[Bf-committers] Reference Images Proposal

[Campbell Barton]

Andy is interested in getting involved. We discussed different
possible projects: modifier, user configurable view angles for numpad,
helping with BMesh and possibly improving background images.

Brecht: can see your point but from a user perspective think it could
be very handy to be able to display reference images, I used to use
textured quads instead of background images quite a lot and it was
fairly annoying.
I ended up forcing wire for the objects I was modeling and then only
having the quads as textured, but it was tedious to setup.

This could be improved but then I think you end up abusing meshes as
reference images! their drawtype needs to override whatever the user
has set for them to be useful, and you end up with having to have UVs
on them and mesh datablocks for every reference.

Having said all this I'm not especially interested in pushing for this
to be added, Andy could be better off working on some other feature
that is less controversial too.

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 5:53 PM, Brecht Van Lommel <brecht at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't think this is a good idea, it really sounds like an abuse of
> the concept of an empty to me, and a special object type for this also
> seems too specific. Why not just use an mesh with a texture applied
> and add the option to always show an object in a certain draw mode
> somehow (which is different than what the current option does). I know
> the whole draw mode topic brings up a lot of other problems but I
> don't like the idea of adding something like this to work around
> something that I think is a more fundamental problem.
>
> Brecht.
>
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Some more fun things...
>>
>> 8) Would be nice to have an "Add Image Reference" in the add menu
>> which could select from images, would bring up a search menu if there
>> were >10 (just like add group).
>>
>> 9) Drag and drop an image from the file selector onto a mesh applies
>> it to the texture, but dropping onto an empty could make it a
>> reference :)
>>
>> Generally this gets a +1 from me but what happens to existing
>> background images? - is this removed? if so we can use do_versions to
>> add empties. is this an acceptable replacement?
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Andy Braham <andybraham at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>     I wanted to start work on improving background images, right now
>>> the only thing that can be done with background images is adjusting the
>>> scale, and x/y position this does not leave very much flexibility. What
>>> I propose on doing is creating a "Reference Image" or "Image" option in
>>> empty objects, or possibly adding a new "Image" object using empty
>>> objects as the foundation. This would eliminate the need to adjust the
>>> images external to Blender plus many more benefits:
>>>
>>> 1.) Image orientation - Allows any image orientation and scale helping
>>> with aligning and fine tuning images.
>>> 2.) Multiple Images with varying depths - This functionality would be
>>> invaluable when modeling objects with cross sections.
>>> 3.) Scenes - Allows images to be used as objects in scenes saving time
>>> on modeling and allows "stacked" image backgrounds
>>>                       similar to cartoon style backgrounds.
>>> 4.) Foreground Images - By using X-Ray the image would be rendered in
>>> the foreground.
>>> 5.) Projection - When Project Paint is finished this will allow the
>>> addition for the ability to move the image over a object and project
>>>                              the image into the texture.
>>> 6) Flexibility - This allows Blender to be much more flexible by not
>>> tying the images to just a view orientation.
>>> 6.) Implementation - This functionality would be quite easy to implement
>>> since none of the views would be affected by adding more options.
>>>
>>>  I would really like some feedback on this from everyone.
>>>
>>> /Thanks,
>>> Andy Braham/
>>> [IRC: Smurfinator]
>>>
>>>
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>>> Bf-committers at blender.org
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> - Campbell
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-- 
- Campbell