[Bf-committers] Keys to control mask feather

Nate Wiebe natewiebe13 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 20 18:22:40 CEST 2012


Currently the hotkeys for controlling the mask feather are a bit
strange. Many will feel this is a relatively small issue that doesn't
need attention, but because of things like muscle memory and
tutorials, it's never a good idea to let bad hotkeys last in a piece
of software. I'll break it into three parts and give reasons why this
should be changed in order to fit into blenders keymap better. I'll
also include a small summary for those that don't want to read why.

Summary:

Initially exposing mask: Currently SHIFT, should be moved to ALT
Creating new mask point: Currently SHIFT, should be moved to ALT
Uniformly moving all mask points: Currently CTRL, should be moved to ALT
Extra: CTRL is used for snapping, SHIFT is used for making accurate adjustments.

Explanation:

Control over the feather needs to be moved over to one key, so if you
know you want to work with the feather, you know it's a certain key.
ALT was suggested by Sergey during a discussion on IRC. Now for
specific reasons:

Initially exposing mask:
When first working with feather, you need to expose it. Currently this
is with the SHIFT key. It moves all mask points uniformly. The thing
that throws you is that after this first operation, to get the same
effect of moving all point uniformly, you have to use the CTRL key,
not SHIFT.

Creating new mask points:
In other parts of blender, you select multiple thing using the SHIFT
key, in the mask it does work if you use the RMB, but you can also
select points using the LMB. Personally, I've added points
accidentally, and if later down the road we get the ability to move
selected mask points at the same time, this would be nice to be able
to SHIFT click without accidentally creating a new point. (But I do
realize this would be human error)

Uniformly moving all mask points:
This switches from SHIFT after the first operation. It feels kind of
awkward not because of the key, but because you're using different
keys for the same operation.

Extra: Talking with Campbell, he'd like to have snapping in place in
the future, which would require the CTRL key. Also I'd like to see
SHIFT for more accurate feather movements implemented in the future.
In order for these to actually take place, we need to move to a new
key. The only one that makes sense is ALT.

I'd like to hear any suggestions if anyone has a better idea, or if
any of my concepts are flawed. I feel we need to nip this in the bud.
Solving this sooner than later makes it easier to switch.

-NateW


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