[Bf-funboard] Curves creating

[Matt Ebb]

On 23 Dec 2004, at 2:07 AM, Martin Poirier wrote:

> I just tried and it worked, so I must be doing
> something you're not. I just added a bezier circle,
> opened it, press H and rotated one of the end CV...

Yes, you're right. In the frustration of my rant I must have made a 
mistake, like pressing T instead of R. Incidentally, this still gives 
you the whole 'transform' feedback like the dotted line and Rot: value 
in the header, but doesn't actually do anything to a 2D curve. Again, 
hardly intuitive.

>> The only thing you can do is
>> move one of the tangent points, ruining the symmetry
>> of the control point.
>
> Which is why you should use Aligned Handles in those
> case, not Free Handles.

Well, that's not really solving the problem. Part of the annoyance is 
that you need to keep switching through a thousand different modes (and 
remember what they all do) just to edit a point. In Blender, there's no 
way to edit both the size of the CP+tangents and its rotation at the 
same time. In Illustrator, it's as easy as click-drag on the CP with 
the 'open triangle' tool, which makes it so much easier to draw nice 
smooth curves.

Check this:
http://mke3.net/blender/interface/interaction/illu_opentriangle.mp4
vs a more blender-style approach:
http://mke3.net/blender/interface/interaction/illu_whitearrow.mp4

(I might add, also having modifier keys to switch between different 
types of 'tools' in Illustrator is a godsend, like holding down Command 
to get the white arrow)

If you want to keep the tangents equidistant in Blender, you have to 
first convert to aligned, then use a repetitive sequence of R and S 
(which rarely takes just one go, because you rotate it, then you notice 
the tangents are too far out, then you scale it in, then rotate it 
again, then scale... argh!)

>> (of course rotating or scaling a single point is
>> geometrically impossible, and should do nothing)
>
> Ever heard of different center mode? ;o)

Touché! Of course the transformer himself would catch me on that :) It 
still isn't very intuitive though, having it change the curve like this 
when you press a completely different key (especially when the 
transformation doesn't do anything).

Perhaps a small compromise for some of these complaints would be to set 
the handles to aligned by default, rather than auto. At the very least, 
it would remove the stupid 'press this other key if you actually want 
to edit your CP' step.

>  the fact that all your curve is always
> visible at once, all the tricks you can do with
> transform in cursor center mode that are hellish to do
> otherwise

Yep, these parts of Blender are definitely good.

In any case, I believe the two main points of my previous rant remain. 
One, that Blender's curve creation and editing could do with a lot of 
improvements and two, that this mailing list should be used for 
constructive discussion and analysis like Martin's provided here. All 
this 'Blender is perfect, shut up and RTFM' nonsense is not on.

Cheers,

Matt

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