Posts made by Alan Chatham

Thanks! I'm glad you like it!

Let me know how you go, Michael. I'm possibly making some changes to how the camera code works today (it should be minor, but basically it currently creates a new camera and uses that, which means it screws up if you use it in conjunction with panning and tilting, so I want to change that).

JClements - That is unintended! It's an unforseen consequence of the mouselook code, which currently clamps the horizontal angle within a certain range. I'll try and get that fixed today.

I finally got some time and energy to do a little more work on this plugin, and have made a few little changes -

-You can now use the numeric keypad to move as well, with 7 and 9 moving up and down
-Movement speed and mouse sensitivity data is stored across sessions

Jorgensen, what platform are you running on? I'll look into alternate keyboard shortcuts to use for moving quickly, but at least on Windows 7, shift is needed to prevent the other tools to be selected when using WASD, which sucks, since it tires out the fingers... If there's something different about your platform, I'd love to make it more feature-rich for systems that support it.

I'm developing a plug-in to allow for First Person Shooter style WASD movement in SketchUp, and I'm wondering if it's possible to disable or override SketchUp's keyboard shortcuts when it's active? Right now, my janky fix is to require that Shift be held down while navigating with WASD, since that seems to block out shortcuts, but obviously having to keep holding down the shift key isn't ideal. Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback so far! I'm interested to know that there may be a way to override keyboard shortcuts... Unfortunately, Google's API documentation just tends to be kinda anemic (not just for SketchUp either). I'll try and get some of the improvements done this afternoon, and post them here then.

I also found out that the built-in navigation (zoom, pan, rotate) tools make a lot more sense and are a lot more easy to use when you're using a mouse... like I said, I'm super new to this. I do all my work on a laptop and only rarely plug a mouse in, and so 'using a trackpad' is the context in which I'm developing this. Just some trivia~

First Person Shooter Navigation

Updated 07 March 2012

• Fixed bug that prevented movement after entering the top-down perspective
• Added nice options dialog

In addition to arrow keys and WASD, you can now use the Numpad to navigate - 8456 move on the X-Y plane, and 7 and 9 move you down and up. Movement speed and mouse sensitivity (in the Plugins/FPSNav menu) now save across sessions.

So, I'm new to 3d modeling, and rather than just getting used to the zoom controls of SketchUp like a normal person, I decided to make a plug-in that allows you to move through the scene with either the arrow keys or the standard FPS WASD controls, with mouselook when you click. However, I'm also new to plugin authoring, and so I'm looking for some feedback on this plugin. You can download it here: http://www.openchord.org/FPSNav.rbz

It should show up on your toolbar (or if not, you can find it in View->Toolbars->FPSNav). Click on it, and it works the following way:

• Navigate on the X-Y plane using the arrow keys

• Alternately, hold 'Shift' and use WASD to move (if you don't hold shift, you'll just activate other tools. Damn hotkeys)

• Also while holding 'Shift', use Q to lower your height and E to rise upwards

• To rotate the camera, Left-click and hold, then drag the mouse around

• To move at 10 times the normal speed, hold Right-click

I'd love to get some feedback on this tool, or even just tips on better ways to control the movement. Thanks!