I find the 3d cursor very handy as a pivot and for placing objects precisely as you can snap the cursor to anything or place it with coordinates and you can snap anything to the cursor.
The distribution of interfering context sensitive clicks on both mouse buttons is quite clever actually (which one is right and left litterally doesnt matter as it can be easily inverted in the settings. For example can you rmb select an object without accidentally clicking on the translation arrows/circles as they can only be pressed with lmb. Same in the timeline, you can rmb select keyframes without changing the position of the timeline and so on. Other way around you can lmb on the position on a timeline without selecting a key there but just move the timeline cursor.
There are some inconsistencies though as the selection in the outliner has its own rules (no rmb selection, context menu…)
I don’t like it when the kids wake me early on Father’s Day even though the best thing they could do would be to let me sleep in late. I guess both of us are going to be disappointed
One question: Do many people simply use the standard shortcuts? The first thing most 3D people I know when learning a new 3D app is changing the shortcuts to their liking. Is this unusual?
I mean, in Blender it is even particularily easy by rightclicking on the relevant button and chosing “add shortcut” so I´ve been wondering why shortcut layouts appear to be a regular problem.
I don’t know about others, but I prefer to use the default shortcuts. Why, because I use a couple of different computers at home and outside, and I don’t want to have to change the defaults everytime I sit down and use a computer that is not my property. I’d rather get used to the defaults. I’m also planning to write brief tutorials in pdf or video, and I don’t want to teach something in which my defaults vary with the beginner’s. That would be confusing.
I could imagine people who plan to write books, make videos about Blender are waiting whether BF would make good of their plan to change the defaults, so that they don’t have to revise their tutorials later. But things are going slow. Are they going to or not, so we can move on…
Yes, many people use the standard shortcuts. If the developers didn’t expect that, they wouldn’t provide them. Not to mention that the tutorials that people learn the software from use those defaults and become very hard to follow orherwise.
With the current transform manipulator you can get that to work by doing some edits to the keymap configuration: Set the manipulator operator (view3d.manipulator) to map type ‘Tweak’ and event value of the selection operator (view3d.select) to ‘Click’.
Interesting. How do you guys cope when using other programs in parallel? For example I often jump between 3ds Max and Blender (creating particles in Max and then exporting them to Blender for rendering for example). Both programs have very similar functions, so I use the same short cuts in both. LMB select is the standard in Max and can not be changed, so I´m forced to use that in Blender as well.
Personally I´m not very good at swichting between two different shortcut layouts and allways press wrong buttons when jumping from one program to the other. Do you have no problems with that or do you simply not use other 3d apps to a significant degree?
It’s an interesting question.
I first came to Blender about two years ago after many years of using 3DS Max and Maya. I have to admit I really loved Blender as soon as I got used to it.
The RMB paradigm has honestly just never bothered me. I seem to remember picking it up and getting used to it pretty fast. It seemed such a small thing compared to all the other things I needed to learn about in Blender. But it does seem to obviously be a very individual, subjective experience.
I decided to stick with it early on. I thought changing it would just make picking up the programs basic functionality more unclear, and following tutorials that much harder.
I started getting myself familiar with Blender initially by adopting it as my main modeler and UV tool at the place I was at, alongside 3DS Max which was always the default animation app there.
I’ve never really had a problem jumping back into Max or Maya with regards the right click. I seem to just go into Blender mode or Max mode in my head. And the right click seemed to work well within Blender and the way things were set up. Besides that, I just found the overall workflow in Blender to just be so comfortable, fluid and fast once I got used to it.
For me it’s mainly hitting the wrong hot keys jumping between apps. I frequently think… doh !
But this is quite similar across so many programs.
I also always remembered a time when I had to try to get as familiar as I could with Softimage in a very short time before starting a new job.
I set it to Maya default as I thought it would save time and ease the process a lot. But later on it felt like a false economy and I really wished I’d taken the time to get used to the Soft default. By then I was in the thick of it on the project with no time to change things. Tutorials’ asking advice from colleagues. It made it all so much harder.
If you have the Maya keymap selected, you hit Q. This means you hide the widget when you dont need it. So you select what you need, then hit the key for which transform you want or hide it after.
Just find the action which hides the transform widget and set it to your own hotkey.
Whoa, it works :eek:! Heheh… didn’t know we can do it like that! Thanks a lot for the tips VertexPainter :yes:!
@SaintHaven, thanks for the suggestion :). Usually I disable the widget by pressing “a” to deselect all vertices. But hiding/ showing the widget means more work. It can make my workflow slower even just a little bit. Often I want to select a vertex while the widget stays visible. VertexPainter’s trick solve the problem though. So… no problem here with left click/ right click select.
Somewhere between now and aug 15th 2020 surely Jokes aside, logically this change should be made in the 2.8 release cycle, since it seems they´re going to break backward compatibility anyway
Its not really more work. You can select and grab without needing the widget at all, otherwise you select which transform you need when you need it. It should auto hide when you are done with the selection. Hiding the widget manually when its “in the way” (which I have never found to be the case) is just an option for when it might hypothetically be needed. For the most part though, I find a lot of excuses about widgets being in the way or accidentally selecting something to be gross over exaggerations, on par with those made for tv commercials were they make opening a can looking murder and thus the new product makes their lives so much better.
Technically we can also say separating the select from interact/modify is also more work.
Its really about how its utilized, sometimes you do add an extra step to cut down on another one somewhere else, other times a few extra steps can still drastically speed up production as a whole… which I what I found out once I started using Modo.
@ SaintHaven
Ah, looks like I misunderstood your previous post. I thought you meant press Q to hide the widget, select the vertex, and then press Q again to show the widget. Sorry about that.
As to move a vertex without using widget, yeah I did that occasionally. Not very often. Because many times I need to see the keyboard first to see which button I’m going to press, you know, just to avoid pressing the wrong button.
G-Y, G-X, G-Z, sometimes I missed a key if I don’t see my keyboard first.
Modeling itself can be boring at some points. Repeated little annoyance is something that I don’t want to get when I’m tired, or in a bad mood. I really don’t see that as an exaggeration. I don’t know with other people, but in my case, selecting a vertex that overlapping with widget is not something that happen once or twice during a modeling time.
And what makes it annoying is mainly not because how significant/ insignificant it is compared to bigger features. It’s because this tiny little feature is in there, in blender’s default. I enjoy it very often, and then suddenly lost it when using the left click select. There’s the little annoyance coming from.
I lived with that for a few weeks, and then someday I just can’t take it anymore. I switched back to right click select and pretty much happy with my choice. <-- True story.
People has own preferred workflow. For me personally, it was worth it to switch back to right click select, just to get that nice little feature.
After I tried VertexPainter’s suggestion though, I switched to left click select to get used to the future of blender. If left click is going to be default, then other parts of blender suppose to be adjusted to follow that behavior. With that in mind, I don’t think there is anything wrong with getting used to left click select from now on.
Don’t know what I’m missing here. The 3d manipulator is a toggle. It can be turned on and off by pressing its icon or Ctrl+Spacebar. I use it when constraining the movement of items to the 3 axes. Otherwise, it’s off. But I don’t have to use it and just hit X or Y or Z to constrain the direction.
Firstly, it is going to happen. I don’t know how many different developers we need to quote saying that is the agreed on solution before people accept that.
Secondly, yes, as currently planned people can opt for the current (or in the new Blender, “old”) keymap options to keep things as they are. Of course, one could always just change the keymap / right-left select settings themselves… just as they’ve been telling the left-click select supporters to do for the past five or so years
@ blendDoodler
This is mostly what I did during my modeling process, over and over again :yes: (my english is not so good, I hope I can make it clear enough):
Using right click select (with 3d manipulator widget visible):
Select a vertex. Click and drag red arrow.
Select another vertex/ some vertices. Sometimes using “b” button, or “c”, and sometimes with holding “Ctrl” button. Click and drag green arrow.
Select another vertex. Click and drag blue arrow. The vertex is behind the widget? No problem.
Press “a” button to deselect all and the widget hidden.
The widget automatically reappear again whenever I select something in the viewport.
Simple and easy. I don’t see there is any problem in there.
Using left click select (with 3d manipulator widget visible):
Select a vertex (if not overlapping with the widget on screen). Click and drag red arrow.
Select another vertex/ some vertices. Again, sometimes using “b” button, or “c”, and sometimes with holding “Ctrl” button. Click and drag green arrow.
trying to select a vertex that positioned behind the widget -> the arrow selected instead. Not the vertex that I want.
There are few ways to select that vertex, but mostly using keyboard shortcuts. I chose to avoid shortcut for this particular case and rotate the viewport a little bit to select the vertex.
Press “a” button to deselect all and the widget hidden.
The widget automatically reappear again whenever I select something in the viewport.
Once get used to right click select, it felt so fluid, it’s like breathing smoothly. Once I tried left click select though, It felt like there is some kind of small “hiccups” in the process. At that time I don’t see much reason to use left click select when I can actually work more fluid with right click select. It’s just a personal preference.
Jokes aside, logically this change should be made in the 2.8 release cycle, since it seems they´re going to break backward compatibility anyway