[Bf-committers] 2.8 3D Manipulator Design

[Joe Eagar]

Right.  I'm rather bad at designing these interfaces myself.  That's the
hard part.

Joe

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 2:35 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Aside of some details, this is what Antony and Julian already have been
> working on.
> The basics is simple, the implications and implementation not - especially
> to achieve top level (and pleasant) interaction.
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation, Producer Blender Institute
> Support us - join blender.cloud or Blender Dev Fund.
>
> > On 23 Aug 2016, at 10:29, Joe Eagar <joeedh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all.  I had a rather panicky reaction on pursing Autodesk Fusion 360
> > videos:
> >
> > http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360
> >
> > Here's a direct link to one of the videos:
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/embed/KZyjLwKWyOw?rel=0
> >
> > So!  3D widget interfaces on steroids.  I've dome similar stuff in the
> > past, so I thought I'd write up how I went about designing a 3D widget
> API
> > (to fit inside my Blender-derived application architecture).
> >
> > The basic concept is pretty simple, and is a lot like a 2D user interface
> > API.  You have shapes that live in the 3D viewport (and participate in
> the
> > dependency graph).  These shapes have event callbacks (and an "am I still
> > alive" method) and can contain other shapes.  They also participate in
> the
> > dependency graph.
> >
> > Shapes never store direct pointers to data.  References to scene objects
> > and the like are stored as RNA paths.
> >
> > In my implementation shape widgets could not go modal.  Instead they
> would
> > invoke modal tool operators, and if necessary insert a temporary DAG node
> > to update themselves interactively.  For example, a translate manipulator
> > widget has a DAG reference to the active object.  When it invokes
> > transform, the widget automatically moves as the user expects.
> >
> > One final point.  3D widget user interfaces are remarkably difficult to
> > design, and I don't have a lot of talent for that myself.  Before any
> > coding happens, we should solicit proposals from people with 3D UI design
> > talent.
> >
> > Anyway, cheers!
> >
> > Joe
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