Concepts
UI Variants
A UI Variant is a saved snapshot of your entire PropUI editor state — your
entries, layout, settings, and target setup. Variants let you keep multiple
panel designs or target setups side by side in one .blend.
Why you'd use them
- Keep a simple and an advanced version of the same panel.
- Store different target setups (e.g. a rig-control variant and a material-control variant).
- Experiment freely, then load back a known-good design.
Think of variants as named save slots for the whole editor, not just one panel.
How loading and saving behave
Because a variant holds the whole editor, PropUI protects you from losing unsaved work when you switch:
- Saving over a variant uses the Save Variant Conflict setting — ask, overwrite, or make a new variant.
- Loading a variant while the current editor differs uses Load Variant With Unsaved Changes — ask, save current as new, or discard and load.
You can set these to prompt every time or to a fixed answer. See Editor settings.
Variants vs. Generated UIs
These two are easy to confuse:
| Holds | Lives where | |
|---|---|---|
| UI Variant | A whole editor design (entries + layout + settings) | In the PropUI editor state |
| Generated UI | A built output panel (script + slot) | As a Text datablock / running panel |
A variant is a design you can load and edit. A generated UI is the actual panel that design produced.
Doing it
The list controls — add, duplicate, remove, reorder, save, load, clear — are covered as tasks in the manual:
You can also import a full setup JSON or bundle as a variant; see Import / Export.