Blender is not central and for sure not the only software I use. So if 99% of the software are doing the same ways (even if its the "bad way) the one standing out becomes the odd one and by the same occasion the annoying one :)

    I'd love to see some stats on how many people are changing all those "logical" settings to a un-logical (in blender's world_ but yet more common to most people

    :)

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  6. Great to hear Aligorith. Thanks for all your amazing work on the animation system!

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  7. turntable for me is unusable, i like to be able to rotate just how I want. However there's so many other things I have to configure for what I consider a good default that this is just one more little thing to click in the list. I wish we had a much better (online?) storage of default settings. something like google chrome's sync so i don't have to do this long list of crap every time i use a new computer!

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  8. +1 for sync of settings :-)

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  9. Dear developer. I glad to see you're making Blender better.
    I also glad that you heard my suggestion of Graph Editor improvment - thanks a lot! Thick active curves are really good.
    Here is another suggestion, which I think has to be implemented (at least as an option). As you know pressing RMB in Graph Editor causes time change. I think it would be super if this behavior was in 3D View :) Animators will be grateful for this little but useful and comfortable improvment.
    I select with LMB and my RMB is not used at all :(

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