Transparent Object Markers

Involved development of the OpenMW construction set.
aesylwinn
Posts: 243
Joined: 14 Dec 2015, 20:30

Transparent Object Markers

Post by aesylwinn »

In the editor, the markers used to move, scale, and rotate objects can obscure smaller objects. A month or so ago, Scrawl suggested making them transparent. I have created some screenshots of what this looks like, and was hoping to get some feedback from the community on whether this solution will work. Thanks for any feedback!

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Nomadic1
Posts: 79
Joined: 16 Apr 2012, 09:08

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by Nomadic1 »

They seem overly chunky for small objects. I can imagine it would still make placing small items in precise positions harder.

The overlap on the arrow heads is a little off-putting, but making them partly transparent would be far better than chunky and solid.
aesylwinn
Posts: 243
Joined: 14 Dec 2015, 20:30

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by aesylwinn »

Nomadic1 wrote: 07 Nov 2017, 20:03 They seem overly chunky for small objects. I can imagine it would still make placing small items in precise positions harder.
The chunkiness is the result of needing to be able to click on them while far away. I don't quite follow how it would make precise positioning difficult though since you can see through them, could you explain further?
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AnyOldName3
Posts: 2666
Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by AnyOldName3 »

I'm not sure if it's the same issue as Nomadic1 was bringing up, or even if it's affected by this change, but I can't actually tell if the object in the top screenshot is intersecting the ground or not. That's probably something we want to make obvious.
Nomadic1
Posts: 79
Joined: 16 Apr 2012, 09:08

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by Nomadic1 »

aesylwinn wrote: 07 Nov 2017, 21:20 The chunkiness is the result of needing to be able to click on them while far away. I don't quite follow how it would make precise positioning difficult though since you can see through them, could you explain further?
When placing small items on surfaces, I used to rotate the camera extensively and look at the object from several angles in the CS to make sure it was in fact on the surface properly / not bleeding into touching objects. To me it looks like the chunkiness could still get in the way of doing that, even though the markers are now transparent.

But I should probably fire this up and see what its actually like though. I might be talking out of my arse.
aesylwinn
Posts: 243
Joined: 14 Dec 2015, 20:30

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by aesylwinn »

Perhaps we could draw a bounding box around the object to make intersections easier to see?

The pull request in its current state is available here. It's not in master, so you would have to build it yourself if you wanted to test it out.
Mojo
Posts: 10
Joined: 08 Nov 2017, 17:13

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by Mojo »

Transparent arrows are definitely an improvment, but I'd prefer to have key bindings like in Blender for moving, rotation and scaling and also for fixing them into one axis. That would be super useful.

Would it be possible to make the arrow size dependent on the object size e.g. big arrows for big objects like a house and small arrows for tiny objects?
aesylwinn
Posts: 243
Joined: 14 Dec 2015, 20:30

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by aesylwinn »

Mojo wrote: 08 Nov 2017, 20:14 I'd prefer to have key bindings like in Blender for moving, rotation and scaling and also for fixing them into one axis.
That is a planned feature, which would exist in addition to having the object markers with configurable transparency.
Mojo wrote: 08 Nov 2017, 20:14 Would it be possible to make the arrow size dependent on the object size e.g. big arrows for big objects like a house and small arrows for tiny objects?
That has been tried before. Unfortunately it makes it nearly impossible to manipulate the objects at medium to large distances. Imagine how difficult it would be to click on the marker in the second image if the arrows were scaled to the size of the object(The candlestick in the first image).

Edit: Just to note, only fixing to an axis using keyboard shortcuts is planned, not movement et al. in general.
aesylwinn
Posts: 243
Joined: 14 Dec 2015, 20:30

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by aesylwinn »

Here's an image of what it looks like if the markers are adjusted to not self intersect.

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Zini
Posts: 5538
Joined: 06 Aug 2011, 15:16

Re: Transparent Object Markers

Post by Zini »

That looks nice. Overall I think the transparent markers are a really clever solution to the marker covering object problem.
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