[Bf-funboard] Transformations, deltas and offsets
Jeffrey
italic.rendezvous at gmail.com
Tue Jul 21 08:32:50 CEST 2015
A while ago, there was a thread
<http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-funboard/2015-April/006106.html>
in bf-committers about parenting offsets and whatnot. I was thinking
about this tonight and it got me wondering: if we exposed the offset to
the user, could we rethink how applying transforms works? When you apply
location, for example, blender moves the origin of the object to the
world origin and just moves the mesh data where you expect it. However,
when you try to rotate or scale the object from there, it defaults to
moving from the origin, which then makes it difficult to further
transform without the cursor or resetting the origin.
My issue with this is that it moves the origin back to world origin.
Honestly, this bugs the hell out of me. If I want to move the origin,
I'll do that manually.
I am proposing we expose the offset to the user in a way that is
separate from the object's transforms. Perhaps it can be in a
collapsible panel directly under the transforms and labeled "Offset from
Parent" to differentiate, or perhaps under "Relations" with the parent
selector. The way I see this functioning is always relative to its
parent object (or in the case of no parent, the world/scene), hence
putting it under "Relations."
This differs from delta transforms because delta transforms are relative
to the object's current position, not to its parent. While they can both
be used to the same ends, the purposes and underlying math are
fundamentally different. The values would be non-keyable and lockable.
I'm not entirely sure how rotation offset would work, since this is
based on the parent, not local space. Delta rotations already follow the
mode of normal transforms (ie quats or eulers), so perhaps it could
function similarly.
I hope to start a discussion with this. What are your thoughts? If this
is technically unfeasible or impratical, why? If you think it should be
implemented, do you have any suggestions to make it better? I've started
a thread <http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?376657> on
BA where discussion can take place, too.
--
Jeffrey "Italic_" Hoover
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