Some editor ergonomics suggestions

[kasool]

 

1. Shortcut for putting a specific viewport into focus:

Currently as far as I know you have to go to View>Layout or RenderView to change which viewports to show, or which viewport to enlarge into focus as the sole viewport in the layout. I think it can be desirable to have a way to quickly toggle a particular viewport into focus. I think generally the more common operation is to go between 1 and (n<=4) viewports rather than changing how many viewports to show, which is why I'm only suggesting a shortcut for the former.

My idea that I've seen implemented elsewhere:

- Currently selecting an object will "highlight" a viewport by drawing a blue outline around it, indicating it is active. Instead of relying on selection, maybe just have a viewport become highlighted simply if the cursor is on top of it. Then have a single shortcut to toggle between focusing/enlarging that viewport, and displaying the previous layout before the focus (could be any of the layouts, and would ideally retain the viewport pane sizes the user made).

The other option is to hardcode shortcuts for each option, but this seems a lot less elegant, although technically not mutually exclusive.

 

2. Increased radius for resizing panes in the 4-viewport mode:

It feels a little too precise to get to sweet spot that allows you to resize all 4 viewports at once with the 4-sided arrow:

Maybe enlarge the radius for detecting this, since you have the whole length of the rest of the viewport for doing the 2-way resize anyways, which is usually plenty.

 

3. Unit measurement numbers displayed in viewports for selected brush

Display the measurements of the bounding box containing the selected brush in the viewport like in hammer:

Useful for people who are sticklers for consistent like me

 

 

4. Configurable shortcuts for the tools (move, rotate, scale, edit vertices, edit faces, edit terrain)

To me something like 1-6 feels more natural and I like to avoid having to do button combinations for high frequency operations.

 

[kasool]

5. Selection box

From what I've tried there doesn't seem to be one. I know it's currently incompatible with the way the tools work right now (dragging creates a new brush), but it'd be useful for a situation like this if I want to adjust things all at once:

I promise this isn't a contrived example , this is actually what I want in my map. Perhaps a separate box selection tool would be useful? Kind of like what Blender has.

[Josh]

Thank you for your ideas. I want to make the workflow the best for you all.

[Josh]

On 12/21/2023 at 3:37 PM, kasool said:

It feels a little too precise to get to sweet spot that allows you to resize all 4 viewports at once with the 4-sided arrow:

The separation space between viewports is consistently used across the entire interface. You'll see the same separation was used in every border. It might be a good idea to increase this, but keep in mind it's a system-wide change, not just limited to the viewport panel.