[Bf-committers] OOPs Wishlist

[Rob Haarsma]

> jeremy@marzhillstudios.com wrote:
>
>> Hey again I have started working on an oops schematic wishlist. Its 
>> small right now cause I'm still adding to it. I wanted to get some of 
>> your impressions and see if you had any other ideas on oops 
>> functionality. I intend to start working on some of it as I have time 
>> so look to be seeing some patches for testing from me soon. :-) 
>
I would've never written this mail, but since you're asking so 
explicitly.... ;-)

Automatic positioning oops:
http://www.tncci.com/blender/oops2.jpg

Way back, when Blender's code got released I did some experiments
with positioning of datablocks in the OOPS window. Like Ton said it is
very difficult to simply visualise the structure of your scene, because
some datablocks (especially Empties and Ipo's) can be connected in
many ways. I had some stuff going, but abandoned the work because
it grew too hackish and didn't know the code very well back then. But
there are two or three things that have crept crawling through my brain
since then.

First; when you click a object in the 3d window, it would be nice if all
datablocks connected to this object got automatically aligned
(something like this: http://www.tncci.com/blender/oops.jpg)
so you can directly switch/click to all data involved. This leads to two;
clicking, or ctlr-clicking a datablock would not only select or activate
the object in the 3d window, but would also switch the lower button
window to the appropriate menu (lampdata, material, texture etc.)
And clicking on camera blocks could change the 3d view accordingly,
as clicking on objects could make the object appear centered in 3d.

And third, it would be extremely convenient if you could select your
own list of datablocks, sorted on name, type of object, connection(s),
datalinks and whatnot. You can compare it with a detailed (windows)
explorer listing of files, where you can quickly sort the list on alphabet,
size, type and date of creation. On a wider scale I also tinkered with
the idea that when the user selects (parts of) a bone structure in 3d,
the oops window could schematically position the selected datablocks
as a tree, according to the parenting hierarchy of the object.

I'm sure there were more ideas, but seeing what coding efforts it would
take, I just left it as it is.. ;-)

Regards,

Rob.