Is there any official place to post RFE´s or is the general discussion a good place to send SideFX ideas?

Here is my suggestion:

The union with the paint displacement inside EditSOP was great however it could be better. In wings3d/silo/zbrush and other destructive modelling apps there is a mode mostly referred as tweak mode. Tweak mode lets you move points on geometry without using manipulators. It’s using the view plane as its default axis for moving the points. Combined with a selection highlight, that in advance show you what points your affecting, it’s a very fast way to model organic shapes. Graphically it could be another Tab in the EditSOP.

I hope this enhancement is recognised as useful.

If you need practical experience in how tweak work check out wings over at www.wings3d.com

If you use the Edit tool and turn off the secure selection (on the left toolbar) and start tweaking points, would this give you what you are describing?

I put in an RFE for the sculpt tool to work in this mode, ie sculpting that would move points in the plane perpendicular to the camera rather than just moving points up and down the normal.
Is that what you mean? I think that would be a great enhancement for tweaking.

heheh.. no pressure but tweak OP will be nice addtion for modeling.. :twisted:

Here's another RFE.

Allow the user to move points while respecting the a selected edge's vector… or a poly's surface orientation. Really it would allow you to redistribute the points along the existing surface with out changing their 3d position.. if you know what I mean.. it would be like modeling “on surface”.

-k

Yeah that would be great too, i've often rfe'd for an option to have the handle aligned automatically with the poly normal, that would help a lot.

rafal
If you use the Edit tool and turn off the secure selection (on the left toolbar) and start tweaking points, would this give you what you are describing?

Well the part where you can continue to select components is right but it goes a step beyond that. Basically tweak is a combination of two actions, move (in the plane perpendicular to the camera) and pre highlight selection. What pre highlight selection does is giving the modeller a visual indication in advance on what components he is going to alter. It is similar to the term “hover” in browser that when you move your mouse pointer over an element in the page you know what you’re going to pick. When doing modelling on mid to high poly models it is a great advantage to be able to do this since the manipulator can many times get in the way for you and having to select and deselect will in the end take a lot more time. It’s workflow booster.

Simon
I put in an RFE for the sculpt tool to work in this mode, ie sculpting that would move points in the plane perpendicular to the camera rather than just moving points up and down the normal.
Is that what you mean? I think that would be a great enhancement for tweaking.

I think thats what I mean. Perhaps making it as an option in sculpt is good. i can post a short videoclip later this week so it might be more clear.

move (in the plane perpendicular to the camera)

I think you already get that if you hide the construction plane with View > Show Construction Plane (or the button below the viewport). Then, with the secure selection turned off, you can drag the elements (points, primitives, whatever has been chosen to be selected in the left stow bar). This will move the elements in the plane perpendicular to the view direction.

pre highlight selection

I guess this is the missing functionality. I will add an RFE for that. You can, however, hide the manipulator by clicking the manipuplator buttons in the left stow bar (BTW, right click to get some other options). That is, when you see the manipulator showin for the first time, unclick the button that corresponds to that manipulator.

Also if you use appropriate viewing mode (wireframe, shaded wire) and aid it with show points (on the right stowbar), you should get a good idea which point or primitive you will be manipulating. This is sort of a workaround until the highlighting RFE is implementing.

Have a look at this softimage video. The tweak tool in Soft is brilliant. It gives you a couple of extra options all in one go. It also works with soft selections, which makes it very powerful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EYfUR1S_Fc [youtube.com]

Tweak SOP that mimics what XSI had, that would be brilliant!