Added Shift + Tab for Snap and Ctrl + Shift + Tab for Snap Element Menu (consistent to
3D View)
NOTE: Exit Group is now Ctrl + Tab instead of Shift + Tab
This merge-commit brings in a number of new features and workflow/UI improvements for
working with Grease Pencil. While these were originally targetted at improving
the workflow for creating 3D storyboards in Blender using the Grease Pencil,
many of these changes should also prove useful in other workflows too.
The main highlights here are:
1) It is now possible to edit Grease Pencil strokes
- Use D Tab, or toggle the "Enable Editing" toggles in the Toolbar/Properties regions
to enter "Stroke Edit Mode". In this mode, many common editing tools will
operate on Grease Pencil stroke points instead.
- Tools implemented include Select, Select All/Border/Circle/Linked/More/Less,
Grab, Rotate, Scale, Bend, Shear, To Sphere, Mirror, Duplicate, Delete.
- Proportional Editing works when using the transform tools
2) Grease Pencil stroke settings can now be animated
NOTE: Currently drivers don't work, but if time allows, this may still be
added before the release.
3) Strokes can be drawn with "filled" interiors, using a separate set of
colour/opacity settings to the ones used for the lines themselves.
This makes use of OpenGL filled polys, which has the limitation of only
being able to fill convex shapes. Some artifacts may be visible on concave
shapes (e.g. pacman's mouth will be overdrawn)
4) "Volumetric Strokes" - An alternative drawing technique for stroke drawing
has been added which draws strokes as a series of screen-aligned discs.
While this was originally a partial experimental technique at getting better
quality 3D lines, the effects possible using this technique were interesting
enough to warrant making this a dedicated feature. Best results when partial
opacity and large stroke widths are used.
5) Improved Onion Skinning Support
- Different colours can be selected for the before/after ghosts. To do so,
enable the "colour wheel" toggle beside the Onion Skinning toggle, and set
the colours accordingly.
- Different numbers of ghosts can be shown before/after the current frame
6) Grease Pencil datablocks are now attached to the scene by default instead of
the active object.
- For a long time, the object-attachment has proved to be quite problematic
for users to keep track of. Now that this is done at scene level, it is
easier for most users to use.
- An exception for old files (and for any addons which may benefit from object
attachment instead), is that if the active object has a Grease Pencil datablock,
that will be used instead.
- It is not currently possible to choose object-attachment from the UI, but
it is simple to do this from the console instead, by doing:
context.active_object.grease_pencil = bpy.data.grease_pencil["blah"]
7) Various UI Cleanups
- The layers UI has been cleaned up to use a list instead of the nested-panels
design. Apart from saving space, this is also much nicer to look at now.
- The UI code is now all defined in Python. To support this, it has been necessary
to add some new context properties to make it easier to access these settings.
e.g. "gpencil_data" for the datablock
"active_gpencil_layer" and "active_gpencil_frame" for active data,
"editable_gpencil_strokes" for the strokes that can be edited
- The "stroke placement/alignment" settings (previously "Drawing Settings" at the
bottom of the Grease Pencil panel in the Properties Region) is now located in
the toolbar. These were more toolsettings than properties for how GPencil got drawn.
- "Use Sketching Sessions" has been renamed "Continuous Drawing", as per a
suggestion for an earlier discussion on developer.blender.org
- By default, the painting operator will wait for a mouse button to be pressed
before it starts creating the stroke. This is to make it easier to include
this operator in various toolbars/menus/etc. To get it immediately starting
(as when you hold down DKEy to draw), set "wait_for_input" to False.
- GPencil Layers can be rearranged in the "Grease Pencil" mode of the Action Editor
- Toolbar panels have been added to all the other editors which support these.
8) Pie menus for quick-access to tools
A set of experimental pie menus has been included for quick access to many
tools and settings. It is not necessary to use these to get things done,
but they have been designed to help make certain common tasks easier.
- Ctrl-D = The main pie menu. Reveals tools in a context sensitive and
spatially stable manner.
- D Q = "Quick Settings" pie. This allows quick access to the active
layer's settings. Notably, colours, thickness, and turning
onion skinning on/off.
Make the UI API more consistent and reduce confusion with some naming.
mainly:
- API function calls
- enum values
some internal static functions have been left for now
* The `NODE_OT_parent_clear` operator has been removed. This was a very
simplistic operator that detached every selected node, which is not very
useful in case of hierarchical frames. The `NODE_OT_detach` operator
only detaches the top parent nodes in the selection, keeping the
hierarchy of selected nodes intact.
* The `ALT+P` shortcut has been reassigned to the `NODE_OT_detach`
operator which replaces the previous `NODE_OT_clear` mapping with
similar behavior (also gives a menu entry shortcut now).
* Shortcuts for `NODE_OT_detach_translate_attach` have been removed, due
to crowded and messy keymap and unintuitive shortcut `ALT+F`. This macro
operator is still registered, in case hardcore users want to make their
own keymaps, but not mapped by default. Node keymaps may need some
redesign in the future for these things.
Operators that trigger UI events (but nothing else)
were using 'CANCELLED' making it impossible to tell if an invoke
function failed, or opened a menu.
whenever enter edge bevel weight editing.
This is what happens when one makes an edge sharp, for instance.
The edge bevel weight display is not on by default for performance
reasons, but seems reasonable to enable it when user indicates
interest by editing bevel weight values.
wrong button.
Works by adding a flag to transform operators "remove_on_cancel". This is currently only used for node transforms, the idea is that if set, the operator will remove the transformed elements when it is
cancelled. It's not possible to do that in the original NODE_OT_add_node operator, because transform is modal and there is no way of reacting to a cancel outside of the transform itself (previous attempt
used a macro operator, but that also doesn't work because subsequent operators don't get executed if the previous transform cancels).
of the active object in the 3D view. This was due to sharing a global G.moving
flag to indicate that transform is active, now it's only set per transform data
type so different editors don't influence each other.
Actually more a feature request... Now create orientations operator has an additional option, use_view, when this one is enabled it will use current view instead of active object to create the new space.
Also made some cleanup (made some funcs static).
* Reflect changes stated in prev commit about contexts in py code.
* Add a "Plural" context, to handle cases where english does not mark plural at all (e.g. shorten labels of only one adjective). Not so happy with that, but can't see any other way to do it, for now.
* Abuse "ID_CURVE" context for all falloff curves (this should solve some confusion issues, e.g. "sharp"...).