[Bf-funboard] Storing object selection order

Jaume Bellet mauge at bixo.org
Thu May 5 09:15:44 CEST 2016


We have performed this enhancement on mechanical blender, and is absolute
nedded to have a logic behaviour in some tools.

Was posted on ba

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?395928-Order-Selection

Here you can check the initial changes

https://github.com/mauge123/mechanical-blender/commit/61f3c7cdf833392f41ffdc276491f24d11a28467
El dia 05/05/2016 3.16, "Jeffrey" <italic.rendezvous at gmail.com> va escriure:

> +1 for saving selection orders. Another use could be in constraints. For
> example, the IK constraint uses a target and a pole target. First
> selected object could be IK target, second is pole target, third
> (active) is the bone to add the constraint to. Currently you can select
> the target bone, then constrained bone and make the constraint, but then
> you need to manually select the pole target. Or select the IK target
> bone, then the top of the chain for the chain length, then the
> constrained bone.
>
> Even adding a constraint to many pairs of bones could take advantage of
> selection order. Select each pair of bones, add a track constraint and
> it points the second of each pair to the first.
>
> Utilizing selection order should be left up to the script author to take
> advantage of. If that functionality is required for the script to work,
> it would of course be noted in the usage instructions.
>
> On 05/04/2016 05:52 PM, Gatis Kurzemnieks wrote:
> > Well, I think this is the most easy way to have some sort of object order
> > input from user except object naming (which is inconvenient and now is
> the
> > only way things get sorted in outliner and dopesheet).
> >
> > I think there would be many potential tools which could benefit from this
> > (including just everyday pipeline tools scripting to do something
> useful).
> > This is a very common behaviour in most other applications.
> > * First obvious example of tool that would need such information would
> be a
> > tool that creates a spline through centers of all selected objects in the
> > order of selection. (Or any other tool that creates something on multiple
> > selected objects where some sort of user defined order is important).
> > * Object distribution/align tools could be added/improved - to allow
> > aligning objects on certain axis in equal distances in-between them,
> > spreading out like array deformer etc. based on specific selectin order
> > * Renaming objects based on selection order
> >
> > What I was trying to create is a simple keyframe step-offset tool that
> > would offset keyframes of each selected object by a step (0 for first
> > object, k for second, k*2 for third etc. Useful for motion graphics
> > effects). Order is very important here - based on specific scene art
> > direction.
> > Because dopesheet has no ability to sort objects (and is based on object
> > naming), this was the obvious solution. As I mentioned - new sorting mode
> > option could be added to dopesheet that displays objects based on
> selection
> > order. I know people have been asking sortig in dopesheet for a long time
> > (including me) - this would be easy fix.
> >
> > Another option would be to finally implement manual sorting in outliner
> and
> > use that, but that I think would be even more confusing from UX
> standpoint.
> > Correct way would be to have both features and outliner providing correct
> > selection order when doing hierarhical selections (top-down order based
> on
> > hierarchies).
> > Selection order is a common UX feature in other 3d tools and I don't see
> a
> > way to not-have it for certain type of tools. *Honestly I don't
> understand
> > why It's not being saved in bpy.context.selected_objects_ordered. I
> really
> > see no benefit of losing that information. *
> >
> > PS: One very cool feature based on selection order in Cinema4D is that
> you
> > can select multiple objects and enter expressions in any UI parameter
> box -
> > for example enter "num * 10" in Transform X channel box. As a result each
> > selected objects X transform would be set to 10 multiplied by it's number
> > in selection set, allowing to very quickly distribute objects in scene.
> > I think it's a very cool idea and could easily be added to blenders UI to
> > allow working with multiple selected objects more easy. Also this could
> be
> > added to expression syntax that can be entered when doing transforms in
> > viewport ( you can already enter math functions there. selection index
> > would be awesome addition there)
> >
> > Thanks
> > Gatis
> >
> >
> > On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 5:21 PM gandalf3 <zzyxpaw at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm not sure I like the idea of selection-order-dependent functions
> >> beyond what we have now with the active object, at least from a UX
> >> standpoint.
> >>
> >> Do you have any examples of tools that would benefit from such behavior?
> >>
> >> On 05/04/2016 03:13 PM, Gatis Kurzemnieks wrote:
> >>> Hi.
> >>> Is there a proper way to get selected objects in the order of
> selection?
> >> I
> >>> did search but could not found a proper way except doing ugly hacks.
> >>> Isn't it a reasonable and extremely easy feature to add? (Maybe just
> add
> >>> bpy.context.selected_objects_ordered to not break existing
> functionality
> >> or
> >>> something like that?)
> >>> It would be very useful for creating different operators that depend on
> >>> order of selection of objects or even adding option of sorting of
> >> channels
> >>> in dopesheet based on object selection order. etc.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks
> >>> Gatis
> >>
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> >>
>
> --
> Jeffrey "Italic_" Hoover
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