Use the old undo method?

(IdleJohn) #1

I noticed that the undo system changed in 2.8. No longer can you enter edit mode, mess around and completely ruin a mesh and then exit edit mode and undo the changes to before you entered edit mode. It was like there were seperate undo lists for inside and outside of edit mode… It was really great!
Now, however, if you ruin a mesh and run out of undos you have to hope you saved recently.
The old way was so much better! Is there perhaps any way to restore the old behaviour?

I tried switching global undo on and off but I can’t see any difference.

(Markus Mayer) #2

While this isn’t exactly helping with your undo struggle:

You have your autosaves. The last one is 2 minutes old at most. Feel free to lower the timing if you think you need more.

(Blenderjack) #3

Actually the real power is before/after comparison of multiple edits with undo redo. From what I’ve seen posted the past few years this workflow was an accident of the clunky undo system they gave us and is not considered a feature by the powers-that-be.

Edit: Btw I never thought it was clunky. Others said that after losing work with an errant keypress (operator error) or it not working like other programs do. To them it was a broken undo system.


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(IdleJohn) #4

Yes exactly, you could mess around with a mesh and then go back out of edit and compare it to what you had before. It was super useful!
Sad that it has gone forever :frowning:

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(John Malcolm) #5

I lost more work to the old system of undo than I ever have to crashes. Do a lot of work in Sculpt or Edit mode. Enter Object mode. Do a few things. Undo them. Undo one too many times. Swear. Try and Redo. Swear even louder.

(Blenderjack) #6

Yeah that’s one of the worse pitfalls of many in Blender because it’s so hidden and destructive. So my operator error remark is true but misleading. Sorry about that and thanks for pointing it out John.


(IdleJohn) #7

Sorry I don’t understand… Why can’t you redo? What happens?

The only way it can mess up is if you undo a ‘chunk’ of edit mode work and then change something. But then:

(SterlingRoth) #8

Nothing. all changes made in edit mode are gone forever.

(John Malcolm) #9

I was slightly mistaken. Just checked and Edit mode can be the culprit when it’s entered straight after sculpting and a Ctrl+Z is mistakenly hit.

I prefer doing manual sequential saves tbh.

Undo should be consistent. For me that would mean “undo the last thing I did” not “undo every single thing I just did in another mode”. The Undo History command confuses things further. It classes changing mode as a thing in its list yet does nothing if you click the state before it.

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(IdleJohn) #10

The old undo was consistent! It consistently undos everything you did in edit mode :slight_smile:

I hope while making Blender more new-user-friendly it doesn’t lose too much of the cool wacky stuff that makes it better than the rest.

I’m not saying we all have to work the same way… I’m just saying it would be nice to have the option to go back to how it was, because for me it was quite a powerful feature.

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(John Malcolm) #11

I must admit, I’m not exactly sure what the Global Undo setting in Prefs does. You’d think that unchecking it would revert the undo behaviour to 2.79, but it doesn’t seem to.

(Ace Dragon) #12

The new undo system does have its quirks, but what needs to be noted is that the old system of global undo was coded way back for version 2.35 and was barely touched until the replacement came in.

What made it seem badly done in cases was that the system was more or less a hack that created a list of temporary “.blend” files (which is why it ate so much memory in large scenes). If that’s hard to believe, then I know Beerbaron can tell you in more detail how it worked.

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(John Malcolm) #13

It’s a pity we can’t have the Undo History as a panel we could keep open like Photoshop’s History. That way you could quickly revert back to wherever you wanted. If the list was colour coded it would be simple to see at a glance when the last Object Mode state change was for example.

While I remember though I’m off to up my Undo steps. I keep forgetting to. :slight_smile:

(William) #14

This would be a great addition. We almost have a History panel with the Info Editor, but there’s no way to step back.

(It would also be really nice to have a way to record and play macros using the operator system)

(Hadriscus) #15

Not against this but copying from the info editor and pasting to the script editor works just fine. Plus it has the benefit of being editable before execution… and being a nice entry door to learning python, which I am afraid a macro-replay system would hide further from the average user.

A dockable history panel would be nice too. I reckon it must not be too difficult to script up, haven’t tried tbh, I don’t use it that much as I rely mostly on incremental saves - and this immediately makes me think of how handy it would be for all panels to be dockable… but that is another topic !

(William) #16

Not quite sure what you mean re docking. In Blender’s UI, everything is essentially dockable:

Admittedly, the Info Editor is very messy and hard to read, and doesn’t allow you to step back, but those things could be added/improved.

(Hadriscus) #17

True ! however that pretty much means opening as many editors and there are things you want to see at once. I do exactly that, mind you - that’s a super welcome flexibility. However having stuff docked in say the viewport sidebar is handy. But really that is another discussion in itself that already has a loooong thread somwhere in this forum. ^^

Agreed for the info editor overhaul. It could use a proposal…
What do we need in an info editor ? A history of executed operators. A simple view (like current history panel), and an expanded view, terminal-style with actual functions and parameters (like the current info editor). Right-clicking an item could bring up a menu with “add line to new/currently opened script” which could fire up a new script editor window, and convenience items like “open source” as we have for all interface things anyway.

(William) #18

We could use disclosure triangles to show/hide the operator parameters:

Probably we should also rename the Info Editor to History Editor. The name ‘Info’ is for legacy reasons and no longer makes sense.

(Hadriscus) #19

Looks good.


How different was it from what it is now ?

(William) #20

Before 2.8, the Info Editor used to be the place where we had the main menus and the info text, such as version number, and scene statistics.

All the actual info is no longer in the Info Editor, so the name no longer reflects what it’s for.