[Bf-committers] Bring multiple objects to edit mode

Jeffrey italic.rendezvous at gmail.com
Fri Feb 26 21:51:22 CET 2016 

In my experience in Maya, new meshes are always added as a new transform
node, with a unique shape node (which actually holds the geometry data)
beneath. If you want to join two shape nodes, you have to use a special
parent command to put them under the same transform node (parent -r -s
(parent shape nodes with relative offset)). Component selection only
allows accessing the mesh data; it doesn't really put Maya into a
different mode, per se (which is why you can select both objects and
mesh components).

When added in blender, I think you could get away with adding new
geometry to the active object instead of trying to be smart about which
object to put it in. Maybe generated mesh (ie new cube, sphere, monkey)
could be separated into its own object. In the case of trying to join
mesh data from different objects with an edge, it might be best to just
throw an error saying "the two meshes cannot be joined, please join the
objects first." But then this is one extra ambiguous step for people
unfamiliar with blender's edit/object mode distinction.

I'm not so sure about how to split mesh from the original mass. If you
were to split off the active object, would it be split into its own
object or still be part of active? What about a selected object's mesh?
If you split that, would it become part of active or would it be smart
and become part of the selected object? I wouldn't want to treat each
island as a separate object on edit mode exit; that just feels
counter-intuitive to me.

I can't pretend I understand the technical side of the depsgraph, so I
won't even attempt.

On 02/26/2016 11:40 AM, Antony Riakiotakis wrote:
> Hey guys, just hopping by to drop my 2c.
> 
> I would be very interested to know how this works in other applications. In
> my current work I already see some issues with the multi-editing such as:
> 
> * It's not apparent where new geometry gets added to (especially new
> geometry, not attached to any existing mesh island). What happens when
> geometry from two meshes is joined? This often leads to the following
> approach:
> * Treat all separate mesh islands as separate objects on edit mode exit.
> This is quite different from the way blender works.  Most code written
> assumes one object is being edited. It would be probably trivial to just
> add a loop over all objects if there were clear boundaries between objects.
> As discussed above this is not the issue, which means quite a lot of
> refactoring.
> * Treating all mesh islands separately can mess up with a lot of
> assumptions about notification and dependency granularity. Those issues are
> not unsolvable but they are not trivial to deal with either.
> 
> It's not impossible (nothing is), but I guess some answers would be needed
> before such an approach is even explored by anyone (not me :p).
> 
> On 21 February 2016 at 19:03, David Fenner <d4vidfenner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> For the moment I don't think we need advanced features for multi edit mode.
>> Maybe support could start only for transform operations (with soft
>> selection too). That would be quite a nice upgrade for the moment.
>>
>> El domingo, 21 de febrero de 2016, Joshua Leung <aligorith at gmail.com>
>> escribió:
>>
>>> IIRC, there are quite a few technical hurdles in many cases.
>>>
>>> * Pose Mode - ALL the tools assume that they can fetch the pose and/or
>>> selected + editable bones off the active object
>>> * All Edit Modes - Again, these assume a direct correspondence between
>>> "active object" (specifically, ob->data) and the geometry they are
>> editing.
>>>
>>>
>>> In a way, that's also why for a long time we didn't even have any sort of
>>> multi-edit for properties...
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 21, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Bassam Kurdali <bassam at urchn.org
>>> <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Multi Edit (and multi pose) would be amazing. Is there a real technical
>>>> reason it can't be done currently? Or is it a matter of design,or
>>>> risking new bugs, etc.?
>>>> There's so many reasons a user would want this.
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 2016-02-20 at 13:11 +0100, Doeke Wartena wrote:
>>>>> yeah I mentioned MultiEdit in the OP. But if you have animations on
>>>>> multiple objects and you multi edit them then the animations break.
>>>>> Also it
>>>>> duplicates the objects, which can be very heavy in large complex
>>>>> scenes.
>>>>> MultiEdit is created with a nice goal in mind but it's clearly not
>>>>> the
>>>>> proper way for a multi edit implementation.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2016-02-18 21:01 GMT+01:00 Yury Baranov <cucumberer at gmail.com
>>> <javascript:;>>:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Actually, there is MultiEdit addon for that. Check it out. You can
>>>>>> participate in development if you want.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>> http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?339369-MultiEdit
>>>>>> -version-5-Multiple-Objects-Editing
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2016-02-18 22:15 GMT+03:00 Doeke Wartena <doeke.wartena at gmail.com
>>> <javascript:;>>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think blender could definitely benefit from allowing multiple
>>>>>>>> objects
>>>>>>>> in edit mode, but it should only
>>>>>>>> work on selected objects, not on the whole scene.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> true
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2016-02-18 20:04 GMT+01:00 Jeffrey <italic.rendezvous at gmail.com
>>> <javascript:;>>:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I have experience modeling in Maya as well as blender, and I
>>>>>>>> prefer the
>>>>>>>> blender way because of Maya's obnoxious automatic mode
>>>>>>>> switching when
>>>>>>>> you accidentally select another object. I think blender could
>>>>>> definitely
>>>>>>>> benefit from allowing multiple objects in edit mode, but it
>>>>>>>> should only
>>>>>>>> work on selected objects, not on the whole scene. If it acts on
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> whole scene, it opens up armature edit mode, curves, metaballs,
>>>>>>>> etc. It
>>>>>>>> should only act on selected objects of the same type as the
>>>>>>>> active
>>>>>>>> object. If a couple meshes and a metaball are selected, the
>>>>>>>> metaball
>>>>>>>> will not go into edit mode if a mesh is active.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I do not think you should be allowed to add an object to edit
>>>>>>>> mode if
>>>>>>>> you are already in edit mode; you would switch back to object,
>>>>>>>> select
>>>>>>>> the other, then switch back to edit. This avoids automatic mode
>>>>>>> switching.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Because edit mode ultimately modifies only the base mesh,
>>>>>>>> modifiers are
>>>>>>>> not an issue here. Likewise, shapekeys store vertex position on
>>>>>> existing
>>>>>>>> vertex indices, so adding geometry is already bad form when
>>>>>>>> working
>>>>>> with
>>>>>>>> shapekeys. I'm less familiar with vcols, but I would imagine
>>>>>>>> the data
>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>> stored similarly.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Multiple object editing is no doubt beneficial, but it needs to
>>>>>>>> be
>>>>>>>> improved. This is my two cents after using both. I have not
>>>>>>>> used XSI or
>>>>>>>> Max for modeling, so I cannot vouch for their functionality.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 02/18/2016 09:55 AM, Doeke Wartena wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> It is actually something that is better in Blender, to only
>>>>>>>>>> be
>>>>>> editing
>>>>>>>> one
>>>>>>>>>> object at a time, as it can cause errors in other programs
>>>>>>>>>> where
>>>>>>>> multiple
>>>>>>>>>> objects are selected.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ...
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ...you can just join them together but pressing
>>>>>>>>>> Ctrl J.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I never had a error with Softimage when editing multiple
>>>>>>>>> objects at
>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> same time. For maya and max I can't remember cause it's way
>>>>>>>>> to long
>>>>>>> ago I
>>>>>>>>> used those programs. And I think if something is prone for
>>>>>>>>> error then
>>>>>>> it
>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>>> the join thing, that doesn't work in so many cases (multiple
>>>>>>>>> objects
>>>>>>>> being
>>>>>>>>> animated for example).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I don't wan't to be rude, but saying that it's not necessary
>>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>> clearly a
>>>>>>>>>> lack of production experience with blender AND other
>>>>>>>>>> software. It is
>>>>>>>>>> absolutely necessary if blender wants to be on par or
>>>>>>>>>> better with
>>>>>>> other
>>>>>>>>>> software.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Amen!
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Also, it might be a few clicks more. But those few clicks
>>>>>>>>> really add
>>>>>> up
>>>>>>>>> sometimes. I had a simple task a few weeks ago that could
>>>>>>>>> have been
>>>>>>> done
>>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>>>> like 3 minutes but it took me around 20 minutes.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Object separation and edit mode are very good design
>>>>>>>>> decisions, which
>>>>>>>>>> actually are keeping things SIMPLE.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It is not about the separate modes. While those modes are
>>>>>>>>> good, they
>>>>>>>> focus
>>>>>>>>> to much on the active object and not the selection.
>>>>>>>>> Blender could shine a lot in the workflow regarding multiple
>>>>>>> selections.
>>>>>>>>> Both for edit mode and object mode. In my opinion stating
>>>>>>>>> otherwise
>>>>>>>>> is truly a lack of vision regarding this matter.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> 2016-02-18 16:03 GMT+01:00 David Fenner <
>> d4vidfenner at gmail.co
>>> <javascript:;>
>>>>>>>>> m>:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> I don't wan't to be rude, but saying that it's not
>>>>>>>>>> necessary is
>>>>>>> clearly
>>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>>>>> lack of production experience with blender AND other
>>>>>>>>>> software. It is
>>>>>>>>>> absolutely necessary if blender wants to be on par or
>>>>>>>>>> better with
>>>>>>> other
>>>>>>>>>> software. You see, ptex isn't necessary because you have
>>>>>>>>>> UVs, ik's
>>>>>>>> aren't
>>>>>>>>>> necessary since you can do fk, sculpting isn't necessary
>>>>>>>>>> since you
>>>>>> can
>>>>>>>>>> paint displacement maps in photoshop, etc etc. So it's not
>>>>>>>>>> about
>>>>>> being
>>>>>>>>>> necessary, is about how useful it is. Multiple object
>>>>>>>>>> editing would
>>>>>> be
>>>>>>>> very
>>>>>>>>>> useful, since basically joining stuff would kill thousands
>>>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> different
>>>>>>>>>> workflows that involve modifiers, vcol, shapekeys, any type
>>>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> linking,
>>>>>>>>>> animation, etc.  And having to edit objects one by one is
>>>>>>>>>> too
>>>>>>> technical
>>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>>>>> old fashioned, any "modern" 3D artist needs to be able to
>>>>>>>>>> be able to
>>>>>>>> shape
>>>>>>>>>> and work on the "whole thing" when he needs to.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> 2016-02-18 11:48 GMT-03:00 Daniel Salazar -
>> patazstudio.com
>>>>>>>>>> <
>>>>>>>>>> zanqdo at gmail.com <javascript:;>>:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> It has nothing to do with instancing. Its about
>>>>>>>>>>> sculpting/editing a
>>>>>>>>>>> compound shape without having to join it.
>>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Jeffrey "Italic_" Hoover
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-- 
Jeffrey "Italic_" Hoover

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