[Bf-funboard] Re: Adding Objects (settings)

[Matt Ebb]

On 3/29/07, GSR <gsr.b3d at infernal-iceberg.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> doug at mudpuddle.co.nz (2007-03-28 at 2221.14 +0000):
> > An interactive preview of the item being added would be fantastic
...
> Sounds tiny and thus not so visible neither controlable, or huge and
> then not exactly a popup, but more like a window... why not just show
> what you will get in plain 3d view, with live update?

Exactly. If we're talking large scale projects, the best thing to do
is get Blender working more non-destructively, with realtime
updateshappening on the actual thing you're working on. I ranted about
this at bconf :) [1]

As for creating objects, I did a little experimental proof of concept,
using the modifier stack to have 'parametric' objects, that you can
change interactively. It's basically using a modifier at the bottom of
the stack to create geometry, which you could then just apply to edit
the mesh directly, though that's not always necessary. This is a bit
similar to how Max and Cinema 4D work. When you add an object, you can
still manipulate things, dimensions, resolution, other parameters as a
whole. Then if you want to edit it manually, you convert it to an
editable mesh with a click.

http://mke3.net/blender/etc/parametric_modifier-h264.mov
http://mke3.net/blender/etc/parametric_modifier02-h264.mov

Above are some screencasts of what I did in Blender. Obviously it's
simple and rough, and if developed further, one could do things to
clean it up like disable those generator modifiers from appearing in
the menu, change the add object code to apply the generator modifiers
automatically, and prevent them from being moved up and down the
stack, and perhaps add some code that upon pressing Tab, would give
you the option to apply that modifier and just convert it to a mesh.
But it could serve as some kind of inspiration for something nice in
the future...

cheers

Matt

[1] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1021270522578100101&hl=en