Rotation interface with Ruby extension -- possible?
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I made this suggestion a few weeks ago in the google sketchup suggestions forums. I would like to post it here and ask if such a thing is possible in Ruby interface--if so, perhaps someone could take it on if they are interested.
Here are a few cropped screenshots of how the rotation works in Spore. In the first picture, I press and hold TAB and then mouse over the rotation ring -- it glows yellow. Then I press and hold it, optionally releasing TAB -- it turns green as in the second picture. Then I simply move the mouse left or right (OR up or down) to rotate the object along that axis. After I'm done, I unpress the mouse. If I had released tab while rotating, the rotation ring can be seen again as in the third picture. Otherwise, the rotation ringvanishes.
(The little arrows are kind of like interactive Sketchup dynamic object value controls -- forward to increase, backwards to decrease... sometimes they resize, sometimes they do other stuff like increase/ decrease a window's border size)
In Sketchup, I propose that one would be able to either use the default X/Y/Z 3-ring, which would be the size of the maximum object limits and centered on the object center (invoking it via a button or a user-defined key), or use a 3-ring defined by a straight line (again via a button or a user-defined key).
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This seem similar to what you get when you select an group/component, activate the move tool and grab hold of the little red crosses that appear on the bounding box.
Or might I be misunderstanding?
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Hi Agamemnus,
Many modelling (or rendering) applications use such "Gizmo's" but as far as I've been able to tell so far, this is because they are much less easy to handle than SU. Thom's suggestion is one easy replace of this need but the Rotate tool is so intuitive and easy to use even for much more complex rotations (not only around just 3 axes or a certain rotation point) that IMO it would be a step back instead of enhancing modelling experience.
BTW RP Tools and RP Edits have something like this in their arsenal.
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@thomthom said:
This seem similar to what you get when you select an group/component, activate the move tool and grab hold of the little red crosses that appear on the bounding box.
Or might I be misunderstanding?
Thanks,
I didn't quite know about that until now. Still, those crosses get really small sometimes and hard to activate.@gaieus said:
Hi Agamemnus,
Many modelling (or rendering) applications use such "Gizmo's" but as far as I've been able to tell so far, this is because they are much less easy to handle than SU. Thom's suggestion is one easy replace of this need but the Rotate tool is so intuitive and easy to use even for much more complex rotations (not only around just 3 axes or a certain rotation point) that IMO it would be a step back instead of enhancing modelling experience.
Well, I guess instead of "a straight line" as I said, then you could just use the group bounding box as a reference...
What does the RPTools rotation tool look like in action? I'm sure it's not like the the Spore rotation tool.
Anyway, does anyone know if it's even possible to use this sort of interface design (3D 3-ring scaled to the group box and view and colored according to certain mouse movements--eg: a copy or something very similar to Spore's controls) in Sketchup with Ruby?
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I would imagine that it is possible. Are you interested in learning Ruby? This is a great place to learn it.
Chris
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@chris fullmer said:
I would imagine that it is possible. Are you interested in learning Ruby? This is a great place to learn it.
Chris
I did a little Ruby tutorial a few years ago, but it kept crashing on me at a certain point. So I guess I know the reeeaal basics. (ooooooor.. could quickly remember them if I seem em again!)
If you could give me some ideas (like methods, functions, etc.) of how I can make this thing work with a Ruby plugin, that'd be great.
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