Improve usability of Group Colors in animation editors #81744

New Issue

Luciano Muñoz Sessarego · 2020-10-15T18:23:33+02:00

2020-10-15 18:23:33 +02:00

Problem:

Without going into much detail, as it stands in the animation editors for the right contrast to be achieved between the white text and the colours they have to be dim but to be useful in the view port they need to be bright (again for contrast).

Blender's default colors unselected in the viewport:

Original Group Colors selected in the viewport:

Brightly colored bones are especially important in the 3D Viewport when they have thin shapes. Dimmer bone colors are hard to see over Blender's dark wireframe and dark background.

It's really hard to tell apart the selected ones from the non selected ones.
If i didn't show you the first picture and you only looked at the second picture you wouldn't have a clue whether any bone is selected or unselected.

The Rigify add-on uses bright bone colors to aid visibility in the 3D Viewport. However, this makes the channel list unreadable, as can be seen in the image below.

For optimal readability in the Channel List the colors would have to be darker, which conflicts with the requirements for the 3D Viewport.

This method has 1 great side and very important for animation which is making very obvious and clear which bones are selected, unselected and active.

And the downside is that the dope sheet/graph editor gets even more unreadable when you expand the channel's attributes:

Leaving us in at a point of: bright groups will give us the readability we need in the viewport but mess completely the animation editors and on the default colors improving the readability in the animation editor but making it really hard on the eyes in the viewport.

So currently the existing solution
Here comes:

An option that has been there for ages and has proven not only useful but for anyone that works with character rigs is the first button they press every time they go to the graph editor posing a new problem: the option is local to the file, so every new shot, every new animation you need to un-tick this box in every animation editor.

So there are a few things here we propose which

First: Move the option to the Animation preferences panel
Pros: you as user chose how do you like it to stay, even if it its on by default you turn it on once and that's it.
Cons: it's still on by default.

Second: Redesign the way the bone group colors are presented in the animation editors
Pros: done well means we could eventually get rid of the option to turn on/off if we come to a solution that is non intrusive a-la outliner, taking full advantage of all the ideas that at this moment seem to be playing against each other.
Cons: longer process to design and implement correctly.

In adition to the presentation of the bone group colors in the animation editors we also can see that creating and editing group colors can be time consuming and way more complex than we want it to be, we'll propose a simplified yet powerful version that will be more clear and faster to setup.

Problem: Without going into much detail, as it stands in the animation editors for the right contrast to be achieved between the white text and the colours they have to be dim but to be useful in the view port they need to be bright (again for contrast). Blender's default colors unselected in the viewport: ![2020-10-27 10_37_17-Blender.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F9109804/2020-10-27_10_37_17-Blender.png) Original Group Colors selected in the viewport: ![2020-10-27 10_38_12-Blender.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F9109794/2020-10-27_10_38_12-Blender.png) Brightly colored bones are especially important in the 3D Viewport when they have thin shapes. Dimmer bone colors are hard to see over Blender's dark wireframe and dark background. It's really hard to tell apart the selected ones from the non selected ones. If i didn't show you the first picture and you only looked at the second picture you wouldn't have a clue whether any bone is selected or unselected. The Rigify add-on uses bright bone colors to aid visibility in the 3D Viewport. However, this makes the channel list unreadable, as can be seen in the image below. For optimal readability in the Channel List the colors would have to be darker, which conflicts with the requirements for the 3D Viewport. ![2020-10-27 10_58_27-Blender.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F9109897/2020-10-27_10_58_27-Blender.png) This method has 1 great side and very important for animation which is making very obvious and clear which bones are selected, unselected and active. And the downside is that the dope sheet/graph editor gets even more unreadable when you expand the channel's attributes: ![2020-10-27 11_00_28-Blender.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F9109906/2020-10-27_11_00_28-Blender.png) Leaving us in at a point of: bright groups will give us the readability we need in the viewport but mess completely the animation editors and on the default colors improving the readability in the animation editor but making it really hard on the eyes in the viewport. So currently the existing solution Here comes: ![2020-10-27 11_02_07-Blender.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F9109918/2020-10-27_11_02_07-Blender.png) An option that has been there for ages and has proven not only useful but for anyone that works with character rigs is the first button they press every time they go to the graph editor posing a new problem: the option is local to the file, so every new shot, every new animation you need to un-tick this box in every animation editor. So there are a few things here we propose which First: **Move the option to the Animation preferences panel** Pros: you as user chose how do you like it to stay, even if it its on by default you turn it on once and that's it. Cons: it's still on by default. Second: **Redesign the way the bone group colors are presented in the animation editors** Pros: done well means we could eventually get rid of the option to turn on/off if we come to a solution that is non intrusive a-la outliner, taking full advantage of all the ideas that at this moment seem to be playing against each other. Cons: longer process to design and implement correctly. In adition to the presentation of the bone group colors in the animation editors we also can see that creating and editing group colors can be time consuming and way more complex than we want it to be, we'll propose a simplified yet powerful version that will be more clear and faster to setup.

Luciano Muñoz Sessarego commented

2020-10-15 18:23:33 +02:00

Added subscriber: @LucianoMunoz

blender-admin commented

2020-10-15 18:23:33 +02:00

#81476 was marked as duplicate of this issue

blender-admin commented

2020-10-15 18:23:33 +02:00

#96159 was marked as duplicate of this issue

Christiaan Moleman commented

2021-03-19 17:17:57 +01:00

Added subscriber: @ChristiaanMoleman

Germano Cavalcante commented

2022-03-05 18:09:42 +01:00

Added subscribers: @stibbot, @RedMser, @mano-wii

stib commented

2022-03-06 01:02:12 +01:00

A possible design fix would be to make the text and icons in the channel list follow the bone colour, and let the background stay grey. That lets you keep the bright colours for the 3D viewport and still be able to read them in the channel list.
Here's a mockup.

A possible design fix would be to make the text and icons in the channel list follow the bone colour, and let the background stay grey. That lets you keep the bright colours for the 3D viewport and still be able to read them in the channel list. Here's a mockup. ![image.png](https://archive.blender.org/developer/F12898741/image.png)

Christiaan Moleman commented

2022-03-06 09:21:51 +01:00

That works for that theme, but I think any possible colour change is going to depend entirely on the surrounding theme. It might be better to just give up on displaying group colours on text in these windows. Perhaps indicate the group colour in an icon or tab separate from the text, alongside it, or just don't show group colours at all here. Their main function is differentiating groups in the workspace, not the Graph Editor, it seems to me.

stib commented

2022-03-07 01:58:39 +01:00

Another approach would be a tile of colour to give an indication of the group, without affecting the functional elements' readability, just there is a rgb tile to indicate the xyz channels you could add one to indicate the group.

Philipp Oeser removed the

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Improve usability of Group Colors in animation editors #81744