[feature request] hybrid transform bone tool

strawbry_jam

One thing I've noticed that could make everything a lot easier is that controlling a single bone, you have to rotate, translate, and scale separately. It would extremely helpful to have an option to control all of those at once with a single mouse click and drag. Simply adding a toggle option for this hybrid option under tools or transform would be easy for people who want to use it while other users who want to do things like they always have.

Basically this hybrid idea could be done so that at the bones origin, one could translate the bone and at the other end, one could scale and rotate at the same time.

Of course this request isn't a huge feature so I wouldn't expect it to be top priority or even implemented soon. Just some thoughts. :smirk:

If this is already possible through some other way, let me know and ignore this 🙂

Thanks!

strawbry_jam

Søren

Welcome to the forum and thank you for the suggestion 🙂

It's actually something we discussed internally a long time ago.

I can't say if it's something that will make it in. But without making any promises I think it will happen at some point.

Nate

Yep, it's something I'd like to get to. Omni tool!

Pharan

I don't get how this works.

Is it a Free Transform tool that changes its functionality based on what handle you manipulate?
Or is it something else entirely? It sounds like something else entirely.
I mean, how and why would you rotate, translate and scale something all at once with a single mouse click?

strawbry_jam

Yeah so ideally you wouldn't translate necessarily while you rotate or scale. You could translate by clicking on the handle at the bone origin. Then at the other end, there would be a handle for scale and rotate.
Sorry to be confusing. By single mouse click, I meant you can do all the transform tools without toggling to a specific transform mode.
Another thing would be child bones should probably be translated if the parent is scaled. So if the parent is made longer, child bones should translate in the direction of the parent bone. Possibly scaled as well.

@Nate and Shiu
Sounds good. I look forward to it 🙂 I really appreciate the work you guys do so thank you.

Pharan

Good news is that scaling parents already translates child bones, so nothing to change there.

But okay, thanks for the clarification.
It's basically Photosop's Free Transform mode (CTRL+T)— or more likely, Unity's Rect tool (T) which acts like Photoshop's Free Transform, but as a tool instead of a mode.

I like that behavior there:
(1) Drag inside the rectangle to move
(2) drag the edges to scale
(3) drag a little outside the edges to rotate.

But it's true, using the hotkeys in the absence of this tool is trivial. So whatever.

Nate

Pharan, I think the OP is just bad at describing things. 🙂 There's no way to "have an option to control all of those at once with a single mouse click and drag".

What I'm talking about is that, as nice as it is to manipulate without having to grab little handles, it could save time in some instances to have a tool that can rotate, scale, and translate without having to switch tools (eg a tablet). Imagine a tool exactly like the rotate tool, but if you grab the bone origin (the round "slot" icon) you can translate and if you grab the tip you can scale on X. I'm not sure how you'd scale on Y and zero length bones could be an issue (do you want to translate or scale?). Scaling isn't as common, this is solved by just saying only the scale tool scales.

Maybe this is just adding features to the Pose tool? It works like it does current (box drag in empty space, grabbing IK target at bone tip to rotate) but also allow to translate by grabbing the origin. For zero length bones, allow translate over the center of the bone and allow grabbing the IK posing target further from the center. Use the scale tool for scaling. What you think?

strawbry_jam, child bones are translated when the parent is scale, just not when it is lengthened. Changing the length could use a modified key to translate the children, but it's not a high priority feature.

Pharan

That's cool. I think adding a translate/position handle to the Pose tool is an interesting solution. A Rotate Tool with a position handle where the bone is is also cool, actually.

Mitch

Makes using a tablet more viable.

Pharan

How do you deselect when you're on a tablet?

Nate

Double tap, though doing that with a pen is a little painful. Tablets also usually have a few buttons (₄) that can be mapped to whatever keys you like.