[GMT] Call for Model Toolkit V1.0 Feature Requests

[Neikun]

7. When I do a Material Find / Replace (which is nice!), would love a big dropdown of all available materials to pick from as the new material, instead of having to know what I want and type it in

..And here I was, done memorized the whole list down to the three different spellings of.. garomorag.

[JohnWordsworth]

@Komag: Good ideas. I didn't realise the animation save path wasn't 'clever', will add to the list. Animation item highlight is also easy - will add in an update soon .

@Xanathar: Good idea, like a 'bake node transform' button and then reset the node transform to the identity.

@Neikun: Haha, the goromorg spelling threw me loads at the start! Very confused. Material dropdown on find/replace dialog should help new modders in the future!

[Neikun]

Negative inputs to scaling behaves insanely. Perhaps a prompt to tell the user that values between 0 and 1 are used for reducing the size of an object.

[Isaac]

I got one... Middle clicks on Nodes auto highlight the clicked node; and select it in the node panel.

A dependent feature could be an interactive origin gizmo for the clicked node, one that allows mouse dragging the gizmo along one of the axis, and updates the node position ~very much the behavior seen in Blender. This could also be done for rotation ~as done in Blender. Not priority feature just yet though.

[JohnWordsworth]

@Neikun: Hah, that's a good point re: negative scale factors. I think a warning box for zero or below (as zero effectively deletes the node too). Of course, if someone wants to use a negative scale for some crazy reason, they can - but a warning would be good.

@Isaac: Both nice ideas. They have been rattling around in my mind for a while, but I wasn't sure how much DirectX will do for me in that regards. I expect it will do quite a lot, and if that is the case, this shoud be pretty easy to add .

[Neikun]

I would prefer to be able to toggle a 3x3 room as opposed to just building it.
nvm. Found the clear all button

However, I have recently updated to the current version.
When saving, it no longer assumes I am saving the same model.

In other words, I have edited a model and saved it. Gave it a name.
I then continued to tweak the model, but when I go to save it, it no longer automatically has itself in the save path.


EDIT: I have since downgraded to 4.1.1 for personal convenience in this matter.

[pferguso]

Request: the ability to move nodes up and down the hierarchy. I was trying to reconstruct some nodes in a model I exported and reimported, and it wouldn't let me insert a new node at the desired index, it made me append all new nodes to the end.

Request: insert and edit bone nodes

[Xanathar]

Since from another thread it seems to be a viable and common way to make texture atlas.. what do you think of a "Snap to PNG" command saving a transparent background rendering of the model ?

[Neikun]

^ I like that idea.

[JohnWordsworth]

Just a quick update. Have updated the main post with the latest feature additions that came from this thread (PNG Screenshot, Middle Click to Select Nodes, Help Doc, Negative Scale Factor warning). I also just wanted to respond to the latest posts!

@Neikun: Hopefully the new build fixes the same name problem .

@PFerguso: Agree that it would be great to have more control over the position of the nodes. At the moment, I'm trying to make sure that every operation you can perform makes it hard to break the node hierarchy (although, you could theoretically make a loop of nodes detached from root using the current system I guess). Good idea though.

Not so sure about adding bone nodes - they are rather more complicated as the vertices in the mesh also have to be related to those bones in the underlying skinning system with bone weights. Adding support for all of this would be a pretty big job (and the sort of thing a 3D modeller will do better). It might be possible to add a basic animation system though I guess, like Milkshape has (transform/rotate/scale nodes in the view port and 'bake' animation frames out of them). As this is a big job that can be done with an external editor (at least, it will be possible when FBX export is there) it's probably lowish on the list.

@Xanathar: Great idea. Done in 0.4.4.0.