Tool System: Where operators can take advantage of a tool system #53101
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This proposal is aimed to look into operators that make sense for a tool system.
Notes:
What is a Tool?
This proposal differentiates between tools and operators,
where tools can be selected from a tool-palette, instead of executing immediately they
are activated, typically by clicking in the view-port (window-region-type).
Tools may include:
Note that a tool must use a key-map / manipulator (or both although this isn't all that likely),
otherwise there is no way to activate it.
Design Considerations
Select Before Action Conundrum
A common reason existing operators don't fit well into a tool-system is that Blender
currently uses
select & action
(as two separate steps).Tool-systems in other applications generally operate on the thing you click on
(selecting and operating in a single step).
We can choose not to follow this convention, however having tools that activate from clicking anywhere is quite strange.
Take the edit-mesh crease operator for example:
If this were to be exposed as a tool,
a user might expect to be able to LMB on an edge to adjust its crease value.
//Some further changes would need to be made here to work usefully to support multiple edges,
shift-click could select, press-draw could change crease value - or something similar this.//
To pick a different example, say we add edit-mesh Edge Rotate as a tool:
Having to select, then click anywhere on the screen to rotate the edge - is awkward.
Single click to rotate the edge under the cursor fits in with what I think users expect.
Again, this leads to the issue where we need to support single and multiple operations.
It also pushes us to add pre-selection highlighting,
since it may not be obvious exactly which edge you're about to rotate.
In the past this has been a controversially topic. It's disputable if we even want to go in this direction.
Possible Solutions:
It arguable how much we should modify existing tools and workflow to support a tool-system.
Nevertheless, here are some options:
If we do this, users will want pre-selection highlighting sooner or later.
My current plan is the first option.
We can always re-evaluate later.
Modal Operators as Tools
In some cases we can expose a modal operator as a tool,
where a single click or click-drag runs the operator, releasing executes/finishes the operation.
Selection tools are a good example of modal operators that can support both kinds of interaction well.
Circle selection for example can be a persistent mode, or a one off stroke.
(although we will want a way to change the circle size in the top-bar).
There are some exceptions to this - where we really can't avoid entering a modal operator,
having it keep running - supporting multiple actions while it runs.
Examples of this are:
In each case we could re-write these operators to work differently.
The ruler is a candidate that would be better implemented as a tool (with manipulators),
this would match what The Gimp and Inkscape do with their ruler tool.
The knife tool for example if a case where it would be nice to be able to use it without being locked into a mode.
Since only some view operations can be performed (internally this is clumsy too).
(this is a reasonably big task).
It's worth noting that other applications also run into this limit.
The Gimp's lasso tool (probably other image editors too)
is a good example of something roughly matching Blender's knife tool.
I don't think we should consider every case an area to re-implement .
Expose Modes as Tools?
While I'm not proposing this short term,
paint modes especially (vertex, weight, sculpt, image) might make sense to show as tools.
This is just something to consider and I don't think we need to discuss in detail now.
Existing Operators as Tools
Currently Supported
These operators map directly to a tool-system without modifications.
curve.draw
view3d.select_border/circle/lasso
mesh.dupli_extrude_cursor
,armature.click_extrude
,curve.vertex_add
)mesh.bisect
.Currently Supported (room for improvement)
transform.transform
(even keeping 3D cursor placement when clicking away from the manipulator).
Of course users can use G/S/R keys still.
transform.vert_slide
,transform.edge_slide
,transform.transform(mode='BONE_ROLL')
)mesh.rip_move
,mesh.rip_edge_move
).Currently Poorly/Unsupported
mesh.inset
,mesh.bevel
)mesh.spin
,mesh.screw
)New Operators
There are some operations that could be written as new operators to better expose existing functionality as tools.
These are just examples that come to mind (please don't focus too much on new-feature aspect of this proposal).
Interactive low-poly face-creation Tool
We would probably want pre-selection highlighting for this, as we have for loop-cut.
Interactive Smooth Tool
Changed status to: 'Open'
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