Anim: rework bone colors #113941

New Issue

Sybren A. Stüvel · 2023-10-19T16:38:06+02:00

Sybren A. Stüvel commented

2023-10-19 16:38:06 +02:00

Bone Colors need an upgrade. The current issues:

One "bone color" consists of three color swatches: "regular", "selected", and "active".
Blender's theme contains a set of 20 bone colors. Given that they each have to define all three of these swatches, they can become hard to distinguish in the 3D Viewport. Using only hue to distinguish them is not enough, as colors then can get too visually similar. This means that brightness or saturation will also have to be used as a distinguishing factor, but that quickly results in the "selected" color of one being quite close to the "regular" color of the other. #112635: Proposal: New Bone Color Presets shows this quite well.
Custom bone colors also need these three color swatches, meaning they cannot be automatically adjusted for light & dark themes.
Blender's armature drawing code darkens the color from the theme, when drawing the bone's wireframe. This results in that riggers have to pick the "Regular" color swatch lighter than they want to, so that it shows correctly when Blender darkens it again.

The proposed solution:

Reduce what a "bone color" is to a single color swatch. This will be labeled as simply "the bone color".
Add theme colors for Solid, Wire, Selected, Active. The first two are used when bones are uncolored (i.e. "default" chosen as color).
Selected/Active bones' wire color is determined by the above Selected/Active theme colors.
Add a "Colorize Bone Selection" userpref option, off by default. When this is turned on, the Selected/Active wire colors are automatically computed by Blender from the bone color. This could be done by, for example, changing the apparent brightness to specific levels.
Remove the hard-coded -50 value offset in base colors so that WYSIWYG.
Add theme options for edit bone colors as well, instead of hijacking mesh edit theme colors.
Versioning: Can map old bone colors to similar colors of the new presets. (Not relevant for Custom Colors.)

Bone Colors need an upgrade. The current issues: - One "bone color" consists of three color swatches: "regular", "selected", and "active". - Blender's theme contains a set of 20 bone colors. Given that they each have to define all three of these swatches, they can become hard to distinguish in the 3D Viewport. Using only hue to distinguish them is not enough, as colors then can get too visually similar. This means that brightness or saturation will also have to be used as a distinguishing factor, but that quickly results in the "selected" color of one being quite close to the "regular" color of the other. [#112635: Proposal: New Bone Color Presets](https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/112635) shows this quite well. - Custom bone colors also need these three color swatches, meaning they cannot be automatically adjusted for light & dark themes. - Blender's armature drawing code darkens the color from the theme, when drawing the bone's wireframe. This results in that riggers have to pick the "Regular" color swatch lighter than they want to, so that it shows correctly when Blender darkens it again. The proposed solution: - Reduce what a "bone color" is to a single color swatch. This will be labeled as simply "the bone color". - Add theme colors for Solid, Wire, Selected, Active. The first two are used when bones are uncolored (i.e. "default" chosen as color). - Selected/Active bones' wire color is determined by the above Selected/Active theme colors. - Add a "Colorize Bone Selection" userpref option, off by default. When this is turned on, the Selected/Active wire colors are automatically computed by Blender from the bone color. This could be done by, for example, changing the apparent brightness to specific levels. - Remove the hard-coded -50 value offset in base colors so that WYSIWYG. - Add theme options for edit bone colors as well, [instead of hijacking mesh edit theme colors](https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/110874#issuecomment-1038531). - Versioning: Can map old bone colors to similar colors of the new presets. (Not relevant for Custom Colors.) ------------ Related: - #81744 - #112635 - #112943

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Sybren A. Stüvel added this to the 4.1 milestone 2023-10-19 16:38:06 +02:00

Sybren A. Stüvel added the

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To Do

label 2023-10-19 16:38:06 +02:00

Sybren A. Stüvel added this to the Animation & Rigging project 2023-10-19 16:38:09 +02:00

Sybren A. Stüvel referenced this issue

2023-10-19 16:39:32 +02:00

Improve usability of Group Colors in animation editors #81744

Demeter Dzadik referenced this issue

2023-10-19 17:16:01 +02:00