UI: Keymap Drag Direction Configuration #109726

Lukas Sneyd · 2023-07-05T10:21:33+02:00

Lukas Sneyd commented

2023-07-05 10:21:33 +02:00

First-time contributor

Configuration for keymap drag direction.

Can follow along by watching 9:56 of this youtube video about my custom build #109150

Blender let's you assign a direction to click-drag in the Keymap. There are 8 of them, which is nice, but it's confusing and inaccurate if all you need are 2. Provide some alternatives in Preferences->Input->Mouse. I'd like to put them at the top of the keymap in that preferences area, but I noticed how that thing will disappear if you load a keymap or use one other than the default. Didn't look into it yet.

Keymap Drag Direction has 3 options. Eight, which is what Blender does, Left Right, and Up Down. The tradeoff for the new ones is that they're exclusive. If you use Left Right, the only Keymap items Blender will match with are Any, Left, and Right. Unless something has been manually set to a direction, there shouldn't be anything besides View Axis, the ones where you hold ALT and Middlemouse while dragging in the direction that corresponds to the view you want.

With Blender's way, try to set Box select to Extend when dragging left aka West, and Subtract when dragging right aka East. If user doesn't initiate a mouse drag within 45 degrees of left or right, they get a Tweak Event instead of what they expected. There's a way to make this work better using the keymap alone. They can set Extend to Any, and Subtract to East, Northeast, and Southeast. The Keymap item set to Any needs to be after the other 3 or they'll be undetectable. Not intuitive, and I didn't figure out this was possible until after making this feature.

With the new ways I made there's 3 operators that will set drag direction. If a Keymap item is undetectable, it will warn the user about it. Not ideal, but nothing bad will happen, it's just telling them that this Keymap item won't do anything because Blender can't see it anymore.

Drag detection has some perpindicular bias. If the user is on the Left Right setting, and they drag up or down far enough before moving to the right, they're going to get the Left Keymap item instead of the Right Keymap item that they intended. If they're on Up Down, and move horizontally before going up, they would get the Down Keymap. With Blender's Eight way, assuming they set it like I described, the dominant Keymap item is the one that is set to the Any direction. The Left Right and Up down options are a lot more precise so it's hard for this to happen. The Eight way calculation rounds to the nearest int, so it treats every mouse drag within 45 degrees of a cardinal direction like it went straight vertical or horizontal. This problem can be mitigated by increasing drag theshold in Userprefs->Input->Mouse.

Configuration for keymap drag direction. --- Can follow along by watching 9:56 of this [youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVrFCOa7RO8&t=596s) about my [custom build](https://blenderartists.org/t/blender-with-better-selection-and-more/1471220) #109150 Blender let's you assign a direction to click-drag in the Keymap. There are 8 of them, which is nice, but it's confusing and inaccurate if all you need are 2. Provide some alternatives in Preferences->Input->Mouse. I'd like to put them at the top of the keymap in that preferences area, but I noticed how that thing will disappear if you load a keymap or use one other than the default. Didn't look into it yet. Keymap Drag Direction has 3 options. Eight, which is what Blender does, Left Right, and Up Down. The tradeoff for the new ones is that they're exclusive. If you use Left Right, the only Keymap items Blender will match with are Any, Left, and Right. Unless something has been manually set to a direction, there shouldn't be anything besides View Axis, the ones where you hold ALT and Middlemouse while dragging in the direction that corresponds to the view you want. ![image](/attachments/98f72a50-1e2b-40d5-8422-9f3f29342a83) With Blender's way, try to set Box select to Extend when dragging left aka West, and Subtract when dragging right aka East. If user doesn't initiate a mouse drag within 45 degrees of left or right, they get a Tweak Event instead of what they expected. There's a way to make this work better using the keymap alone. They can set Extend to Any, and Subtract to East, Northeast, and Southeast. The Keymap item set to Any needs to be after the other 3 or they'll be undetectable. Not intuitive, and I didn't figure out this was possible until after making this feature. With the new ways I made there's 3 operators that will set drag direction. If a Keymap item is undetectable, it will warn the user about it. Not ideal, but nothing bad will happen, it's just telling them that this Keymap item won't do anything because Blender can't see it anymore. Drag detection has some perpindicular bias. If the user is on the Left Right setting, and they drag up or down far enough before moving to the right, they're going to get the Left Keymap item instead of the Right Keymap item that they intended. If they're on Up Down, and move horizontally before going up, they would get the Down Keymap. With Blender's Eight way, assuming they set it like I described, the dominant Keymap item is the one that is set to the Any direction. The Left Right and Up down options are a lot more precise so it's hard for this to happen. The Eight way calculation rounds to the nearest int, so it treats every mouse drag within 45 degrees of a cardinal direction like it went straight vertical or horizontal. This problem can be mitigated by increasing drag theshold in Userprefs->Input->Mouse.

left-right keymap.jpg

162 KiB

warning.jpg

206 KiB

drag options.jpg

154 KiB