[Bf-committers] Camera Guides

[Michael Fox]

ok i will stop now, thank you all

On 06/05/11 07:33, Campbell Barton wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 20:03 +1000, Michael Fox wrote:
>> In the past few days i have been working on adding guides to the camera
>> object, to be used for perspective and eye line tracking  as well as
>> composition guides (rule of thirds, etc etc) ,  now granted there is
>> patches available to do this but they are all hardcoded and don't allow
>> for much in the way of adjustment or precision, and certainly not
>> elegant or integrated well.
>>
>> However there has been concerns over this feature is really necessary,
>> like people should use BG images or Grease pencil, really slapdash stuff
>> and that custom guides are not needed nor should be developed, so I
>> would like to ask, do I continue on this project, or call it a day and
>> let the patch pass around the community because I do not want to keep
>> going if it is deemed of little or no interest or need.
>>
>> the Patch
>> http://mfoxdogg.com/development/cam_guides.txt
>>
>> Pros.
>>       -uses SDNA/RNA
>>       -fully accessible via python
>>       -update real-time
>>       -both ends of each guide are independent and can be put anywhere in
>> the area of the camera
>>       -has a transparency value
>>       -position values are percentages of the camera area so no need to
>> redraw guides if resolution or camera scale change
>>       - due to accessibility of python, a preset system could be
>> developed for this
>>       - guides are saved in the file
>> Cons
>>       -only exist in camera view
>>       -only a dashed line and no colour support at this time
>>
>> The patch has a few issues
>>       - need a way to clear memory made where the guide is made
>>       -due to this files saved with guides will crash
>>       -the remove guide button does not work, for some reason
>>       -only very basic UI has been developed
>>       -no documentation at this time
>>
>> Now please don't view this as me sulking and being a primadonna its just
>> i have very little time these days and havn't developed anything for a
>> while, there is not design docs for the object colour rules system yet
>> so i took on this challenge, which has been in the back of my mind for a
>> long time.
>>
>> Thank you for your time
>>       Michael B. Fox
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-committers mailing list
>> Bf-committers at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
> It seems to me that this is spending energy on a feature which is mainly
> useful in corner cases, while grease pencil isn't perfect, I think with
> some minor tweaks it can work very well.
>
> Suggest to do this instead:
> * Add generic overlay presets like golden rule, center, diagonal lines?
> There could be 3-6 of these that can work like existing tile safe.
>
> * Rather then adding new code, use grease pencil for this feature, the
> only change needed is show a cameras grease pencil while in the camera
> view - irrespective of selection.
>
> * Modify the SVG importer to optionally load paths into grease pencil or
> import SVG and convert curves to grease pencil internally.
>
> --- (end implementation details)
>
> For users this can be made as simple as a button in camera panel:
> "Load SVG to Camera Grease Pencil".
>
> This avoids adding DNA, rna api, editing tools etc.
> If people really like to make some detailed camera overlay that cant be
> drawn by hand in grease pencil they can use inkscape and import it.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers