Blender Feature Proposal

• Loop Subdivide features
• Solidify Function
• More Merge options
• Correct Knife Behavior
• Highlighting Axis (comes with 2.35)
• Better Viewport Behaviors (obsolete see 2.37a Transform Widgets)
• Uniform transform action (weighted Subsurf, Bevel, Warp etc.)
• Saveable Rendering Settings
• Face Selecting in Edit Mode (Mesh editing in 2.35)
• Uniform Key and Mouse Action (corrected in 2.37a)
• A perfect Boolean - better Booleans comes with 2.40
• Compression option for files
• More hints at the 3D View header
• Screensaver support
• Different Cursors
• Missing Theme Options
• Radiosity Texture Baking
• MP3 and OGG Vorbis Sound Support
• Camera Switching
• Automatic Snapping
• Selection Menu (Hotkeys+Mouse action in 2.35)
• Cartoon and Sketch Render Features
• Advanced Wireframe Rendering
• Better Mapping - UV Subsurf fix comes with 2.41
• Cleaner interface and better color picker
• Adding properties and stacks - modifier stack comes with 2.40
• Shadow color for lights
• Area Lights with meshes
• A light panel (like camera has)
• Uniform GUI and workflow for the Oops
• Uniform workflow for the Outliner
• Better UV/ Image Editor Behaviors
• Improved IPO Curve Editor
• GLSL Shaders
• Script Hotkeys
• Edge Beveling
• Fullfeatured BlenderPlayer
• Game Engine Enhancements

Loop Subdivide features

With the release of Blender 2.40 a great addition comes to mesh tools: Multi Loop Cuts. In further development some nice improvements could be added. A none linear worklflow that allows any time changing of cuts and modes would be fine:

• the only linear step is only the first selecting the edge for cutting
• after selecting the edge for cutting you can setup any time during you do a click the numer of cuts
• activate/ deactivate the smooth option up to that time you click; after that a input popup appear for the smoothnes factor
• move your cuts with two options: static or proportional supporting step options with Shift and Control keys;
  static means the cuts have the same distance to each other but you can move them along the cut edge; when the static cuts at center of the cut edge the object will be cutted in uniform parts;
  porportional allows you moving the the cuts and when they get closer to the end of cut edge the distance of each cut to the other get closer too

Static cuts can moved along the cut edge and have the same distance to each other

Same cuts in Proportional mode, the cuts getting closer to the end of the cut edge

Solidify Function

A very nice feature would be creating solid objects. This would help to close the hole about missing primitives (helps generating tubes with thickness) too.

When a object is selected in edit mode and you press 'w' for special menu.

When you start to drag you can specify the thickness. While dragging pressing 'o' for adding solid outside, 'i' for inside and 'c' for center. Of course feature the known feature like hold down Shift for fine adjustment, hold down Ctrl for step adjustment and 'Tab'-Key for insert numeric values. Image shows dragging with adding solid outside.

Examples

Solidify Plugins for other 3d progamms:
3dsMax Solidify; 3dsMax F-Pot; TrueSpace; SoftImage (Quicktime-Video)

More merge options

When you merging two vertices you can merge them only "At Center" and "At Cursor". it would be very usefull to have additional options like "At First selected" and "At Last selected". So all selected vertices will be merged at the first one that was selected or at the las one.

About merging of different types see Bellorum proposal: http://bellorum.50webs.com/feat_props.html
And the patch of Hairbat: And the patch of: http://bellorum.50webs.com/feat_props.html

Correct Knife Behavior

Blenders knife tool is great but it behaves incorrect when you try to create more then one cut.

Picture shows actual behavior and correct behavior:

The knife tools didn't act uniform to the standard mouse button actions (as i described in Uniform Key and Mouse Action). Blenders knife could work like this: holding down 'LMB' and moving the mouse paints, clicking with 'MMB' allows you to draw lines, holding down 'LMB' again and moving the mouse starts painting again, using 'RMB' aborting knife tool and clicking with 'LMB' should be confirming cut. Or in another way that depends on the Uniform Key and Mouse Action.

Uniform transform action (Weighted SubSurf, Bevel, Warp etc.)

Saveable Rendering Settings

Often when you create a scene you like to do test renderings and at the end a final rendering. Options that makes the differences between test and final renderings are located in the button window at Scene ('F10') and World ('F8') Amb Occ and Mist/Stars/Physics.

At the moment most of the test/ final rendering settings must be set by hand (OSA-Level, Amb OCC on/off and Samples, Shadows etc.). It would be great if the user could set and save the complete Scene ('F10') settings and the World ('F8') Amb Occ and Mist/Stars/Physics as his rendering settings, so that the only thing that must be changed for a final render is select just another rendering setting.

Picture shows the redesigned Format panel, the button 'Unified Renderer' should be moved to the Output panel.

Compression option for files

Blender 2.40 comes with the feature to save files compressed which is a great addition and save a lot of disk space. The only problem is the non standard way of implementation using a menu option instead of the save file dialogue. Most application have such options at the save dialogue, here are some examples: OpenOffice ,  Photoshop ,  CorelDraw

A button at the "User Preferences" will set the default status of the "Compress File" button in the save dialogue.

It could realized as a toggle at the Save dialogue too.
BTW: There are buttons at the save dialogue like "Releatives Path" and "Loading UI" that comes from the open dialogue.

Yes, of course saving and loading compressed files took longer. Maybe there could be a hint at the tool tip for that.
The very old way putting the "Save files Compressed" in the file menu isn't clear for users.

More hints at the 3D View header

Screensaver support

After anybody gets a 3D graphic card 3D screensaver are popular then ever. Blender has all tools and properties generating amazing 3D screensaver and could be the first solution allowing creative minds deliver their stuff on different platforms. The possibility to export a runtime as screensaver is missing.

Integration of the screensaver menu as part of the runtimes

The screensaver should support the standard interface of the different platforms. The option dialog should allow changing the resolution and could include a "Made with Blender" hint too.

Possible integration on Windows

Different Cursors

Different cursors can show a user in/ on which action he is or which mode he entered. A example: a user is unintentional pressing 'Tab'-Key and so entered numeric input. I noticed that at this moment beginners thinking Blender did not act proper because they did not recognized (and mostly do not know that this mode is available) that they are entered numeric input.

This small visual change of the cursor gives the user a feedback (example: you entered scale mode) of his actions and let him work certainly.

cursor proposal (most of them have a midpoint for exact alignment, they designed to be always visible anyway the background is dark or lighten): 200%, Black-White, White-Black; used for action

Missing Theme Options

You can customize the interface of Blender but some things are missing:

• dot size for IPO curves (btw. the text and icons at the header of the panel 'Transform Properties' are blue and not black like in other panels)
• Color of the position line cursor of the IPO, Action, NLA, Video Sequencer and Audio Timeline (i mean the green vertical stroke)
• UV/ Face Select Mode: color for edges of selected faces (if you have turned 'Draw Faces' off, its hard to see which faces are selected and which not)
• Color settings for background of the script window
• Color settings for the values of edge length, edge angels and face area

Feature suggestion: More and more theme options for the 3D View are available, instead of adding many entries for available options with just one slider or control for option it would be fine grouping them.
Example: Now we have available options 'Face Dot Size', 'Face Dot selected', 'Face' and 'Face Selected' ('Face Dot unselected' or just 'Face Dot' is missing) but they all can be grouped under the Option 'Face'. This would prevent too much entries at the theme option menu of the 3D View.

Themes and skins where loved by most users, at the moment you can save your skin via script. It would be great if:

• you can submit your themes at the Blender3D.org site so other users can download it there
• Help menu of Blender has a entry 'Get more Blender themes'
• Script window have a section 'Themes' for applying themes
• First entry of the 'Themes' section would be 'Save current Theme' and after that all available themes where listed

Radiosity Texture Baking

Blender has the great feature generating radiosity and assigning it as vertex colors. It would be fine if radiosity could be assigned to textures by modifying the existing textures or if there is no texture assigned by creating a radiosity texture.

A additional texture panel for setting dimension, file format, packed or path of texture is needed too.

Texture baking for game development in 3dsMax 6
Texture Baking in 3dsMax 6
Texture Baking and VRML
Texture Baking and VRML again
Texture baking and Unreal
Caligari Gamespace and texture baking

A Shockwave3D Demo using baked textures

MP3 and OGG Vorbis Sound Support

Camera Switching

At the moment there is no easy way switching from one camera to another and the next or back like you can do it with screens (using Ctrl+LArrow or Ctrl+RArrow). My suggestion is when Numpad keys used for view navigation Shift+Numpad6 could be switch to next camera and Shift+Numpad7 for switching back ro previous camera. Maybe Shift+Numpad 5 could show a popup with a camera (listed and sorted by object name) list for switching directly to a specific one.

Automatic Snapping

We have nice snapping options for snapping on demand but toggles for automatic snapping like in many graphic apps are missing:

• "Snap on Grid" let the object snapping during transformation and work in Front, Side and Top views
• "Snap on Object" let objects snapping on other objects on their Bounds, center and pivot point
• "Snap on Mesh" let objects snap to others on their vertices, edges, faces depending on the edit mode

Cartoon and Sketch Render Features

Chriss asked me at the Blendpolis Forum about adding something about colored edges to my proposal and so i started about thinking about cartoon and drawing render features.

It would be great if edges where a material property like Ramps and could be individual for any object. Any object can have:

• edges on or off (this could be usefull in technical renderings too to hinting or show up something)
• its own edge style and thickness (calligraphic, freehand or systematic styles)
• its own color, alpha and blending mode (like the Ramps)
• its own shifting options

Additional to that it would be great if there where a texture plugins (like marble, clouds, wood, stucci etc.) available too that simulates drawing styles:

• using shading and material properties
• different drawing styles
• have color band support

Cebas FinalToon for 3dsMax
CINEMA 4D Sketch and Toon
Penguin a conceptual, sketch and cartoon, non-photometric scan line renderer

Advanced Wireframe Rendering

Sometimes rendering objects as wire is needed. At the moment there is just a very simple implementation is available or using a script that modifies the mesh.

• thickness of the wire
• Depth Buffer like Monkeyboy describes as 'Hidden Line' or now available in "Edit Mode" with "Limited Selection"
• Adding spheres or cubes at cross points, corners and ending with size option and material id for them
• "3D Shading" option renders the wire like an real 3D mesh

Cleaner interface and better color picker

After release of Blender 2.34 we have a nice color picker (thanks again to the coders).
So what about cleaning up the interface

and putting the color slider into the color picker with the possibility to copy and paste color to/ from clipboard:

the cleaner Material panel:

the cleaner world panel:

the cleaner Yafray Mirror Transp panel:

Shadow color for lights

To create colored shadows in Blender you can use the Ray Transp option for transparent objects or a trick with a normal light and a negative light at the same position.
What about adding a color field (see Cleaner interface and better color picker too) to the Shadow and Spot panel for setting up the color of the shadow. This great feature for realistic, surrealistic and cartoon rendering is a standard in other major 3d apps like May or 3dsMax.

the preview panel:

Area Lights with meshes

A light panel (like camera has)

Sometimes it would be fine to have a visual hint about the distance of the lights (and not only for spots), some times all the these dotted lines are boring and in the next moment you'd like know which light is which one.
So it would be fine to have a panel for lights like for cameras to display the limits (distance), icon size or name of a light.

Uniform GUI and workflow for the Oops

The Oops and Outliner are great tools to get an overview of the scene and they work well but some things could be improved:

• C-key for center view (center of the bounding rectangle of all blocks)
• using the nice GUI elements and styles of Noodles that comes with the orange brunch, because they have similar functionality
• Gradiants for the wires (connectors) of the blocks like in Noodles and antialiasing for them
• Shadows behind the blocks like Noodles
• Theme options like in Noodles "Wire" and "Wire selected"
• the block colors using significant colors of the icons instead of some undefined colors for better visual orientation
• a element to show where the delimition of the blocks is a good idea but why not using something simple like a grid
• X-key for deleting objects/ properties - this is quite usefull in complex scenes or with object that has no geometry and prevent users switching always from one window to another and back to the Oops
• NUM/-key for viewing selected blocks and depending blocks only
• scaling (size) for selected blocks using S-key would be fine (clearify impoartant and unimportant parts of the 3d scene)
• support for SHIFT- and CTRL-key for steps and minor steps like in "3D View" when grabbing/ transforming/ scaling blocks
• direct input when grabbing/ transforming/ scaling blocks like in "3D View"
• the border of Border selection (B-key) should be dotted like in "3D View"
• CTRL+LMB for renaming blocks like in Outliner

A mockup of a Oops using the nice GUI elements and styles of Noodles:

Uniform workflow for the Outliner

Better UV/ Image Editor Behaviors

Improved IPO Curve Editor

GLSL Shaders

With Blender 2.41 we have GLSL Shader for the game engine which is quite fine. A great improvement for the "3D View" would be to support shaders too for a better visual feedback of materials and effects:

• for compatibility issues and speed there is a toggle "Use GLSL Shaders" at the "User Preferences" in "System & OpenGL" to turn on/off GLSL shaders in "3D View" in general
• the shaders are only active in display modes "Textured" or "Shaded" of the "3D View"
• the different diffuse/ specular shaders and color ramp options will effect the appearance of the "3D View"
• a python access to the source of the internal GLSL shader for export issues would be great too (something like getDiffuseShaderSource() and getSpecShaderSource)
• of course a GE that can use besides custom shaders GLSL shaders for the appearance would be fine too

Some resources about shaders:

• Calgari TrueSpace7 vidoes
• 3dsMax
• Lightwave 8.5-9
• Maya 7