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[Steve]

The Bone Rotate tool in Build 1175 uses a trackball. You can rotate bones in 6 different ways with just the left mouse button. Here's a screen shot:



The colored arcs rotate the joint around an axis in the bone's local coordinate system: Green for X, Blue for Y and Violet for Z. Click-drag in the direction of the arc to rotate the bone.

The outer ring rotates the joint around the screen's Z axis, and the Yellow arrows rotate it around the screen's X and Y axes.

You can also click directly on any bone and rotate it with the mouse just like the previous tool worked. In this case the LMB rotates in the screen Z axis, MMB in the screen X axis, and RMB in the screen Y axis.

Note: Priority is given to the trackball controls, so clicking on a bone that's mostly covered by these controls can be a bit tricky to do. That shouldn't be a big problem because the controls should be as easy or easier to use. But allowing this makes it possible to click-drag on an unselected bone and rotate it without first having to select it, so I thought that this would be useful to support.

Give a big Thanks! to raxx for his feedback on the design.

[neirao]

  Wow Steve!!
Amazing news Features!! TrackBalls very Helpfull!
PS: and Thanks for implements the 'Dia' value question.
Thanks!!

[neirao]

Steve,
in this version the new Button "that allows rotation and changing the length" of bones
no work the "lenght" only rotation..in previuos version, work very well..
is a bug?

PS: Nice if you implements the 'TrackBall' in 'Sequence Mode' too!

[captaindrewi]

Looks good... but everything goes turgid in figure mode, computer slows down terribly, figure doesn't immediately import and soon crashes after trying to move and rotate.

[davdud101]

STEEEVE!! You did it!!! WOW! I haven't tried it yet but I CAN'T WAIT!
Steve, I can't stress enough that you are THE HERO of independent software developers!!!

[johnar]

wow!!! This looks beautifull.  Can't wait to try it out later tonite. No doubt will post again regards this first trackball widget. Awesome Steve. And big thanks raxx for your input and help with steve for the design. BIG thumbs up .

[cooldude234]

It's a great start for sure!
Just a few suggestions...
A) why use a second circle for the z rotation (the one relative to the view point) when you could use the one that is touching the other axises
B) it would be nice to lock the rotation in an 8 way direction in 45 degree increments (possibly use the shift key for this while rotating) (would be nice when needing to reset the position of the bone)
C) as said before the bone edit tool now doesn't work properly
D) in scene mode nothing with bones work now?

[Steve]

neirao: Oops, you're right, that's a bug - the length won't change for then "Edit Bone" tool.  I'll fix it.  Yes I plan to add the trackball to the Sequence and Scene editors .

captaindrewi: I'll look into the crash - do you have a Figure to import that shows this problem?  You can e-mail it to me at support at  anim8or.com.

As for the slowness, is it slow when you build a Figure from scratch? Is it slow in all of the Figure tools or just some of them (such as the new Rotate Bone tool)?

cooldude234: A) The inner circle doesn't always show - when you are looking directly at one of the axes it is completely covered up.  So I added the outer circle for Screen-Z rotation. The inner circle is mostly to show the sphere of the trackball.

D) In the Scene mode you need to use the "Rotate Bone" tool ('hot key 'R') and click on the tip of the bone to rotate it.  Anim8or has worked this way forever. (Download v0.98 and it works the same way.) I will be making it more flexible, changing it to use a trackball, etc. but I haven't gotten to the Scene editor yet. Is there something else that's not working?

everybody: Thanks for the compliments

[johnar]

Super wow. I'm not having any trouble with this at all. (Win xp and win7). Works like a charm. Can't wait to see this in the sequence and scene editors.   If it works this well there, then its a huge step forward for Anim8ors animation system. It really is a whole lot easier, and so far, (in figure mode), glitchless.
 Congratulations Steve, (and raxx). This is a real humdinger.!!

[Raxx]

Hey Steve, looks and works great! The screen coord axis tabs are an interesting addition. I still think having a world-coordinate mode is important though, and set to be default. Like I mentioned before, the move widget will be worked with world-based the most, and I personally find it more useful to work with bones world-based rather than local..and other programs default to world-based mode too. It'll work well with the coord-mode buttons as well if you can switch from world/screen/local that way.

I have a small change to suggest regarding the arrows. Arrows are more suited for movement indicators, and I get a funky feeling looking at them. I think it'd be nicer to change them to tabs like in the attached image, as it's more neutral but still indicates rotation options. Also, I think scaling the outer circle a bit wider in diameter and making it (and the arrows/tabs) slightly lighter colored than the inner circle will help the user pick it out better.

When working in just one view full-screen, the widget is pretty massive at 20%. Might be better to be around 15% of the workspace width.

Lastly, the widget gets visually blocked by other meshes and bones. Widgets should render on top of everything

[Steve]

Raxx: There are 4 coordinate systems that I think might be useful, World, Screen and two "Local"s:

World: defined by the global environment.
Figure Local: relative to the Figure.
Bone Local: this is defined by the X, Y, Z-axis joint rotations.
Screen: defined by the plane of the screen.

Does it make sense to support them all?

[Raxx]

Hey Steve. What exactly is "Figure Local"? What kind of uses would it have that's more advantageous than the other coord systems? It seems a bit overkill to have.

"Local" to me means the coordinate system is oriented to the orientation of whatever's selected. Assuming full implementation, that'd mean if I were doing p/e/f mesh editing procedures, the axes would be oriented to the mesh shape's orientation (for example, moving in the positive Z direction is the same as moving in whatever direction its "front" is). Same for the shapes as a whole, and for objects attached to figures, and for scene editor elements when moving, rotating, and scaling. For bones it's along the joint rotations. It's what I expect would replace the old "Object Coordinates" button.

[Steve]

OK, that's what I think makes sense, too.

So if you want to rotate (or move) in another plain you can rotate the view so that it's aligned with the screen and use Screen coordinates.

[johnar]

 Found a problem in scene mode. Have attached an .an8file.
 One figure with three bones and one object attached. I've put it in sequence mode and can rotate bones as normal, but when imported into scene mode, select a bone and try to rotate as per normal. Sorry to say, nothing happening.
 Possibly related to slow-down posted by captaindrewi, but its not a slow down here, it just isn't moving. And if a bone is selected and you click on bone with MMB, to rotate on Z axis, the bone just becomes unselected. X and Y do not unselect, but will not move.
  nb. Problem occurs on new and old figures. Tested on win7 and xp.

[kreator]

Found a problem in scene mode. Have attached an .an8file.
 One figure with three bones and one object attached. I've put it in sequence mode and can rotate bones as normal, but when imported into scene mode, select a bone and try to rotate as per normal. Sorry to say, nothing happening.
 Possibly related to slow-down posted by captaindrewi, but its not a slow down here, it just isn't moving. And if a bone is selected and you click on bone with MMB, to rotate on Z axis, the bone just becomes unselected. X and Y do not unselect, but will not move.
  nb. Problem occurs on new and old figures. Tested on win7 and xp.

I confirm this happens in scene mode, perhaps its not implemented in scene mode though.

edit: I can add Keys by double clicking the bone then add a key that way, but kinda defeats the whole object of doing so using the trackball rotation system from the GUI