[Bf-committers] GSoC intentions: non-traditional devices

[Matt Ebb]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 6:34 AM, Mike Erwin <significant.bit at gmail.com> wrote:
> I found
> several posts over the years about the BF working with 3D Connexion on
> SpaceNavigator support, but also found some confusion about plugins
> and whether or not these devices work out of the box or need a special
> build.

Hi,

Spacenavigator support is in 2.49, you need to get a plugin to put in
a folder under your blender dir to make it work. Support in 2.49 was
ok, but quite limited due to the old events system. 2.5 is much better
in this regard, the new event system/keymaps have lots of exciting
possibilities to do some very cool things with the spacenavigator, but
it's just not implemented yet.

I looked at doing this myself a little while ago on OS X, but got
stuck since blender is now using 64bit/cocoa on OS X, and I was having
trouble re-compiling the plugin to work on that system. Plugin aside
though, putting spacenavigator support back shouldn't be too
difficult, you just need to insert the events generated by it, similar
to how tablet events work, and then key maps and other code in Blender
can get those values.

This would be really great to get back in 2.5, however it may be a
little small for a GSoC. Maybe if combined with something else it
might be better, i.e. some really good UI design/implementation about
how to integrate it throughout with Blender's tools and take it to the
next level?

cheers

Matt