Please stop coding, and discuss this proposal properly first. As I said, post on Right Click Select, and include screenshots of the "before" and "after". Also be sure to discuss this change with the UI and Animation module teams first.

In D7685#189252, @Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) wrote:

Please stop coding, and discuss this proposal properly first. As I said, post on Right Click Select, and include screenshots of the "before" and "after". Also be sure to discuss this change with the UI and Animation module teams first.

Sorry, should have clarified. I will still set up a proposal on RCS, and I'll happily talk with UI and Animation (what's the best way to communicate with them?). The code work to be done will be to help demo the proposal and to help me learn the back end of Blender. I'm okay with having the code completely thrown out and possibly rewritten. Either way, I don't expect the patch to move forward until I've made the proposal.

In D7685#189424, @Scott Wilson (propersquid) wrote:

Sorry, should have clarified. I will still set up a proposal on RCS, and I'll happily talk with UI and Animation (what's the best way to communicate with them?). The code work to be done will be to help demo the proposal and to help me learn the back end of Blender. I'm okay with having the code completely thrown out and possibly rewritten. Either way, I don't expect the patch to move forward until I've made the proposal.

👍

Drop by on https://blender.chat/, you'll find the teams in the #ui and #animation-module channel. You can also always drop by in #blender-coders, most Blender developers hang out there.

Note that I just renamed the UI channel to #user-interface-module (to follow our naming convention, reading this here reminded me of this).

@Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) - As requested, I created a proposal on Right-Click Select.

@Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) , Despite the timestamp shown on Right-Click Select, the proposal has only been up for about 7 hours and has already gotten significant attention, with 39 retweets, 168+ likes and 31 upvotes on R-Click Select. No one has really added suggestions, besides general comments of support of this being added as an option (Dare I say... default? Naw, I won't push it).

1. Would this be a tip / base switch or a slider, to allow the axis display to be positioned more strategically?
2. Should this be seen as a "set it and forget it" option (placed in the Preferences) -OR- be put in one of the Viewport Display menus. @Fin O'Riordan (fin.eskimo) might have some thoughts on this.
3. *While this option is being considered, there is something related that I'm seeing that will affect riggers* - There is an automatic scaling being applied to the axis display, which is based on the bone length. This is pretty slick for most (60-70% of bones & views), but this not-so-great for situations where the bones are short. This impacts the visibility of hands, feet and spine with more than 3-4 bones. When rigging, I find it important to be able to view all major points of articulation at a glance, but this feature can hide critical pieces for getting the overall feeling of alignments, and how they relate.

All that being said...
What is the next logical step?
Is there additional information needed or checkboxes that need to get ticked?

P.S. I hope that someone noticed that I avoided saying, "*This is how they do it in XXX software.*" ;)

Nice to see this is being worked on! As a rigger this little issue has always been disturbing. My 2 cents about it:

• Bones axis should be drawn by default at the root position (as proposed)
• A slider to adjust the head-tail axis position is a nice option. Should be definitely a per-bone setting, not a global preference, to workaround the issue only when multiple bones have the same root location, leading to display multiple axes at the same location. This issue already exists with the current axis position, when multiple bones have the same tail position.
• More drawing option for axis scaling would be nice (and I'd go further, for bones draw scale as well) , but maybe it should be treated in another patch in order to better separate the tasks and optimize chances for inclusion in master.

As discussed a bit in the Rigging & Animation meeting.

We all seemed to agree to have this as a per Armature attribute.

This is simpler than having to manage per bone.
This also makes it easier to find the option/slide, as it keeps it next the Axis display checkbox.

How is this layout?

Or should the slider be squeezed onto the same line as the checkbox?

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

• Checkbox and slider on same line. Got it! Would it still make sense to hide the slider when checkbox is off, or disable it? From my memory, Blender usually disables the element.
• The default value. Yeah, I need help here. I don't know where to set the default value, and as a side question, what do we want the default to be (root or tip)?
• Ticket title and description: I'll update it tonight.

Thanks again!

I think this is a feature that should go in the animation preferences, as its something you'd normally always prefer on either the tip or the head of the bone and only change it when for some reason the current place is cluttered or so, but that's corner cases.
For those I'd have it in the display of the overlays as a sort of "override" of the default set in the animation settings.

In D7685#266932, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) wrote:

I think this is a feature that should go in the animation preferences, as its something you'd normally always prefer on either the tip or the head of the bone and only change it when for some reason the current place is cluttered or so, but that's corner cases.
For those I'd have it in the display of the overlays as a sort of "override" of the default set in the animation settings.

I honestly have no thoughts on this either way. From what I was told by my rigger friend, the anim and UI team wanted to keep those options close together. If we do want it moved elsewhere, then I'll need some help to learn where to put it and how to have it accessible in the function I've modified.

In D7685#266932, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) wrote:

I think this is a feature that should go in the animation preferences, as its something you'd normally always prefer on either the tip or the head of the bone and only change it when for some reason the current place is cluttered or so, but that's corner cases.
For those I'd have it in the display of the overlays as a sort of "override" of the default set in the animation settings.

In the biweekly animation/rigging meeting, it was suggested that it be placed here to keep it next to the visibility switch, which would prevent people from having to hunt for the option.

In D7685#267718, @Jer Bot (verbal007) wrote:

In D7685#266932, @Luciano Muñoz Sessarego (looch) wrote:

I think this is a feature that should go in the animation preferences, as its something you'd normally always prefer on either the tip or the head of the bone and only change it when for some reason the current place is cluttered or so, but that's corner cases.
For those I'd have it in the display of the overlays as a sort of "override" of the default set in the animation settings.

In the biweekly animation/rigging meeting, it was suggested that it be placed here to keep it next to the visibility switch, which would prevent people from having to hunt for the option.

I agree that hunting for options isnt great, but when an option like this you basically want to set it up once and never thing about again the settings make more sense.

Updates from Animation Module meeting:

• Axis position defaults to 1 (tip) to match current Blender way of doing things. We decided to go for the least controversial settings for now, and can set the default to 0 (root) if requested (in the next Blender version?).
• Changed the percentage back to factor. A few people pointed out they prefer factor, and I'm okay with that.
• Fixed custom bone shapes not being affected by the position slider
• The placement in the UI is still in the armature panel. The reasoning is that we want the turn on/off the axis and the axis position to be in the same area. We could move it to an overlay position, but that opens a can of worms (Should all armatures have their axes visible at once, or is that too noisy? What other overlay options that are currently on a per node type basis should also be moved to a global overlay?)

In D7685#274720, @Sybren A. Stüvel (sybren) wrote:

Changed the percentage back to factor. A few people pointed out they prefer factor, and I'm okay with that.

I missed this. Who were those "few people"? I don't feel strongly either way (I prefer percentages, but constraint influence and all kind of shader node properties use 0-1 factors).

Honestly, can't remember. I've talked with a few people about the patch.

Changed the default of the axis position to the root.

A nice touch would be to add some versioning code, to set the value for existing files to 1. That way backward compatibility is maintained, and opening an existing file doesn't show a different result all of a sudden.

Added!