New Editor Feedback

[Thirsty Panther]

Had a quick play with the new editor.

- The rotation gizmo obscures the object you are rotating. Can we make it smaller or transparent?

- I get a black viewport if I use  the resizing tools. and occasionally when I move the camera.

-The color value is not updated when a new object is selected. e.g if I start on a red box then select a blue box the color in the appearance tab is red.

- A brightness level less than 100 results in a black object. This might be caused by the lack of a light in the scene.

- Can we get keyboard shortcuts for scaling ("S") , transform ("T") and rotation ("R"). This saves moving the mouse from object to  button and back to object.

[Josh]

How about Shift + S, T, R?

[Thirsty Panther]

The rotation gizmo is much better now.

Can we add scaling in the viewports. Transform and rotation work but not scale.

[SpiderPig]

Here's a gif of what I'm getting when resizing the viewports.  I can get rid of the black screen if I click in that viewport.

[reepblue]

I also get the black viewport issues as well as the issues I described before.

I haven't had time to really play with the recent updates, but I just hope the older 2D viewport tools with CSG come back. I want to still be able to rotate and scale with the corners. Also, don't forget shear!

[Josh]

I hope you guys are falling in love with the CSG editing features. I know I am.

[reepblue]

@Josh

Everything works well in 3D, but my 2D experience feels like a total downgrade. 

• I can't resize brushes correctly in the viewport at all. 
• It's not that intuitive to change modes. I miss double clicking to change between resizing and rotating the brush. I now need to take my mouse to the toolbar.
• Vertex mode doesn't work at all in 2D.
• I miss rotating brushes by the corners. 

Although it takes more time, it seems I can do what I want in 3D perfectly. Only things that tripped me up were multiple times of me selecting and moving a brush instead of creating a new one and vice versa. It's obvious that the 2D system wasn't the focus. 

I would say just go back to how you did it in Leadwerks, but I know you want consistency between 2D and 3D editing. I actually loved that you removed most of the widgets, and the rotation widget is nice for models/3D but it's terrible in 2D. If I wanted to rotate something to line up with something else, it was easier to rotate it by the nearest corner. Now I have to rotate it by the center, and I see it being really awkward. 

Overall, I think I should feel right at home using the editor like it was Leadwerks, but was surprised that things weren't working as I expected. I guess after half of my life using both Hammer and Leadwerks, I expect it to act how it always acted. 

[Josh]

Resizing isn't implemented in the 2D views yet.

One alternative approach for rotation in the 2D viewports would be if you just click and drag anywhere on a selected object, it starts rotating around the center. This would be like the way movement in 2D viewports currently works.

[Josh]

How do you feel about the rendering modes? I haven't implemented the solid / textured / lighting rendering modes that Leadwerks and Hammer have but I'm not  sure these are needed.

[reepblue]

I like textured/flat rendering (no lighting) for dark areas like caves and wireframe mode can be useful if it shows me how things are culled.

I never ever used solid mode.

[Yue]

According to images, I think that lighting with textures, only elimination, and the one where you see only colors, the last one should be only a base layer, the one to see the polygons mesh I see it useless. 

[Yue]

By the way the illumination probes that can be scaled like brushes. 

[Josh]

There's an update up now that adds the behavior I described above to the rotation tool. See how it feels.

[Josh]

12 hours ago, Yue said:

By the way the illumination probes that can be scaled like brushes. 

The new scaling tool actually allows this, with no changes. It works on all objects.

For creation, I plan to make it so environment probes get drawn like a brush when they are created.

[reepblue]

On 7/3/2023 at 3:47 PM, Josh said:

There's an update up now that adds the behavior I described above to the rotation tool. See how it feels.

This is wonderful. I no longer need to rotate things by the widget tool. Now you need to re-implement switching between transform and rotate by clicking on the object when selected and I'll be a happy camper. 

I think you should re-add the widgets as it gives you visual feedback what mode you're in. Should they be operational? I don't know. But I like them being there to tell me if I'm about to move the object or rotate it. May as well throw in the scaler widget too. Also, you need better cursors. It might be aesthetics, but I think it'll make your editing tools more obvious. I also would like something that showed me the origin of the object.

Creating brushes in 3D is better, but I'm still making brushes in places where I didn't intend to make them. I sometimes make the brushes behind my structures and the height of the brush seems to be the highest brush made in the session. I would like to turn instant creation off and adjust my wireframe to build by brush where I need it to be. In Leadwerks, I have instant creation for brushes turned off as I sometimes use the wireframe to measure. 

[SpiderPig]

I just deleted a folder in my project with the editor, would be nice I think if it went to the recycle bin rather than gone for good.  If possible.  Or we could just be really carful.  

[reepblue]

Few thoughts while you continue on. 

1) Please allow me to deselect an object by clicking on it again instead of asking me to select the void. I keep accidentally selecting things when I'm making things and I keep accidentally building things when selecting things and I only recently noticed that this happens because I'm trying to build something close of a selected object. 

2) When resizing in 3D (In Face/Vertex mode), please change the cursor to the vertical resizer (I believe it's CURSOR_SIZENS in the API) when the alt key is used like in transform mode. It may be a good idea to ignore the alt key when resizing in the 2D viewports as it's useless and the brush will distort when you release the key while dragging. It's just odd.

3) I'm really, really, heartbroken that I can't uniformly scale brushes by scaling by the corner. I understand it because there's no logistical way to translate that to 3D but still, it's an end of an era for me. 💔

4) I'm not a fan of instant selection, and I don't care for instant selection for point entities. Hopefully an option will come online to disable it and it'll effect both tools. But the point entity tool works as intended. 

[Josh]

7 hours ago, reepblue said:

It may be a good idea to ignore the alt key when resizing in the 2D viewports as it's useless and the brush will distort when you release the key while dragging. It's just odd.

3) I'm really, really, heartbroken that I can't uniformly scale brushes by scaling by the corner. I understand it because there's no logistical way to translate that to 3D but still, it's an end of an era for me. 💔

1. I did not know this was even happening. You are right, that is not intentional.

2. You can scale brushes by their corners in 2D. Trenchbroom uses a similar scaling technique in 3D, but it does support scaling on two axes at once. However, I find the edge selection in 3D in TB to be very twitchy, so I set it to just do one axis at a time in the 3D viewport.

[reepblue]

3 hours ago, Josh said:

You can scale brushes by their corners in 2D. Trenchbroom uses a similar scaling technique in 3D, but it does support scaling on two axes at once. However, I find the edge selection in 3D in TB to be very twitchy, so I set it to just do one axis at a time in the 3D viewport.

I know there was a reason for this but one thing I was critical of all the modern engines was that I couldn't do this and I use this all the time. Hammer and the Leadwerks editor are the only two that support this. 

One idea is to allow two axis scaling is if two faces are selected that share the same edge and you try to scale it. 

I understand this is a change in workflow and I guess I'm just not used to everything yet. 

11 hours ago, reepblue said:

I'm not a fan of instant selection, and I don't care for instant selection for point entities. Hopefully an option will come online to disable it and it'll effect both tools. But the point entity tool works as intended. 

Clarification here. I meant instant creation, not selection. I have this off in Leadwerks and I am itching to be able to turn this off in Ultra.

[Josh]

5 hours ago, reepblue said:

I know there was a reason for this but one thing I was critical of all the modern engines was that I couldn't do this and I use this all the time. Hammer and the Leadwerks editor are the only two that support this. 

Leadwerks doesn't support brush scaling in the 3D viewport. Scaling in the 2D viewport in Ultra works the same as the one in Leadwerks.

[reepblue]

I just want to resize brushes on two axes at once by the corners. 😭

I am sorry I'm so attached to the older controls, but everything just feels much slower to make in 2D. I usually layout using the top viewport and using the vertex tool is the thing close enough to the old way of resizing brushes (but arguably more useful). Maybe it also feels slow because copy/paste isn't in yet which I also use.

One other thing I'd like to do is click on edges in face mode to select the face I can't see. For example, if I'm looking at the top view but want to move the Z+ forward, on the same viewport, I should be able to click the top edge to select that face. I think the little dot on the face does (or should) the same thing, but it's too small. I honestly would need to try it again.

[Josh]

On 8/8/2023 at 8:56 PM, reepblue said:

I just want to resize brushes on two axes at once by the corners. 😭

I am sorry I'm so attached to the older controls, but everything just feels much slower to make in 2D

I don't understand. You can resize brushes on two axes in the 2D viewports.

[reepblue]

On 8/10/2023 at 8:00 PM, Josh said:

I don't understand. You can resize brushes on two axes in the 2D viewports.

Ahh, I see it now. I never associate the scale tool with brushes as I assumed it's scale values would get modified but it works as I expect.

[reepblue]

Really happy to finally to see point entities. However, they are hard to select and move around. Can we get a bounding box around the point entitles? The transform widget would also work. It's also kind of important to visually see what direction the entity's forward direction is pointing towards. 

Also, you can't load maps in the editor anymore. Maps load fine in the current build of the engine.