Comments on: Goodbye, Yellow/Pink Dots

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 06:47:34 +0000

Good question. There are still a few issues that are preventing me from committing - mainly that lamps become kind of invisible since they lose their dots/circles. I’ve mentioned this all to Ton, who is interested in working on this stuff for 2.35, so chances are, it may appear in bf-blender after he finishes his current coding binge with mesh editing, undo, and so on :)

By: Coltseaver

Coltseaver — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:13:33 +0000

hi Matt,

good idea, but when could we see that? at least in tuhopuu

thanks!

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:36:42 +0000

IamInnocent: All very interesting points. The way I have it right now, is that its displayed on all selected objects. I’ve been using it like this, using blender most days for the last month or so and it’s been good for me, but it really needs testing. About detecting what object have no vertices left, I think it’d be even better to represent that in it’s own way, like drawing a special icon or special axis type when there are no vertices.

Perhaps a button in View Properties that toggles centre point display for all objects (off by default) might be a compromise for the cases that have been brought up here.

Cheers

By: IamInnocent

IamInnocent — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 10:04:17 +0000

Apparently there are quite a few people who use the center pivot very creatively in way that your system could not easily replace.
For example grouping a bunch of center pivots in the same place makes it easy to detect if one of the group has moved. (Don’t ask me why, I’m just the messenger)
In another case, the center pivot is often the only way to detect objects with no vertices left to them.

Jean

By: IamInnocent

IamInnocent — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 06:57:19 +0000

I vote for it but with the ctrl option of displaying the pivot points, one is forced to hold a key in circumstances it should be released ; better a toggle option in the Object context I believe.

What I haven’t understood though is if the axes will be displayed for every selected object or just the active one. There’s a dilemma there since, in the latter case, your system will proove much more of a clutter bug than the present pivot point when many objects will be selected together. OTOH, not having it would be a disadvantage sometimes, like when the pivot point is the center of transformations.

Nice idea anyway : don’t give it up !

Jean

By: Youpi

Youpi — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 20:00:36 +0000

please erase my msg!

i have not seen the second pix :o)

By: Youpi

Youpi — Sun, 15 Aug 2004 19:45:07 +0000

You did it!!!
Excellent matt.

another con which you could resolve:
Backface culling in edit mode now :p
those “backvertex” make me and you crazy

oh damn! sorry, it’s not a feature Tracker here eheh

By: William

William — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 17:03:08 +0000

I like the idea. Anyway, with the axis indicators it would be possible to tell where the center is.

By: Phlip

Phlip — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 23:45:35 +0000

Maybe include “Centre Point” in the F7 settings, along with the “Axis”, “Bounding Box”, “Name”, etc options?
Then you could turn off Centre Point and turn on Axis and get what you have here (minus the colour, but that shouldn’t be hard to implement)

By: kama-loka

kama-loka — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 14:35:43 +0000

thanks. now i understand a bit more.

there are in deed cool techniques to produce outstanding work, blender expects its users to be very imaginative…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 06:20:39 +0000

Hi, kama-loka

The problem, as I’ve tried to describe, is that the dots add visual clutter to the workspace, without being that useful in themselves. You’ll notice that very few other 3D applications use things like this - in a conversation with Ton (who is supportive of this idea :), he mentioned that the main reason they are there is because way back on the first Blender versions, when computers were too slow to even display complex wireframes, it was helpful to know where the objects were. Things have changed now though, and this use isn’t important any longer.

Not only problems though, I feel that this can be improved considerably (eg. better vsualising local axes).

Regarding what’s important to improve, I’m a designer and my programming skills are very limited. I work on what I’m capable of doing, and what I’m interested in (interface design). Coding in the render engine is far out of my skills, but that doesn’t stop me doing what I can to help out, anyway. Anyway, it’s possible to render wireframe with hidden edges, with a bit of trickery - have a look at this thread on elysiun.com: http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26144

Cheers and thanks very much for your comments,

Matt

By: kama-loka

kama-loka — Thu, 05 Aug 2004 15:42:44 +0000

sorry, i don’t realize where the problem is. why care about the yellow dots? i guess you`ll never publish a work in such a view. i think there are more important features to improve, for example i would like to have a rendered image in wireframe mode with hidden edges…

By: R2Blend

R2Blend — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 17:33:32 +0000

Maybe there could be an option to switch between the one on Blender now, and yours.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 18:32:15 +0000

Yeah, I realise that, though the selection by centre point is largely a symptom of incorrect selection code (if you click on it, it should be selected)! An option could be to only have the dots show up when Ctrl is held down - that would also give a hint that Ctrl actually does something, too.

By: ideasman

ideasman — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:16:52 +0000

The burple dots can be used for Ctrl+RMB, so the object is selected by its centre. this can be good.
HOWever, being able to turn them off would be nice :).

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 07:19:03 +0000

Thanks, R2Blend! I’ll put it in tuhopuu for people to try as soon as the 2.34 chaos is over.

By: R2Blend

R2Blend — Sat, 24 Jul 2004 21:25:36 +0000

Thank you!!! That will be great in blender!

/me hugs broken