Major User Interface Bug with Cheetah3D 4.6

Mikey2008 said:

Well, from when I was using the software I don't recall seeing any small icons above the 3D view that could be used for manipulation other than the apparently "all in one" transform tool... somebody posted a screenshot which showed separate "move" "scale" and "rotate" icons which I have as of yet to locate anywhere in the interface... maybe it was from an older version?

Click to expand...

The camera navigation icons are always there. See first screenshot.

To get the other transform tool icons you have to customized your toolbar. Right mouse click into the toolbar. See second screenshot.

Mikey2008 said:

I have found that at all times I CAN move and rotate objects using the increments off to the right side of the 3D view, but that's kind of inconvenient as opposed to being able to just "free-hand" move and rotate the camera or objects at will.

Click to expand...

For object transformations use the transform tool.

For camera transforms use either the camera controll icons or the ALT+ dragg. Moving the camera is needed way to often that it would be effective to select the camera object and use the transform tool. Therefore there are these to dedicated camera navigation options which always work. Even when the camera is not selected.

Mikey2008 said:

The oddest part about this is that after option+leftclick+dragging to "rotate" the view around a few times, not only do I suddenly lose the ability to freely "move" the camera around (by regular leftclick+dragging anywhere in the 3D view) but I ALSO lose the ability to freely move ANY objects around the same way; it suddenly makes it so that if I do have an object (let's just say a single cube) and I select it, then click any empty space in the 3D view and drag the mouse, with NO modifier held down, it ROTATES the object around INSTEAD of changing its coordinates at all, and once this happens there seems to be no way to get the "transform" tool to go back to "moving" the object around other than by relaunching the software =(

Click to expand...

If you want to rotate a object rings of the transform tool highlight. If you want to move a object click on one of the arrows to enable the move mode. The arrows will then highlight and you can move the object.

Please see also the documentation of the Transform tool.

I'm quite sure there is no bug there. Otherwise I would have been flodded with bug reports already.:wink:

Bye,
Martin

I don't see any problem either. When you create a new scene the camera is selected by default. Thus the transform tool moves the camera, which you happen to be looking through. If you create an object it is selected. Thus the transform tool now moves the object, however Alt-Click+Drag still rotates the camera as it is supposed to. To move the camera by dragging in empty space, simply select it in the camera in the object browser. As Martin said, this is just how it works, not really a bug.

Not the case Jeff, if it were that simple I wouldn't be claiming there were any bug on my end; that is the way I would EXPECT it to function... however what happens is that once this bug "kicks in" (which basically seems to trigger by overusing option+leftclick+drag in the 3D view to rotate the scene camera), even selecting the "camera" in the object list and then clicking and dragging in the 3D view results in *nothing* happening, at all.

However option+click+dragging will still rotate the camera (regardless of what object is selected).

Clicking on an object in the object list and attempting to just "move" it by clicking and dragging results in the object *rotating* when the way it would have functioned just moments before would be for the object to "move around". It's almost as if the tool somehow gets "stuck" into being good for object rotation only (with no modifier key in use)

I will try when I get home using the independent move, scale and rotate tools to see if they respond accordingly, if so then I'll just replace the all-in-one transform tool with the other 3 on my toolbar... I'm kind of more used to using independent tools anyway.

Check your keyboard shortcuts (in Cheetah prefs) and make sure you're not accidentally activating the rotate mode. If rotate mode is active then indeed the camera will not move when selected (and the other objects will rotate). But reactivating the move tool allows you to move the camera again. I've got the three tools bound to W, E, R so I can toggle back and forth quickly. I use Options+Left-Click n' Drag all day long and have never had it just switch modes randomly.

I can only say that i'm using cheetah not that long but when i first started to use the program i first read the manual to see what the tools do ,and HOW they do the things they do .

I've never encountered any problems with the cheetah Camera .

Maybe u r used to doing things with an other program in a certain way and cheetah works a bit different for u , but in my eyes , that's not a bug .

You can check the gallery ,there are some amazing works there , i don't think that this would be achieved with a completely buggy camera .

Hope you'll find a way around this and don't miss out on this nice piece of software .

Kenneth

Francois said:

Hi,

First, I must say that I am kind of exhausted after reading so many lines of useless text for what should be a simple "possible" bug report with clear / clearly defined actions to repeat the bug. I'm sorry, but what is a click-drag ? Click where ? Is this a left-click, a right click, a middle-click ? I guess that should have been 10 or 20 lines max. to describe and/or confirm the behaviour.

I must be too stupid too but I'm not able to reproduce "A Major User Interface Bug" with these steps :
" ...
To replicate instantly:
Open Cheetah 3D.
Create a Cube.
Press Delete.
Select Transform Tool.
Click and Drag.
..."
I even tried some variations ... ! Not a single sign of a bug, at least on my system !

Click to expand...

I pretty much agree with everything you said there, but those steps work for me every time (at the end you should have nothing selected, and clicking (the left button) and dragging ANYWHERE should pan the view and does not).

The problem stems from this throwaway line in the documentation (which I only just now read, but to which Mike is referring) -- this is under "3D View":

You can also move the camera around by clicking and dragging. If you hold down the Alt key, the camera will rotate around a central point.

Click to expand...

Sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't.

Once again:

1) This is a "feature" I've never known existed or attempted to use. I suspect from other people's bewildered replies they are in the same boat.
2) The standard way of doing things (all centered on the middle mouse button) is FAR superior.
3) So are the view control widgets.
4) I would happily see the feature removed or the documentation changed.
5) This is not a "Major User Interface Bug"

Now, everyone please be civil. Stop calling each other names, or implying that other people are calling you names. You'd think this was the Blender forums and someone had just complained about left click changing the 3d cursor position or something

Ok, I'm home and I've had a chance to try things out with the middle mouse button as has been described and knowing that the program has the ability to function so well with the middle mouse button and scroll wheel I can see why people would opt against bothering to use a transform tool and regular left-clicking in this program.

Bear in mind that for the majority of the 13 years I HAVE been using computers, "middle mouse buttons" and "scroll wheels" did not even exist, that's why I have been so used to relying on using built-in transform tools. I can see how it would be pretty simple even if one did have a standard one-button or two-button mouse that functionality would still be very much intact using the small icons at the upper-right above the 3D view.

On an interesting side note the "far left" and "far right" mouse buttons function identically on my intellimouse as the middle mouse button for camera movement; then again I never install the microsoft drivers because of how horribly they screw up the tracking speed among other issues.

Also now that I've checked in the preferences, it looks like part of the whole reason behind this was that the default mouse setting is for "three button" camera navigation style. The "one button" style is more what I've been accustomed to most other programs using by default.

Bear in mind that for the majority of the 13 years I HAVE been using computers "middle mouse buttons" and "scroll wheels" did not even exist, that's why I have been so used to relying on using built-in transform tools.

Click to expand...

The dominant platform for 3D from the early 80s through to around 2000 was SGI who used three button mice pretty much from the get-go. Pretty much everything in the 3D world happened first on SGI machines and the conventions were established there.

Maya is a descendant of Power Animator -- originally available only on SGI platforms.

XSI is a descendant of Softimage -- originally available only on SGI platforms.

The only major exception is Lightwave, which started on the Amiga, which had a two-button mouse.

Wow this is a weird bug. I never noticed it either because I did not know this feature was available.

The feature seems useful, but can't we transform the camera by selecting Camera view and then moving the view with the middle mouse button anyway?

It seems that the best way to solve this is to remove the feature entirely.

Exactly ... it's a feature no-one realized was there that doesn't quite work