[Bf-committers] Reference Images Proposal

[Matt Ebb]

I still quite strongly disagree with the idea of adding new Image
object types, especially when talking about using objects in 3D Space
for UI functionality (adding more complexity to scenes).

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 9:14 PM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Example of why this is important is: a often requested feature is to
> be able to overlay an image in projection paint and use stamp from
> this image.

I think this stems from the previous hack we've probably seen on vimeo
where somebody did something very similar to this. But I don't think
using *background images* specifically is the right solution, it's
really something more like modifying the placement of your brush
texture. It's quite a likely use case that you might want reference
images for modelling something, but you're painting on something quite
different, i.e. painting on scales on a creature from a photo
reference. What's really needed is a better, more interactive way of
positioning and manipulating brush textures.

> Perhaps we keep existing background images but have a way to give then
> an absolute transformation in 3D space, and have some modal operator
> (transform or its own operator), for moving them about

This is more like what I would like to see, for both background images
and other things like brush textures, but not necessarily in the form
of a modal operator. I haven't had time so far (yay bugs!) but for a
while I've been wanting to look into and write up a proposal/code for
a generic manipulator system that works by modifying RNA values, in a
way similar to the functionality you added for editing lamp properties
in the View, but graphical and directly manipulatable.

With such a system you could toggle on or off 3D View handles for
moving/rotating/scaling background images, or brush textures, or
material texture mapping, or lamp properties (grab the spotlight cone
directly), or modifier controls (eg. a handle you can drag to control
the amount of bending in a simple deform modifier), etc. etc..

That way you could have easy access to these properties in the 3D
View, but not clutter up your actual scene file with helper objects
that really should be on the UI level.