Thumbnail "Views" list

I would like the ability to customise that list;

- stretch it up/down to display more images

- stretch it wider/narrower to change the size of the thumbnails

(Poss a 'stretch' button below the 'pin' button?)

- Have each click on the top/bottom scroll move only one view (rather than a 'page')

- Double click on the scroll to move a page worth (the current behavior)

- Disable (or hide) the top/bottom scroll button when you are at the top/bottom of the list

It would also be handy to have a 'camera' view button that added the current position into this list (as well as the "create view" in the native application - which will create the view, but not automatically tag it as a 'favorite' to add to that list.)

It would also be nice to choose the speed to move from one view to another (IK Double click jumps)

Perhaps dragging a thumbnail from one view to another could have it start a slow walk between the two views. (Maybe put a little arrow between the two on the palette to show that they are linked - this arrow could then let you access options to change the speed of transition, whether to bounce back, link to another view, ... and basically set up a simple "hands free" mode that would give a guided tour.)

Quote from Kaj Burival

Hi Gadget, thanks for your feedback! I've filed it as feature requests accordingly. Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like to share with us.

LOL - don't you guys have enough to do? look back on my posts in the ideas/requests area

A small bug that you might want to look into if playing with the thumbnail view list: any mirrors are displayed as cut-outs to the external panorama...

Idea request

Another thought occurred to me - with the latest developments in key-frames for animation, can the two things be merged? So that each 'favourite' view is actually recorded as a special form of key-frame?

This would be beneficial in several directions

- it would allow the saving of FOV and Focal distance with camera position

- it would allow easy creation of paths.

- it would allow quick jumping to camera key-frames.

- it would allow you to export the key-frames as step through images.

...

Forgive my curiosity - What do you see as the difference in functionality between a "view" and a "Keyframe"? I don't see what is stopping one from being used as the other? And why it matters if there is a clear definition between the two?

... so the only thing in a key-frame that wouldn't be useful in a scene is the time-stamp. (Although it could be used to determine it's relative vertical position on the thumbnail view list.)

:shrug: It seems to me that it would streamline and simplify everything (at the front-end) if both were interchangeable - or just became a "Keyframe scene"

Quote from Kaj Burival

but what if users wanted to keep them separated?

It's a 3-way toggle: use for batch, use for keyframe, use for both.

Another advantage for this is also that you can 'turn off' the keyframes from being visible in the geometry (by setting them to 'batch') without actually removing them from the project. Similarly you can de-activate certain keyframes from a path or turn various 'sets' on/off to show different animations.

Quote from Kaj Burival

Making them one and the same thing would also include creating a 3D scene/view out of every Keyframe you place - in the host software. This would disrupt a lot of projects out there.

Would it have to create scenes in the host software? Do keyframes currently do this? Why not populate the favourites list from the current keyframe list rather than the application's scene list? Sure you could create the scenes as you can just now by clicking the camera button, but why disrupt current projects by dumping a whole lot of scenes into the native application? Why not have the list of favorites actually a list of 'keyscenes' and a button to import the current (native application) scene into the list (Rather than listing the current scenes and ticking on/off).

Perhaps an option to monitor the native application and keep imported scenes up-to-date (Lock these to prevent change, or notify and ask if the settings should be written back to the native application).

Quote from Kaj Burival

Maybe it would be worth considering the option to simply include keyframes separately into the view list so you could use both in presentation mode?

I do understand the function of both, and I think that making scenes from your native application into keyframes is a part of the work-flow to create a presentation. Add an option to show both is one solution, but it's adding clutter rather than reducing it.

Personally I would really like to use the options that the keyframe tools give you in a 'live' environment (which is the primary function of Enscape) rather than exporting it - having scenes and keyframes the same thing would go a long way to achieving that goal.

Quote from Kaj Burival

So, we'd need to have keyframes that should not be scenes, and we would need scenes that should not be keyframes.

...And you would have ones that should be both. (You could even have a flag that denotes the camera position is a panorama)

It seems to me that there are several requests to add camera specific things into individual scenes (rather than globally) and you already have a mechanism in place to do that - keyframes. It just needs one more data tag added to the information stored in a keyframe to tell it to be ignored when batch rendering or ignored when creating a path.

If there is a better method to add FOV, DOF, timestamp, etc to a scene for rendering and if there is a better way to change the speed of moving between scenes and all the other cool stuff that would make the working of scenes better I eagerly await it. As a feature request it is more of a practical solution to a lot of other feature requests rather than one in it's own right.

I know you could place cameras where your scenes are, but isn't that duplicating the same information?

(I've not had a chance to play with the video mode from the latest couple of releases... yet)