General Category > Ongoing Anim8or Development

Layers

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Steve:
The Object and Scene editors now support Layers. You can give each mesh or objects a layer and toggle the visibility and the ability to edit each layer in the top toolbar.

Everything is on layer 0 by default. You can set the layer to between 0 and 7 in the properties dialogs. Each layer can independently be displayed or hidden, and editable or locked. The top toolbar displays the layers' status. You toggle the visibility by left-clicking on a layer, and toggle whether is can be edited or not with the right mouse button. Locked layers have a little lock in the lower right corner. By default layer 7 is locked.

Questions:

1. Should the layer's status be saved to the .an8 file with each Object and Scene? I tend to think this would be useful but would like your feedback. -- Added in 1066.
2. Should layer 7 be locked by default? -- Removed in 1066.
3. Would layers be useful in the Figure editor?  If so, how important is this (versus other potential improvements)?

Raxx:
1. Definitely. I'd hate to have to reconfigure the layer setup every time I come back to a project, especially if I start making habit my own standard system of using the layers (ie layer 1 for reference images, 2 for base meshes, 3 for accessories, etc depending on the project and personal preferences).
2. Seems a weirdly arbitrary layer to lock? I don't really care either way.
3. I wouldn't rank this as very important *if* you implement the following suggestion: Retain layer visibility for object shapes throughout all the editors. Meaning, shapes in a hidden layer in the object editor remain hidden in the other editors. I like the idea of "out of sight, out of mind", even if the scene layer that the object is in is visible.

A few more suggestions:

How about a Selected Layer feature? New shapes/objects get added to the current selected layer, rather than defaulting to Layer 0. Also an easier layer assignment feature? For example, something like:

* Select Layer - Ctrl-click on the button and it selects the layer. Maybe a border around its button?
* Assign to layer - Shift-click on the layer's button and it assigns the selected shape(s) to that layer
* Layer indicator - It'd be nice if when you select a shape, it marks its layer button in such a way that it's easy to see which layer it's on
Bug: It seems the layer label for the dialog boxes is covering the input field, seems to need resizing or change of z-index.

Steve:
Good feedback.  Yeah, I messed up all the layer dialogs when I fixed all the tab orders.  I'll fix that and post an update.

I've fixed this and updated the exe.

Water Music:
Interesting. I like it.

Two things I'd find useful: a transparency slider for each layer, instead of just a visibility toggle, can help with relative positioning; and being able to add select vertices - to a layer to change visibility and lock for editing - would be insanely useful on complicated meshes.

Gotta love scope creep.

Raxx:
Nice ideas Water Music. Transparency sliders would be interesting. If layer selection is implemented then all you'd need is a single slider along the bottom of the row of buttons. Vertices/edges/faces visibility would be cool also, I wonder if that'd be much more difficult to implement.

Some more feedback from me as well.

Turns out you can select a shape (or vertex, edge, whatever), hide the layer, and still manipulate them while they are invisible. I think it might be better to deselect or disable the content in hidden layers so that unintended actions don't occur if someone leaves something selected by accident.

The lock mechanism seems incomplete. You can select a shape, then lock it, and then manipulate it still. Point edit operations also seem to affect the content within locked layers. I think layers will become a powerful tool if a locked layer is absolutely, totally locked. Also, I think it would be wonderful if locked layers don't show the points in point-edit mode, or maybe put a locked layer GUI option set in Configure->GUI? Or Options->Layer dialog options for GUI settings on a per-layer basis?

I know we're kinda adding a ton of ideas onto this. Layers can have a lot of features to them, and some people might want more or less depending on what the layer's being used for. Personally, I'd like to know what your vision for layers is, Steve.

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