headus 3D tools

ghib · Posts: 27 Joined: 02 Feb 2007

Hi Phil,

I've found myself wanting, on a fairly regular basis, to be able to pick some polys in the 3D window and quickly center them in the UV and/or Ed window. Also vice versa.

My current workflow takes me back and forth between XSI & UVlayout, tweaking and refining as I go (which I love), and quite often will have shells stacked on top of each other and gets pretty messy sometimes.

At the moment the G key is used as a visual aid for finding polys and breaking large chunks of uv shell. My suggestion is to extend it's function to be able to select, find, isolate and to move without having to hover the cursor over highlighted polys. We currently have to manually find the highlighted green polys.

Given this ability we will be able to pick polys in the 3D window that are hard to find in the UV viewport, then switch to UV and move or home in. This is a function that works like the tweak function in Silo and MMB drag in Maya (also other apps I'm sure have this ability)

A further extension would be to hide all non-highlighted/unselected polys for clarity while working with individual shells.

Cheers for this great app.

headus · Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 5:16 pm Post subject:

"... pick some polys in the 3D window and quickly center them in the UV and/or Ed window. Also vice versa. "

Actually, you can already do that ... I added it a few months ago (another user requested it in email) but haven't updated the docs yet. If you're running v2.00.05 then you should have it.

In any of the view modes press and hold G to mark the polys, then switch views. Aim the mouse pointer at clear air and type G to bring up the extended marking menu and you'll see a Home option; tap the Home key to focus on the visible marked polys.

You can also use the H menu and H-G to hide the marked polys, then H-S to hide everything else and only show the marked polys.

And finally, the Home key normally focuses on the single poly under the mouse pointer; if that poly happens to be marked, then it will focus on the group of marked polys adjacent to the pick one.

Phil

ghib · Posts: 27 Joined: 02 Feb 2007

Oh! thanks very much Phil, didn't know about this 'secret' menu, must've missed that lesson. Things around here are very busy and I've found myself working a certain way.

It makes sense to me to just focus in on selected polys if you're aiming at clear air when you hit Home and with nothing selected would focus on All. That would make things a little speedier. Also a hide unselected function would be slightly quicker way than swapping then hiding. These are small things but sometimes it's the small things that make using one app that much more comfortable over another.

I'd love to see the ability to translate/rotate/scale selected polys without having to hover over the shell. I quite often work this way in XSI or Maya and one other thing occured to me while looking through the menu options you just revealed...

...is there currently a way to select a poly and quickly expand the selection to the whole UV shell? It's possible by using the 'grow' function but it's not that efficient for this purpose. This would also be a very handy thing for isolating and controlling things when there are many overlapping shells. Perhaps even an automated function in the 3D view, where it will select the whole UV shell by clicking once on a poly.

Having this inter-connection between windows would really help I think.

Cheers again for the pointer and thanks for listening.

Mike Morton
Lionhead Studios

headus · Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 5:56 pm Post subject:

" select a poly and quickly expand the selection to the whole UV shell?"

Type double G to fill the shell under the mouse pointer, so a combination of G-Home and G-G will sort of give you that.

But G filled/marked polys cant be xformed, only detached. I think what you really want is some tweaks to the LMB pick function ... this selects whole shells that can then be xformed together. Currently shells can only be picked in the UV view, but it wouldn't be hard to work something out for the 3D view as well. And while I'm at it I'll give you the option to xform picked shells without the hover. And also add H-P to hide unpicked shells.

I'll have a go at those now ...

Phil

headus · Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:28 pm Post subject:

OK, I just made those tweaks to the shell picking code ...

- You can now pick shells in the 3D view with Shift-LMB.

- You can now xform picked shells in the UV without having to do the hover thing.

- Added a new H-P hotkey sequence to hide all unpicked shells.

So they're not the poly marking things you wanted, but I'm thinking they might be the better way to achieve what you're after. Anyway, I'll upload a new installer sometime early next week, and these tweaks will be in there for you to try out.

Phil

Lewi · Posts: 61 Joined: 14 Jul 2006

I was wondering if there is a reason that left clicking empty space doesn't deselect all shells. For selecting lots of shells I suppose it makes sense to have persistent selection, but it seems to catch me out when finalising and tweaking individual shells in my layouts. Maybe a little toggle somewhere ?

headus · Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject:

Sorry, I'm confused ... are you saying that a single LMB click should or shouldn't de-select all shells? At the moment is does the former (ie a LMB click on empty should be de-selecting everything ... if its not, then you've found a bug).

Phil

Lewi · Posts: 61 Joined: 14 Jul 2006

Yeah " LMB click on empty should be de-selecting everything " is what I was expecting, and I am sure it was doing this before.With the file I was working on last week, I had to click each shell to deselect it. It's probably just the file then and I'm the bug for not doing a quick test Embarassed

sorry. Gotta think before I speak.

headus · Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject:

"I had to click each shell to deselect it."

OK, that's definitely a bug then ... next time it happens, LMB click'n'drag an empty box; that will also deselect everything, and might bypass the error?

Phil

ghib · Posts: 27 Joined: 02 Feb 2007

headus · Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the suggestions! I should have that new version up tomorrow, so try that out and let me know what else you might want changed.

Phil

headus · Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject:

OK, a week late, but I finally got that new version uploaded! Here's the release announcement ...

http://www.headus.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2746#2746

Phil

ghib · Posts: 27 Joined: 02 Feb 2007

Hey, can't complain about your output of updates at all, so a week late here is around half a year early for most other apps.

All that hard work is definately appreciated, will give the new release a try today.

Cheers.