Hey people,

I had an interesting conversation with Support about the camera lock feature and why I think that's a non-feature which actually complicates things unnecessarily and requires the user to perform more clicks.

I don't want to get into this here (unless someone asks me to) but I'd like to know your view on another but related matter that sounds like this:

-there are menus in Houdini that switch between different modes or toggle various options. For example when one opens up Houdini for the first time you are in Wireframe mode. To get into shaded you go to the cube icon (we'll ignore the shortcut ‘W’ for the sake of this example) and choose your desired mode. Now to get back into wireframe, you go again to he drop-down list at the cube icon.

The feature I'm proposing is to use MMB for switching back'n'forth between the two last states (wireframe and shaded in this case)

The same would go for camera selections - switch just once between a camera and the Native Viewport Camera and then you'll just MMB to switch, you won't have to access the menu. Keeping the camera lock button pressed would eliminate my problem with this “feature” (which I didn't expand upon but just mentioned).

The Viewport Layout and Ghost/Hide/Show menus would benefit from this and others.
They would make it possible to reassign hotkeys ('W', ‘Y’) currently used for these to other actions used more often (like for modeling, but not only), whoever wants to, of course.

Wouldn't you agree this would be a very good improvement for Houdini's interface?

p.s. MMB is not set in stone obviously, ctrl+LMB or any other combo can work.

I actually like the camera lock functionality, and do not like how this can get confused in Maya, where sometime when working fast, one can easily perform a series of moves on the wrong camera. Usually when I am key framing a camera, I am deliberate and know that I am editing here, so the extra step of locking the camera is not that inconvenient. I also find it way more convenient to be able to check my camera, then move without having to switch cameras, which involves a dropdown menu and a choice.

Also what happens when you have multiple cameras in a scene?

It would be nice to have some key commands to move quickly through the shaded choices.

sl0throp
I actually like the camera lock functionality, and do not like how this can get confused in Maya, where sometime when working fast, one can easily perform a series of moves on the wrong camera.

If you're going to render from that camera you should keyframe it. In productions (animations) cameras are animated and moving while in a camera mode will not be a destructive action - the camera will snap back to its position once you move the time slider.

sl0throp
Usually when I am key framing a camera, I am deliberate and know that I am editing here, so the extra step of locking the camera is not that inconvenient.

So it is inconvenient to some degree then? I don't know what you mean by you being deliberate when animating a camera - as apposed to what, animating it by mistake? I'm genuinely confused about you mean.

sl0throp
I also find it way more convenient to be able to check my camera, then move without having to switch cameras, which involves a drop-down menu and a choice.

The minus click you'll gain from checking a camera and then orbit without switching you'll pay back when switching to a camera with the intention to orbit by an extra click to lock the view.
If you think about this camera lock logically, you'll see there's nothing to be gained other than another layer of complexity.

sl0throp
Also what happens when you have multiple cameras in a scene?

You're free to access the drop-down menu, what I'm proposing is adding a functionality for switching back-n-forth between the two last modes (i.e. cam1-native, native-spotlight1, etc.) with MMB or other button/mouse-keyboard combo, not removing the drop-down menu.

Anyway, before someone else tries to convince me why the camera lock is a good feature, please know that I'm not hell-bent on removing it and that's not because I've been persuaded the other way in the meantime, I just want to focus on the switch feature I've proposed which is more important.

More to the point, is this a feature you'd like to see implemented and if not, why not. Again, this adds some functionality - great for viewport centered work when you often switch between a camera and the native cam., shaded/wireframe and so on, nothing is removed/changed.

Camera Lock (toggle) for editing camera settings is awesome feature that is real live saver in production.
I wish other software (Maya, XSI etc…) adopted this feature as it helps a lot not to break camera layout.

I witness a lot when somebody accidentally moved approved camera (during layout, animation etc. and not realized it until composition). Also some people have autokey turned on (so keyframed camera isn't bulletproof either).

So Toggle for CAMERA EDIT MODE is great. Period.


I would like to see this MMB switching (of shaded/wire/etc. view style) and (previous, current) viewport more like as extension of “Repeat previous command” RFE


There are shortcuts (W, Shift+W, Space+Y, ]) for those features already, so currently this is more like neglecting wish then feature that is actually needed.


It is already possible to reassign W, Y keys to other features. (Top menu: Edit->Hotkeys)

Period, shmeriod, if one can accidentally keyframe the camera because he forgot that the Auto keyframe is ON, one can just as well forget that he previously locked the camera with the same destructive end result.
It seems other apps get along just fine without it and adding one more thing you can forget about is not going to solve other things you have to remember (like the auto is ON).

The arguments brought up so far are weak at best from an objective stand point. They're all about “I'm used to it and I like it” which is a valid subjective position by the way, but if we're talking about efficiency, they fail. Double period.

Anyway, I don't want to prolong this camera lock discussion (I regret for even bringing it up).

I'm glad you agree the switch/MMB thing feature seems like a good addition.
As I said previously, I know there are shortcuts and I can reasign to whatever I want. I also said that shortcuts are precious for viewport centered work and if you can delegate some things to a menu which is accessed with a single click (MMB) it's for the best as you can free those shortcuts for other tasks (modeling ops for example) while not leaving you only with the menus for the operations you just lost shortcuts of - you'd have a MMB helping with menus as well.