UI Overhaul, CharacterScene Resource, and GDScript Enhancements

[CristKenydy]

Summary

Introduce several improvements and additions to Godot Engine 5.x, focusing on:

• UI overhaul for future versions
• New specialized editors (e.g., Material Editor, Character Editor)
• New resource type: CharacterScene, which enables better character-oriented workflows
• Enhancement to GDScript: add a with keyword and new class method for CharacterScene

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Proposal

1. UI Improvements

Godot's current UI is functional but could benefit from a more modern, customizable design in future versions. Inspired by tools like Blender and Unity, an updated UI could improve usability and artist/programmer workflows, especially in large projects.

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2. New Editors

✅ Material Editor

A dedicated visual Material Editor (node-based, like Shader Graph) to allow easier creation of materials without having to write shader code directly.

✅ Character Editor

Introduce a new resource type: CharacterScene.

• It represents a character as a unified asset: model, animation tree, logic, etc.
• Introduce a new editor: CharacterSceneEditor with:
  • Built-in model editing tools (basic rigging/mesh editing)
  • Animation previewing
  • A Character ID text field to assign a globally usable ID

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3. New GDScript Features

➕ Character.GetCharacterID(id_name: StringName)

New static method to retrieve the CharacterScene with the given ID:

var enemy = Character.GetCharacterID("EnemySoldier")

[Meorge]

You should open a proposal issue or discussion for each individual item. That being said:

• Your "UI Improvements" is extremely vague. The only specific, actionable proposal I can get out of it is to make the UI more customizable, but it sounds like you have hopes for more than that?
• The "Material Editor" you describe already exists as VisualShaders.
• The "CharacterScene" and "Character Editor" you describe sound to me like they might be a bit too implementation-specific. Different games will have different requirements and setups for characters, so an attempt at a one-size-fits-all system would probably have trouble.
• The GetCharacterID (or get_character_id, in GDScript's snake_case) method you describe sounds like it could be useful, if made more generally into a system like Unity's Addressables, which I'm not aware of Godot already having (though I could be wrong).

[sockeye-d]

This also seems AI generated and lacking details - there's no description for what the proposed with keyword would do

[Calinou]

Closing, as one proposal should be opened per requested feature. Also, please refrain from copy-pasting AI-generated output. In the interest of writing relevant, high-quality proposals, proposal text should be something you write.