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OK I've experimented a bit with using the Shift key in Add Bones mode so you can orient/scale bones by click-dragging on their tips. It works fairly well so I'll include it in the next drop.

Superb! Thank you.

I don't know how distinguish between the start of a bone and the tip of it's parent though.

This could be something to discuss after the dragging is committed.

In new bone mode, once you release the mouse button, the endpoint of the new bone is frozen, and you have to switch tools to keep adjusting it. Is that the way it's meant to work?

polyGon_tError
Your close-edge script doesn't collapse individual pieces of selection. It just merges all vertices affected by the selection. I've been emulating collapsing in the recent versions with "scale to almost-zero then convert to points then merge". Works well enough.
I've found nothing resembling a dissolve among these tools.

I always thought Mysterons was a Portishead song, but what do you know.

There are a lot of possible problems: one example of many is if a ring of edges completely encircle a group of faces, then deleting them will create an island.  If anything strange like this is present, bail out and revert to the original mesh.

Bailing out is one option. Another would be to go for the closest valid result. An example from Wings:



Perhaps this would be the "least surprise" choice in situations where you dissolve edges in multiple areas at once. But of course, it's your call.

For face dissolve:

1) Replace each selected face group and all it's edges and points with a single point at the group's center.

But this is collapsing =) Anim8or's Merge Faces already dissolves face groups.

Then there's the concept of face and edge collapse, which is another topic ...

Maybe this discussion should be snipped off the script request thread into its own?

Basically it only cuts the edges/faces of faces shared by the starting point/edge, with no chance whatsoever of unintentionally cutting what you don't intend to cut (such as stuff underneath).

I see. But what about the existing slice-the-hell-through functionality for situations when you do need it?

Off topic: I couldn't find a "topo"-labeled tool in Mod Tool, but what you showed in the video looks like Add Edge.

MMB with or without Ctrl still zooms in perspective mode in arc-rotate (FOV info in the status bar). The wheel, however, dollies (distance from POI info in the status bar).

I had kind of hinted at this to Steve before

Ah, then you should keep trying! Steve is very keen on the important stuff if you can prove it's important =)

I hadn't realized how useful this would be until I implemented it - so thanks for keeping on reminding me about it until I finally did something